Mindfulness can be an excellent tool to help reduce your experience of stress and help you to live a better life.
Mindfulness is simply being aware of your present situation, emotions, environment, body, thoughts, etc.
Let me give you an example:
You and your teen-ager are discussing their use of the car this Friday night to go to a school function. You say that this privilege is contingent upon their completing three missing assignments in math class. Your teen begins to whine, complain, and resist. Your blood pressure rises, as does the volume of your voice. Then your teen gets defensive. Before you know it, both you and your teen are in a full blown argument. How did that happen again?
Without self-awareness and other-awareness, situations like this will continue to play out until your little darlin' launches off to college, career, or the military.
How do you practice mindfulness?
Good news! Mindfulness is a learnable skill. Here is a quick way (of many ways) to begin using mindfulness:
Take a deep breath.
Seriously.
Five or six in a row.
And just observe how you're feeling, what you're seeing, if your jaw or shoulders are clinched, what sounds you're hearing.
And pause.
Practicing mindfulness when you are alone and not agitated is a great way to improve the skill, so that when you ARE in a situation like I described above, you will be able to calm your nervous system and be able to think and act in a calmer way.
Try it, not just for a few times, but for a few times per day for several weeks. Your experience of day-to-day stress is likely to drop, if not a large amount, then at least a small (but not insignificant) amount.
I believe you'll be very surprised at the results.
Peace and calm to you,
Teresa
Teresa Heald, LCSW
