Mindfulness means paying attention, on purpose, to whatever is going on in the present moment without passing judgment on it. This practice involves noticing something and holding it in your attention lightly, with gentle acceptance, like a butterfly resting on your hand, until it moves away on its own. In mindfulness, you attend to a feeling, thought, or sensation without clinging to it, resisting it, or trying to change it.
Why Practice Mindfulness?
- Increase sense of inner calm
- Experience both pleasant and unpleasant thoughts and feelings safely
- Learn through experience that everything changes; that thoughts and feelings come and go like the weather
- Have more balance, less emotional reactivity
- Develop self-acceptance and self-compassion
- Increase self-awareness
- Feel more connected to yourself, to others and to the world around you
- Have more direct contact with the world, rather than living through your thoughts
- Become less judgmental of yourself and others
- Reduce the struggle with anxiety and depression over time
- Cope more effectively with chronic pain
How to practice mindfulness
- Mindfulness can be practiced at any time, any place, anywhere, and no one has to know.
- Use mindfulness when faced with a trigger, anger, unwanted craving, or pain to help move past negative items.
- Focus on the present, not items in the past or those that may occur in the future.