Mindfulness
A few years ago Mindfulness was the buzzword. If you were in wellness and didn’t practice mindfulness you might as well hang up your mala beads and eat a McDonalds. I have helped my clients be more mindful for over 10 years and I’ll be honest, most people are baffled at what Mindfulness is. This is mostly because it is actually so simple.
Letting go of the past, trying not to control the future, staying in the present.
Easy right? Hmmm
Taking a breather from our busy lives to try not to think about the past; how we should have said something different, cleverer, funnier. How we should have behaved differently. Or taking a pause from making lists, to tick things off in a never ending loop of attainment, manifesting and visualisation, which stops us from being present.
What then? Funnily enough our brain doesn’t easily empty or become calm.
This is where Mindfulness has a toolbox for the modern “monkey mind”, jumping from tree to tree, interjected with random thoughts firing off, accompanied with bouts of social tangents and life admin. So how do we change this?
Here are just a few of the tools that I use to help bring my clients back to the present moment:
Mindful breathing
Mindful pause
Mindful eating
Mindful walking
Mindful movement
Mindful Breathing brings a focus onto the breath; observing with curiosity the nature and quality of the breath, the speed, nasal or oral breathing. How are you breathing right at this moment? Are you rushing or multi tasking and therefore breathing fast? Unknowingly triggering your sympathetic nervous system and your body into going into fight or flight mode? Only with awareness can there be change.
Mindful pause is taking a moment- often signified by an earlier placed sticker- when we are reminded to stop and be present. Present with feelings, present and aware of the breath, noticing the quality of the mind. Calm or busy. Overwhelmed or peaceful. Place the sticker on your mirror and say “I love you”, to yourself every time you see it. Or put one on your laptop lid which reminds you to take a pause when you’ve finished work and go on to something else. Like creating pockets of pause in your day.
Mindful eating brings our attention to our eating habits. I remember being told to chew my food 100 times and this is a version of this. Instead, you mindfully look at the food, smell it, touch it and continue consciously using all the senses to really be present with whatever you’re eating. This is usually taught using a raisin. Hence it is coined “The raisin Exercise”. You stay with each sense until it is consumed. Try doing this with a biscuit and you may find the urge to eat more than one subsides.
I was taught mindful walking or walking meditation when I was staying with the Dalai Lama’s monks in Dharamsala learning meditation. We had to do a one hour walking meditation all the way up to the top of the stupa (hill) at 5am to get to the monastery to begin the morning meditation practice. Mindful walking and mindful movement are ways of keeping the state of mind we have created whilst breathing or pausing but in movement. Slowly and with awareness and curiosity.
These are some accessible ways of incorporating a Mindfulness practice into your daily life. Emptying your mind whilst waiting for the kettle to boil for a cuppa. Sitting at the bus stop and not getting out your phone but instead breathing for a few moments. Walking to the water cooler at work and feeling the ground beneath your feet as you make contact with it. Having a big stretch after you’ve washed your hands when in the toilet. This is what I tell people when they say smoking calms them down. I get it. Going outside, away from your desk, on your own and taking big long drags of a cigarette. It’s not the cigarette,(which is actually stimulating ), it's the ceremony and the breathing that’s calming. All of this can be done without the cigarette and with far more benefits.
Do you feel that you can say to your coworkers that you are going outside to take a mindful breath?
For 30 years, I have travelled the world studying yoga, healing, meditation and massage and have learnt from the best. I was taught about Tibetan medicine from the Dalai Lama's physicians and practised meditation and mindfulness with his monks at the Men Tse Kang Monastery in Dharamsala. I have trained with shamans from Peru and learnt how to teach yoga from a lineage that comes from Sri K Pattabhi Jois.
I have worked In the wellness industry for over 30 years. I am a wellness consultant, an addiction therapist, hypnotherapist, Reiki Master and auricular acupuncturist. I am currently the wellness consultant to three major independent production companies in the television sector, Diamond Light Source and has her own private practice.