beginning a mindfulness practice
Knowing where to begin after experiencing an awakening or an expansion can be daunting. There are so many layers and levels of expanding your conscious awareness and feeling into what resonates for you is exciting and is meant to be fun.
While there is a lot of validity to spiritual hygiene practices, and a lot of time and space can be saved when beginning a practice with intention around your unique ‘basics’, these practices will come and it is never too late to visit establishing your own core basic mindful practices.
Until that time, here are some suggestions to get you started.
1- breath is key - So much of our conditioning and our environmental influences encourage shallow breathing, and one of the ways that we can combat this is by being mindful with our breath. This doesn’t mean that every breath needs to be traced in, down, and radiating through our body, but when you feel like you need a break, or you’re too focused on your task, and not on your well being, it is time for a wellness breath!
Envision your heart has lungs on either side of it that you can inflate.
Breathe in long, slow, and deep allowing your body to relax and your heart to expand
As you breathe out, let out a soft sigh and let your body gently deflate
Envision your next breath traveling into your belly and let your gut poke out
Breathe in long, slow, and deep allowing your belly to soften and pull your breath into your pelvis
As you breathe out, let your pelvis gently soften and sigh softly coming into your center
2 - Begin each task with intention - What do you want to feel? accomplish? experience? If your intention is to complete a task, then how long do you want to experiment with bringing your full presence to the task? This is a good time to set what your energy levels are available for, and you can experiment with bringing a little more presence and breath to your task.
3 - Make what you are doing, what you are doing - Multitasking is great, and totally possible to do with great precision, but when you are trying to multitask, steps can get skipped. Mindful practices allow you to bring absolute precision to your task when you can be single-focused on the task at hand.
4 - Release yourself from the attachment to the outcome - Yes, set intentions, yes, set and experiment with each task, and yes, ask what would help you bring more presence to this moment… but don’t forget, the point of mindfulness is to live with more purpose, clarity, intention, and joy. Once you have your task AND intention, it is important to surrender to the task, and the unfolding process, curious as to the outcome. This allows you to ENJOY (be IN JOY) during the creation of the task. When you are attached to a specific outcome that you MUST have, you are immediately pulled out of the creative space that will enliven magic, and brought to a conditioned space of linear task completion.
EASY EXERCISE - Practice mindfully writing an email or responding to a text message.
Before responding to an email or text, envision the other person standing in front of you ask yourself, ‘how do I want this person to feel with my response?’ (cared for, seen, heard, safe, happy, etc)
Knowing that your intention and it’s accompanying emotion is all that is needed to shift a simple act into a mindful one
Recall a memory where you felt that way and take a long, slow, mindful breath in allowing yourself to feel that memory.
With the intention of communing with this person, write an appropriate response while feeling your personal memory.
State the felt intention and your willingness to release yourself from how your words will be received then press send
Allow a moment to acknowledge or celebrate your little experiment with mindfulness. It may seem small, but a bunch of small mindful acts actually create huge ripples in how we relate to one another.
