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8 Simple Ways – Practicing Mindfulness for Busy Mums
As a busy mum, you often don’t have time to slow down and focus on yourself, am I right?
An important element to help ensure and maintain a healthy balanced lifestyle, is to implement and practice mindfulness activities.
Implementing some time to practicing mindfulness daily is a great way to improve your health and well-being as these activities help you focus on the present moment and bring awareness to your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings.
Practicing mindfulness can help in all elements of your life including physical, mental, and emotional aspects you experience in life.
The goal of this article is to help you understand what mindfulness is, practicing mindfuless, and what the benefits are from practicing mindfulness.
Understanding Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a practice that has been around for centuries. It is an ancient form of meditation that has been shown to have many benefits.
It’s the idea of being aware of what you are doing and the feelings you are experiencing in the current moment.
Mindfulness is a skill and ability to become more aware of your inner self, which includes being aware of thoughts and feelings you experince without judging them.
As stated on Mindful.org , Mindfulness is available to us all in every moment, whether that be practicing mediation or breathing techniques.
The goal of mindfulness is to become engaged in your physical, mental, emotional and well-being processes.
Mindfulness is a powerful tool to implement in your life as it allows you to:
- develop better relationships with others,
- become more aware of your thoughts and emotions,
- learn how to problem-solve,
- help you find relief from stress
- help you to develop a positive attitude and attitude toward life
- help you cope better with adverse events
Practicing Mindfulness
With our lives so busy and the feel like we can never catch up, we often don’t have the time to slow down and take in our surrounding, our thought and our feelings.
We are usually on auto pilot and not having the chance to take it all in and be in the present moment.
The advantage and benefits of implementing and practicing mindfulness as part of your daily routine can allow you to slow down, take in what is happening around you and give you a clearer prospective.
Principles for Mindfulness to Adapt
The principes for mindfulness are the foundation of a mindful life.There are several different principles that make up the characteristics of Mindfulness.
Learning and understanding these principles will help you to successfully implement mindfulness and help adapt your mindfulness habits for a better way of living and help you find balance.
Beginners Mind
A beginners mind is the development and adaption of a mindset. It is the ability to not cloud your experiences with what you already know or believe.
Patience
Patience is something we all need to learn and adapt to and can be a very useful skill to learn. Patience is needed in almost everything we do in life. When you allow yourself patience it gives you time to think things over and consider all possible consequences.
Trust
Trust is the process of learning and gaining trust within yourself. You will develop the ability to listen and trust your own thoughts, feelings, emotions and actions.
Gratitude
Graditude is about recognising and being grateful of your life, what you have and for the present moment. When you are grateful, you are more happy and content.
Letting Go
This is a process of letting things go. A way of accepting the outcome of certain situations and in turn letting the thoughts and feelings go. This can be a hard principle to learn but without letting things go you often become distracted, stressed and reactive.
Non-Judging
You may often jump to a judgement as either good or bad, sometimes not even realising you have made that decision. Having awareness around how you judge situations can help you to assess and make better judgement. Non-judging is also a mindset that allows you to be accepting of others.
How to Implement Mindfulness in Your Day
Making time in your schedule daily to practice mindfulness is a great way to improve your health and well-being.
If you are new to mindfulness, the key is to be patient and not put too much pressure on yourself. Everything takes time to become part of your daily routine and over time you will get better at it and naturally start incorporating mindfulness.
The most important thing when starting out is to be patient with yourself. When you implement mindfulness in your day, start with a simple exercises and gradually increase your activities and length as you get the hang of it.
Don’t stress if you find it hard to clear your mind right away or if you don’t get your breathing techniques correct the first time. It takes time and practice.
Mindfulness Exercises and Activities
By practicing mindfulness regularly, you can improve your mental health, reduce stress, and increase your happiness.
Mindfulness activities can be as simple as taking a walk or sitting still for 10 minutes in silence.
The key is to find an activity that you enjoy doing. This will ensure you will continue practicing mindfulness on a regular basis.
There are many ways to practice mindfulness in your daily life including:
Breathing Techniques
Breathing techniques is an easy mindfulness practice to get started with if you are new to mindfulness.
