Having practised breathe with movement for over a decade, these are a few personal insights into practising Mindfulness. Another way of terming Mindfulness is Awareness of Breathing. When this was explained to me a while ago the whole idea of “Mindfulness” made much more sense to me. Whilst Mindfulness is not something I particularly enjoy, it is something that maintains my wellbeing.
Some of my main hinderance have been the thoughts;
“I cant Meditate.”
Sleepiness and Distraction
There are lots of other hinderances, but the intention of this article is not to discuss the barriers to mindfulness. There are other articles for this. The intention is to give insight in having explored mindfulness at length, some of the exercises that felt accessible and achievable.
Here are a couple of Mindfulness exercises that maybe helpful to those people who find mindfulness difficult:
- The mindfulness of breathing or awareness of breathing that can be undertaken while practising creative pursuits. Bringing awareness to the breathe rather than the mind chatter
- Breathing in and counting to 10 then exhalinh
- Mantra: My breathe is my anchor, my anchor is my breathe
- Mindfulness with Mudra when you can’t concentrate eg sa, ta, na, ma
- Be the witness, or observer to yourself
- Guided meditations eg apps, cds
- Accept the flaws when mind is like a flapping fish and bringing kindness to your flaws rather than listening to our “Inner Critic”
- Diarying for mindfulness
- Gardening
- Nature walks
- Walking for mindfulness
- Vase on the top of your head visualisation. The idea that you need to be so mindful that the water does not spill out of the vase