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 hindrance have been the thoughts;
“I cant Meditate.”
Sleepiness and Distraction
There are lots of other hindrances, 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 into having explored mindfulness at length and some of the exercises that felt accessible and achievable.
Mindfulness or awareness of breathing can be undertaken while practising creative pursuits. Bringing awareness to the breathing rather than the mind chatter
Here are a couple of Mindfulness exercises that may be helpful to those people who find mindfulness difficult:
- Breathing in and counting to 10 then exhaling
- Mantra: My breath is my anchor, my anchor is my breath
- Mindfulness with Mudra when you can’t concentrate eg sa, ta, na, ma
- Be the witness, or observer of yourself
- Guided meditations eg apps, CDs
- Accept the flaws when your mind is like a flapping fish and bring kindness to your flaws rather than listening to your “Inner Critic”
- Diarying for mindfulness
- Gardening
- Nature walks
- Walking for mindfulness
- Vase on the top of your head visualisation. The idea is that you need to be so mindful that the water does not spill out of the vase