Diving Into Mindfulness
Mindfulness involves bringing one’s attention to the present moment – it encourages individuals to fully engage with their thoughts, feelings, and surrounding environment. By cultivating a mindfulness practice, individuals can help reduce levels of stress, anxiety, and rumination and promote a sense of calm and inner peace. What’s more, mindfulness can help to enhance self-awareness, allowing individuals to understand their thought patterns and emotions, which can lead to improved emotional regulation and overall mental clarity.
While some find it easiest to practice mindfulness in a quiet room, it can also be incorporated into daily activities such as eating, walking, or even completing daily chores like washing dishes or folding laundry. If you’re new to mindfulness, consider using a guided app for additional guidance and support as you begin your practice. From there, find what works! This week, we’re all about mindfulness, highlighting resources that outline the benefits of the practice in addition to offering tips to weave mindfulness into your everyday life.
MINDFULNESS
Make Your Mindfulness Practice Work for You
Psych Hub
You ask. We answer. Psych Hub interviewed Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, a clinical psychologist and a leading expert in the cognitive-behavioral treatment of anxiety disorders. In this episode of Ask the Expert, Dr. Cohen explains what Mindfulness is and what it isn’t, and how Mindfulness will help you.
How To Pay Attention To (And Appreciate) What’s Around You
Life Kit
When you’re in a familiar place, it’s easy to go on autopilot and fail to notice the small joys that surround you. Artist and author Jenny Odell shares tips on how to pay attention to and appreciate what’s right in front of you.
Listen to the 20-Minute Podcast
Guided Mindfulness Meditation for Difficult Emotions
The Mindful Heart Doctor
In this video, Dr. Jonathan Fisher guides you through a 10-minute meditation to help work through challenging emotions like anger, fear, sadness, grief, and overwhelm. These feelings are “sticky“ – the more we try to push them away, the tighter they hold us in their grip. If we don’t work through challenging emotions, we risk getting stuck in a chronic state of hyperarousal, which so often leads to stress-related diseases.
Reconnect With The Moment
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach felt too stressed and busy to spend time with her elderly mother – until she had a lightning moment of realization. Why couldn’t she enjoy living in the moment with her beloved parent? What fears and insecurities were preventing her from devoting time to her mom? Tara tells Dr. Laurie Santos how she created RAIN – a mindfulness practice that allows us to Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture our emotions. Once we consciously engage with those emotions, Tara argues, we can decide what is really important to us and our happiness.
Listen to the 34-Minute Podcast
ASSESSMENT
Are You Mindful or Is Your Mind Full?
Have you ever been on autopilot and don’t know how you arrived somewhere until you were there? Or been so absorbed in an activity that you don’t notice what’s happening until you’re done? This is called mindlessness. Mindlessness is a very common thing to experience, especially in a goal-oriented, get-stuff-done society. On the other hand, mindfulness can help keep us grounded in the present and has many physical, emotional, and mental benefits.
Take this assessment to find out if you’re mindful or if your mind is full. Afterward, check out our recommended resources to foster, maintain, or improve mindfulness habits.
