Mindful March
I was introduced to mindfulness back in 2011 and to be frank I wasn’t best pleased. I thought that it was a load of rubbish to start with. I was undertaking a pain management course and it was part of the activities they introduced us to. At first I thought “how is this going to help me?”. Little did I know it would open up a world of possibilities to me.
First things first, what is mindfulness?
You may have heard people say “living in the moment”, you may have even said it yourself? I know I have. Well basically living in the moment is being mindful, although I do find this phrase a bit hashtag. It doesn’t explain how to actually be in the moment. I feel we must elaborate to bring clarity and understanding for this statement to have any significance. Personally I think mindfulness is best described as paying attention to your experiences whether good or bad as they unfold. Enabling you to recognise your feelings without letting them run away with you and allowing you to live for the here and now rather than in the past or future.
Now we have cleared that up, how can mindfulness help us?
There have been many studies into the benefits of mindfulness. Mindfulness has been proven to help both mental health and physical health. Through being mindful and paying attention to your body and your surroundings you can lower blood pressure, control your thoughts thus helping to control anxiety levels, relieve stress, aids in controlling pain levels, help in anger management and much more.
Who is mindfulness for?
Anyone and everyone! Probably the most amazing thing about mindfulness is that anyone can practice it at anytime and benefit from it.
So, how can we practice mindfulness?
You can be mindful during any activity and that is the beauty of it and why I now love it so much, it’s so accessible. Don’t get me wrong its hard to live mindfully all the time and mindfulness takes a lot of practice and patience. The key is to start small and build up. After reading this just sit and pay attention to you, your surroundings, your feelings, your thoughts. Sounds simple right? However you will probably notice that within a few moments your thoughts will have wandered and you are more than likely thinking about what you should be doing next. Like I said it takes patience and practice.
We like to think of mindfulness as a new “trendy” way to self heal but the truth is it’s been around for years. Through mindfulness we gradually retrain our brains to focus on the positive rather than the negative. This allows us to free ourselves of negativity and we (our inner energy) begin to vibrate at a higher frequency bringing us into alignment with positivity.
If you would like to introduce mindfulness into your March you can visit my social media pages to find some fun mindfulness challenges either for yourself or for all the family to try out. My hope for the month of March is that you will become more mindful and allow yourself to be in the moment and enjoy the peace it has to offer.
Peace, Love and Harmony
Reiki Rach
