Mindful or Mind Full?

When ruminating about the past or worrying about the future, you’re causing yourself artificial anxiety. Being in the now rather than yesterday or tomorrow can make for a happier life. It’s a lot harder to do than it sounds. Mindfulness takes practice to train our mind to stop wandering.  The foundation of mindfulness is to not judge yourself, have patience and practice acceptance in letting go.

Numerous mindfulness research studies (here’s an extensive list) show mindfulness improved symptomatology with stress, mood, anxiety, depression, sleep and so on, as well as psychological well-being in quality of life, and biological functions such as improved blood pressure, regulated cortisol and less inflammation.^[3]

So how do we begin to live with mindfulness? Starting small and slowly is the key. Big goals of meditating for an hour every day to start will likely end up in frustration and failure. One of the easiest practices of mindfulness is to just notice your breath. One hand on your chest and one on your stomach. Don’t change your breath, just notice it, notice the transition between the in and the out breath. When your mind wanders, bring it back to the breath.

There are plentiful resources in a variety of platforms to start someone on their mindfulness journey. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in the art and science of mindfulness, has a book that was originally published in 1990 and revised since, called Full Catastrophe Living where he

“Shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing. By engaging in these mindfulness practices and integrating them into your life from moment to moment and from day to day, you can learn to manage chronic pain, promote optimal healing, reduce anxiety and feelings of panic, and improve the overall quality of your life, relationships, and social networks.”^[4]

Jon also has a website that offers information on mindful practice and meditation, providing audio clips of various practices.

There are numerous mindfulness programs out there that share the same over-arching components such as relaxation with abdominal breathing, body scan, gentle yoga, mind-body connection, visualization/imagery, cognitive coping strategies, personal empowerment, and social support.

The Mindful Awareness Research Center is a part of The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and it offers free guided meditations and   free programming and resources which also includes a plethora of previous podcasts to listen to.

The American Mindfulness Research Association offers numerous podcasts regarding mindfulness, such as Mindfulness added to the culture of a university, Meeting pain with mindfulness, App-based mindfulness for revising bad habits that impact health, and more.

The Free Mindfulness Project website provides plenty of downloadable mindfulness exercises such as focusing on bringing awareness to the process of breathing, body scan meditations to move your focus of attention around the body, sitting meditations, guided imagery and self-guided exercises where a bell sounds at different intervals to allow you to move from one phase of the meditation to the next.

As always, There’s An App For That to help you in your mindfulness journey. Perhaps one of the most well-known mindfulness apps is Headspace, that states “With guided lessons on mindfulness, sleep, and simply remembering to breathe, it’s the everyday app for feeling better”.^[5] This app does however require a monthly or annual subscription after a free trial.

There are definitely free apps available that are full of features. Insight timer states it is “the #1 free app for sleep, anxiety and stress with more than 100k guided meditations led by the best teachers from Canada and the world”.^[6]

The app “Am mindfulness” or “AmDTx” purports to be clinically researched and offers 10 to 20 day structured programs. “AmDTx is clinically proven to boost stress resilience, improve mood, enhance focus, and establish discipline. The first and only app with objective measures of stress, AmDTx allows you to measure and visualise your stress levels and find the most impactful content for you at any given point of time.” ^[7]

Mindfulness can be useful for a variety of issues such as depression, anxiety, anger, and addiction.^[8] It can be an easy practice that helps us to be self-aware of our bodies and thoughts, thus enriching our quality of life.