What is the Practice of Mindfulness
The practice of mindfulness is directing all of your attention and awareness to the present to improve physical and emotional health. Among its many benefits, practicing everyday mindfulness can:
- Improve the relationships in your life
- Pull you out of the negative downward spiral that can be caused by too much daily stress
- Help you make fewer errors when processing your experiences
- Help you put stressful events into perspective and build resilience so you’re less overwhelmed by them in the future
And while there are many mindfulness exercises you can practice on a regular basis, learning how to be present in the moment is also a way of life. With practice, you can learn to live a more mindful life that allows you to become more conscious of everything you are doing.
It can be tough in today’s fast-paced world to pause and be present, however. After all, there are many things competing for your attention and there’s a lot of pressure to multi-task.
But, if you’re intentional about being more mindful during your everyday life, you can live with greater purpose and more happiness.
Mindfulness can be cultivated through techniques. Here are some examples:
- Seated, walking, standing, and moving meditation (it’s also possible lying down but often leads to sleep)
- Short pauses we insert into everyday life
- Merging meditation practice with other activities, such as yoga or sports
The Benefits of Mindfulness Practice
When we meditate it doesn’t help to fixate on the benefits, but rather to just do the practice.
When we’re mindful, we reduce stress, enhance performance, gain insight and awareness through observing our own mind, and increase our attention to others’ well-being.
Mindfulness meditation gives us a time in our lives when we can suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness—to ourselves and others.
We propose and explain some group activities to practice mindfulness
