How to practice Mindfulness

It was one of the very first psychologists who I saw in 2005, who introduced me to Mindfulness as a self-practice. He lent me a copy of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, Full Catastrophe Living.

About a year later, I found myself searching for more, so I started regularly attending a Buddhist Centre and practising Mindfulness there. And since then my practice of Mindfulness has continued every day. It’s evolved with my other practices and then sometimes it’s as simple as the very first practice I learnt.

In May, I was very honoured to host a workshop @holisticone about Mindfulness. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to simplify many of the teachings I normally share, an opportunity for us to simply come back to the present.

Often, the more we learn, the more we can complicate things so much that we forget what it is we’re trying to achieve in the first place… and why…

Mindfulness is a beautiful reminder of just how powerful it is to simply connect and be aware of to the present moment.

Jon Kabat-Zinn says that Mindfulness is necessary for us. “We need to be optimally aware of who we are, where we are and how we are to survive…”

How often do you stop throughout your day and take stock of who you are really in the moment? How often do you connect with yourself and become aware of how you truly feel and allow yourself to feel it? And how often do you know where you are and how you even got there?

You may not realise this, but for most of the day, we’re all living in the past. You’re so accustomed to how you live that you go about your day most of the time, on autopilot – from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep.

Most of what you do, think, say, wear, eat and so on is exactly what you’ve experienced in the past. It’s just a pattern you follow over and over again.

It’s not until something happens to shift you out of it that many of us even take notice. You miss a turnoff, you hear super exciting news, what you eat didn’t agree with you, you see a rainbow, and so on.

But for the most part, your days look and feel pretty much the same.

There’s no judgement about this but unless we’re making the conscious effort to become aware of who, where and how we are in the present moment, we’re living out our past patterns.

Mindfulness is a practice that just requires you to take notice. And when you start taking notice more, then it’s no longer something you only do when something outside of you grabs your attention. But it becomes a part of who you are – someone who takes notice. And someone who knows how they feel, who and where they are and how they got there.

As you can imagine, the benefits to this are infinite. But to name a few:

• deeper connection with self
• greater ability to manage stress and anxiety
• sleeping better
• deeper awareness of the self and that impacts how you also respond to the world (better boundaries, knowing who you are and what you want, etc.)
• boosts happiness
• enhances ability to focus and get clarity
• greater compassion and kindness

So, how do you practice mindfulness?

There are many different ways to bring your awareness to the present moment but here is my favourite and a practice you can do for as long or little as you like. 

Connect to the breath: This is such a simple practice of just connecting to your breath. Bring your awareness to your breath. Just the simple inhale and exhale. 

If you find it challenging to focus on the breath without your mind wandering off, you can also focus on counting each breath. Each time your mind wanders, start back at number 1. 

Once you feel like you have the hang of mindfulness – this practice of focusing on the present moment, you can then bring this into your daily life, rather than feeling like you need to take specific time out of your day. 

Practice mindfulness – simply focus on the present – focus on the activity, on the feelings, sensations, and using all of your senses in certain moments of your day. You really can bring mindfulness into almost every part of your day. MIndfully making your morning coffee, brushing your teeth, gardening, running or lifting weights, cooking, cleaning and so on…

And most of all, add mindfulness to your other self-awareness or spiritual development practices such as Reiki and Crystal Healing. By adding mindfulness, you can create a more present practice that focuses on just being, rather than needing to solve or heal anything by worrying or overthinking it. We shift out of analysis and simply just let the energetics and the magic do what it needs to do. 

Mindfulness is a wonderful practice of course, in letting go! 

All my love

Loretta