The Benefits. Mindfulness allows us to get more out of what is happening so that we don’t sleepwalk through our lives. Life is valuable. Let’s live it and let’s enjoy it when we can! We can discover the abundance in our reality, even doing boring activities. Here are some of the benefits:

– Greater awareness of our thoughts and emotions
– Better control of our emotions
– A different relationship with our thoughts
– Decreased reactivity

When we’re present, we’re not ruminating about the past or fearing the future which is a big part of why mindfulness practice improves wellbeing.

By taking our thoughts less seriously during mindfulness, we can improve our mood, decrease worry and reduce stress. With all of this taken together, mindfulness can help improve our overall wellbeing and reinforce positive thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

How can we practice? 

Like any habit, being more mindful takes practice. This is like exercise in a sense. There are two major categories of mindfulness practice.

List 1 is like going to the gym – its really helps build the muscles and stamina. List 2 is like the exercise we get in everyday life from just getting up and going.

Activities designed specifically to engage mindful awareness:

🧘 Meditate
🍃 Spend Time in Nature
🧘‍♂️ Yoga
🔎 Bodyscan
🔈 Ambient sounds
❤️ Practice gratitude

Bringing mindfulness to our ordinary life activities:

🌬 Breathe
⏰ Slow Down
🥗 Eat Mindfully
🚶 Walking
📚 Reading, writing, creating
📱 Reduce Screen Time

Remember

You’re not bad at meditating. Losing focus again and again when meditating is normal and is going to happen. It’s even part of marking our success as we have become aware of what our mind is doing.

The goal isn’t to become “good at meditating”. The point of meditation is simply to train focus on the present and to let go of judgements.

Remember

Let go of attachment to a specific outcome. We never know what we will experience during meditation. We can practice opening to whatever happens in a particular session.

Myths

🛑 Mindfulness is a religious practice.
💚 Mindfulness can be applied to daily life without adherence to any religious tradition.

🛑 Mindfulness is not objective.
💚 Mindfulness has been scientifically proven to change the brain.

🛑 Mindfulness means spending a lot of time in our heads.
💚 Rather than dwelling in our minds, mindfulness is about connecting with our basic experience and letting go of the stories and narratives that can rule us.