22/04/2022
Improving our Well-being: Mindfulness
Stop! Before your brain instantly clouds over with groups sitting in circles, and slow deep voices asking you to focus on your breathing, let’s cut through the cliché. Mindfulness is simply becoming aware of your physical body and your environment within this moment, it can be done anywhere and doing almost anything (particularly physical activities). It involves focussing your attention away from your internal thoughts about the future, the past, worries, fears judgements and instead on what is happening now in your body, around you, and your mind.
Some benefits can be improved mood/emotional regulation, improved relationships, and a decrease in stress and anxiety (there are more benefits).
There are lots of websites and apps that can help to learn mindfulness. My suggestion (if you’re struggling with the guided meditation types) try to do something you enjoy (anything) and just take a moment to think about what your body is doing - what you can sense (see, smell, hear, feel, taste?), and then check in with how you’re feeling at that moment. There isn’t a right or wrong way to feel, but if you can recognise how you are, you can start to work on what you need at that time.
