Mindfulness: Easy Ways to Experience and Practice
You may have heard about mindfulness. I have been attending multiple sessions about it with coaches and experts. It is a well talked about topic and I felt that it has been made very unique and esoteric in the minds of many. This led me to think of writing a simple blog that makes it easy to comprehend and practice with simple tools we can incorporate in our daily lives.
Essentially, mindfulness is an ability to be fully present at the moment. It has its ingenious perks, everything from releasing stress and sadness to enhancing concentration and happiness, as per the general mindfulness research.
But what exactly does mindfulness mean? And, how can you recognize it and reap its many benefits? In day-to-day life, mindfulness is a meditational practice and the only way to truly experience the present moment and integrate that awareness into your lifestyle.
Let’s break it down for you.
First of all, mindfulness is not rocket science! It is a simple practice that increases cognitive focus and regulation. It provides you a way to be aware of your thoughts, navigate through them and over time, it helps you to manifest your thoughts. Like Aladdin’s Genie, it is a golden key to unlock your dreams. Mindfulness is a proven practice followed by giant geeks like Einstein and Lincoln.
Here’s everything you need to know to get started.
In the beginning, to create a mindful experience at home, it is important to understand that being mindful does not have to be always a formal practice in which you sit in meditation, but it can be an informal practice that occurs throughout the day. The simplicity of focusing on one task at a time or putting down your smartphone and taking a few mindful breaths leads to a focused environment.
So, let’s find some ways to create it in our daily routine:
Mindful Wakeup: Kick-start day with a purpose
Guiding Questions: Can you feel your hands moving? What makes your hands move? Is it the air filing in your lungs? Can you feel the air moving in through your nose? Can you feel the air moving out through your nose? Does the air feel a little coder on the way in and warmer on the way out? Can you hear your breath? What does it sound?
Mindful Walks: Activities to bring out inner joy
We can walk along noticing things that we have not seen before. Then we can choose a mindful moment, where we are completely silent and pay attention to all the sounds we can hear, such as birds singing, lawnmower running or a stream gurgling over stones, etc. This will turn into a natural walk into an exciting adventure and teach them to focus all their senses.
Mindfulness Meditation and Practices
Loving Kindness Meditation, Gratitude Journaling and Grounding exercises are ways to apply mindfulness in everyday lives. A combination of these can help you stay calm and reduce cortisol levels in your body. They can create a sense of centeredness in the sympathetic nervous system. Sometimes learning with a group and other like minded people from the community can help. You can experience curated workshops to learn this here. This is how the community sessions at Freebirds look like:
Mindful Connections
Mindfulness can be tool to strengthen and deepen your relationships as well. Building mindful connections helps you navigate your life with ease and around people you can trust and love. There are practical tools that can enable you to do that. You can attend facilitated sessions with coaches and peers to learn and practice building blocks of mindful relationships here.
Meet Yourselves Through Art
A great engaging way to start the journey towards mindfulness is through art and creative processes. It allows your mind to wander while allowing those expressions to be put freely on paper enabling you to listen to yourself and be more aware. You can give yourself an hour of time once a week just to be completely free with your mind and slowly learn to be more aware of your thoughts and hence, more mindful of them to enable them to serve your dreams and purpose. You can learn about this online or go through it with experienced guided facilitators like Deepali Parmar, Mindful Love Tribe, Roshani Shenazz.
Last but not the least, you can try these 3 practices daily:
1. When you wake up, sit in your bed, rub your hands and pay gratitude to the universe for giving you the best gift called a new day.
2. Take three long, deep, nourishing breaths — feel the coldness of breath underneath your nose and movement of your lungs going in and out.
3. Ask: “What is my intention for today?”
Take oath “Today, I will try my best to be kind to myself, be patient with others, and enjoy the moment.”
Let every day begin with inner awareness and happiness!
