Why Practice Mindfulness?
Turn down the volume - pause, reset, accept, attend, and live in the moment.....
Respond as opposed to react....
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Is your needle stuck on red?
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Feeling like you're always chasing your tail?
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Your automatic reactions are not what you want them to be?
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Do you feel stuck in your own head?
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Are you anxious about the past or the future?
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Would you like to enjoy life more?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, the beauty of mindfulness is it gives us the opportunity to find our own better way.
Through the practise of mindfulness you can learn how to press pause, reset and ground yourself. Turn down the volume of endless thoughts running around and around your head, calm your automatic reactions, regulate your emotions, and put yourself in the driving seat of your own life.
Reams of evidence and research connect mental wellbeing and physical health, the mind and body link is undeniable. If we improve our mental responses to stress we can reduce the physical manifestation of that stress, we can literarily heal ourselves.
For many of us, our inner self-talk is littered with self-criticism, self-doubt, or anxious ruminations about the past and/or catastrophic thoughts about what will go wrong in the future. It is as if our life is a bad soap opera, but we have lost the remote and we cannot change the channel.
In the practice mindfulness we anchor ourselves in the present, without judgement, decluttering our minds, we make space. When we make space the natural peacefulness of mindfulness comes through, no need to force it, clarity arrives, and anxiety fades.
With this calm clarity, we can become more sensitive to the novelty and power in our everyday experiences, we can kick the habit of autopilot reactions, quietening our rumination and thoughts of catastrophe.
With our attention fully rested in the present, and stress levels reduced, we find it easier to let go. Everything is eased, we will most likely sleep better, digest our food better, concentrate better, think more creatively, and generally improve our wellbeing.
Allowing us to love the life we live.
Live here and now....
The practice of Mindfulness enables us to interact with life, friends, relatives, colleagues, in fact everyone around us, in a more attentive, considered, and calm way.
By being fully present in the moment, we can feel more content, fulfilled, and generally more happy with our lives as they are. As we experience pleasurable moments we can fully embrace what is happening right here right now, leading to enrichment that we would have previously either diminished or entirely missed.
When the inevitable bad or painful experiences arrive, we are able to respond not react by noticing and turning off our automatic "auto pilot" often destructive reactions. We are more able to see them as they are, experiences in the moment.
We can create space for ourselves that would have previously seemed impossible.
Healthy acceptance....
Healthy acceptance is at the core of mindfulness, with acceptance comes peace, contentment, fulfilment, and laser like focus.
Accepting things as they are, with the realisation that this split second in time is all we can really control, worry dissipates, the past is the past, the future is the future, accepting that the only place we really live is right here right now. Life can be a lot less stressful.
With healthy acceptance greater equanimity can be achieved and things we find difficult and stressful can feel not quite so important or challenging after all. With this new realisation and improved perspective of our current situation, we have developed new tools to cope, more space to think, and time to react differently and make long lasting changes.
To healthily accept what we can and can't control and what we do and don't want to change.
Self-compassion....
The benefits of self-compassion are numerous, varied, and undoubtably positive, The practice of self-compassion in addition to the benefit of helping to alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression, can have a positive impact on relationships, physical health, resilience, and motivation.
Dr Kristin Neff in her book "Self Compassion"* defines self-compassion as containing three core components, self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
To achieve self-kindness we need to turn off our inner self-critic, to quieten the voice in our head telling us that we are not good enough, the same voice that might be questioning our judgement, and decisions. Showing yourself self-kindness is to valuing yourself exactly as you are, with all your strengths, weaknesses, boundaries, and idiosyncrasies. To embrace the privilege of being who you are.
Furthermore there is a chemical benefit to self-kindness, our bodies release Oxytocin. This “hormone of love and bonding” can be released either by the physical contact or the feeling of care or love. Our brains and bodies do not distinguish between physical contact and feelings, both fire the same response.
Oxytocin increases our feelings of soothing and comfort. Conversely, self-criticism releases adrenaline and cortisol which heighten our threat awareness, and we can become wary, and detach.
Self-kindness is to care for ourselves and as we are kinder towards ourselves we build resilience, and the inner strength to cope with the stresses and strains of modern day life.
Nobody is perfect and we all suffer this is the shared human experience, our common humanity. If we wholeheartedly embrace the state of "I'm Ok, Your Ok", that we are in this together, self-compassion will flow.
The Latin origin of the word compassion is “co-suffering” which developed into the English noun “to suffer together with”. By isolating ourselves we remove the words “together with” and leave only “to suffer”.
If we lose sight of our common humanity we lose sight of who we really are, the long line of ancestors from differing parts of the world and cultures, the millions of decisions that had to fall perfectly into place to create the circumstances in which we live, and the fact that we even exist at all.
By being “together with”, sharing life experiences, we can appreciate that everyone suffers, maybe not for the same reason or in the same way, but nevertheless everyone suffers, and we are all in this together.
Through the practice of mindfulness, we can put space between us and the negative thoughts we have about ourselves. With practice we can develop the mental agility of allowing, in this way we do not try to supress or ignore negative thoughts we simply allow them to come into our awareness and flow through us, just as clouds floating through the sky.
In this way we attach no more or no less importance or pain to each negative thought, we practice what is know as equanimity. With mindfulness we can be helped to accept who and where we are, with curiosity, without judgement or striving, letting go, and trusting in ourselves, this is true self-compassion.
