THE BENEFITS OF PRACTISING MINDFULNESS

What is practising mindfulness:

Life can and often does get busy and stressful. Mindfulness is a method that involves creating time and space to get in tune with yourself and to make a conscious effort to be present in every single moment. It means not just living life on autopilot, but instead actually taking in what is going on. It means deliberately being aware of your own reactions and responses to things. It doesn’t however require making judgements on any of those things.   

 

THE BENEFITS OF MINDFULNESS

1. Decreases stress and depression

Practising mindfulness can help you to handle stress and decrease its effect on you. It can help you consciously and deliberately calm yourself down when you feel your stress levels are rising. This also applies to dealing with depression. Mindfulness offers you the option of deciding what to with the frame of mind and emotions you’re experiencing. 

2. Improves the capacity to cope with sickness

Mindfulness can be helpful when people are dealing with illnesses and pain. It doesn’t deal with the specifics of the conditions but it helps with your ability to cope with the illness and whatever you’re going through. Instead of thinking just about the medical issue, It provides the option to manage the effects of the illness and your response to it. 

3. Speeds up recuperation

When dealing with a medical issue, mindfulness can help to improve and speed up the return to health process. 

 

HOW TO PRACTICE MINDFULNESS

  • It involves concentrating closely on the things that are happening to your body. Are you sweating or shivering? What is your breathing like? 
  • What information are you receiving through your senses? What is happening around you? Can you smell the bread baking in the oven? Can you hear the birds singing outside your window? 
  • Mindfulness is all about being observant and taking notice of absolutely everything that happens. and everything that you feel, without judging any of those things. It’s about living in the moment and not just allowing things to go over your head, or taking anything for granted.
  • It’s about doing one thing at a time and focusing all your attention on that one thing at that particular moment. That way not even one second of life is missed or wasted. In fact, it helps with embracing life more fully. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Deliberately becoming observant can help you do all of the following:

  • Become more conscious and alert so life doesn’t just pass you by.
  • Become more serene and unperturbed, so life is faced in a composed manner.
  • Display the ability to determine how to respond to your emotions and frame of mind (even when negative).
  • Help you to be more caring and loving to yourself.

Practising mindfulness can make all the difference to the way you are affected by things that you experience. Life happens and can often can feel overwhelming. Its aim, therefore, is to enrich, and enhance the quality of your life, equipping you to adequately handle every challenge that may arise.