Mindfulness is a practice of being purposefully aware of ourselves and being fully present in the moment. With practice, we become more fully attentive to our thoughts, actions, sensations, and feelings in the moment.
Beginning a Mindfulness Practice
Mindfulness happens when we still the commentary in our heads and become aware of our own being. This includes attending to the physical, mental, and emotional states that we hold in each moment. Beginning a mindfulness practice allows us to become increasingly aware of our physical body, thoughts that trap us in black and white thinking, and feelings that close us off from love and connection.
When we are fully present in the moment, we are not thinking about the past, the future, or expectations in the moment. We are just being fully present. A good first step in mindfulness practice is to become aware of your breathing. As I began my regular practice, one of the first things that I noticed was that had a habit of holding my breath for long periods. I was not breathing. Imagine how this impacts our physiology!
Benefits of Mindfulness
As we practice being fully present in the moment, we begin to experience the many benefits of beginning a mindfulness practice such as
- improvement in mental focus and memory,
- decrease in stress,
- emotions become calmer, and
- our interpersonal relationships become healthier.
Learn More About Mindfulness
We have a 9 part series dedicated to ‘Mindfulness Mondays’ and to the attitudes of mindfulness. We follow the attitudes outlined by Jon Kabat Zinn, the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
We explore one of the 7 attitudes for cultivating mindfulness:
In this series all about Beginning a Mindfulness Practice, we also go over what I refer to as the gifts of mindfulness: gratitude and generosity.
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