The mind is often full of thoughts. Breathing helps you to learn to concentrate on one task at a time.
Taking five slow, deep breaths can be a form of meditation that can be practiced anywhere during the day. This can be especially helpful if you have little time, new to mindfulness and can be done without needing equipment.
Mindful Meditation
Meditation has been around for centuries and has been proven to have many positive benefits.
Mindful meditation has gained popularity and is a great mindfulness activity. It involves sitting with your back straight, having a clear mind and focusing on your breathing.
Some of the benefits of meditation are:
- a form of relaxation
- can help you find more peace in your life
- can help you focus better
- can increase creativity and productivity
- can help improve relationships with others
- can help reduce stress levels, anxiety and depression
- can help manage or reduce pain
Mindful Yoga
Yoga is another popular mindfulness activity. It is a mental, physical and spiritual activity that orginated in ancient India.
Yoga involves stretching in various poses for a set amount of time and also helps you to focus on your breathing techniques.
The benefits of practicing yoga helps to connect with your mind and body and include:
- increase your concentration
- improve your memory
- helps build your immunity
- can help reduce stress levels, anxiety and depression
- can help manage or reduce pain
Minfulness Apps
Mindfulness Apps in the past few years have gained some serious popularity and for good reason.
Research shows that they do in fact have benefit to you including helping you to improve your attention and focus. It has also been said that by using a mindfulness app can help you to feel less stressed.
Mindfulness apps are to help improve and guide you through mindfulness. Features of a mindfulness app can include:
- breathing techniques and exercises
- relaxation techniques
- guided meditiation
- relaxation sounds and music
Using a Journal
Research over the years has revealed that writing and expressing yourself through journaling can have a positive effect on your mental and emotional health.
Using a journal as part of your mindfulness routine can be a beneficial way to:
- express and reflect on your day
- a way to process your thoughts and emotions
- a way to practice self gratitude
- helps to be present
- helps create perspective
- helps identify habits and behaviours
Mindful Walks in Nature
Practicing mindfulness by taking a walk and inparticular outside in nature can help to ingnite your 5 senses while taking in the environment and fresh air around you. Going for a walk can have a positive benefit on your physical health and also your mental health.
The benefits you can receive by taking a mindful walk can include:
- achieve a sense of balance and inner peace
- connect with nature and places that have meaning
- focus on your breathing
- experience the 5 senses – sight, sound, touch, smell and taste
- allow you to think and process thoughts
- a time to slow down
Purposeful Mindful Breaks
Taking mini mindfulness breaks periodically during your day, inparticular when you are at work or doing a tasks repetitively for a long period of time can help give your mind a break and in turn help you to re-focus and re-energise.
A mini break to practice mindfulness can be a short as 2 minutes and can be done simply by moving your body around, doing a few breathing techniques, having a glass of water or even having a stretch.
By taking a few mini mindful breaks during your day can help:
- improve and increase your concentration
- improve and increase your focus
- allow your eyes to rest
- re-engergise your mind and body
- increase your energy
- increase your productivity
Mindful Eating
Mindful eating is about creating a focus on your eating habits, becoming aware of what you are eating and your emotional experience you get while eating.
Practicing mindfulness when eating can help you become more aware of your feelings and emotions while eating and can help you to feel better in your body while building confidence.
Mindful eating is not a diet. Rather, it can help increase your relationship with food and help you to enjoy a healthy balanced variety of foods.
Final Thoughts
There are many ways to practice mindfulness in your daily life and should be an integral part of your life. It helps you be fully engaged in activities, and it offers incredible health benefits.
How ever you practice mindfulness as long as you enjoy the activity and you are receiving the positive benefits from mindfulness your doing a good thing. You could try meditation, yoga, mindful eating or listening to podcasts on your mindfulness app.
There is no right or wrong when it comes to mindfulness, it is a personal choice and a choice that you make in your daily routine that fits in with your lifestyle.
One of the most important aspects of practicing mindfulness is to be kind to yourself.
I have a link below to The Healthy Mummy App which is what i use on a daily basis for my healthy eating, meal planning and wellness all in one. If you are interested in finding out more, the link is below.
Amy xx
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