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Saturday 27 December 2014

Six ways to make 2015 a mindful year

Practising mindfulness - or practising mindfulness more often - is an aspiration many people will have for 2015. To make it happen, try these six tips:

1. Don't start with long meditations.
It's good to sit and observe your breathing mindfully for 20 minutes a day - but most people give up after a few days. Instead, find short practices that help to bring you into mindfulness many times a day. The best mindfulness practices are the ones you will actually do - not the ones you "ought" to do.

2. Remind yourself often: Return. Invite silence.
A useful working definition of mindfulness could be: Returning your attention again and again with acceptance to what's going on outside your head right now. What's going on outside your head could be your breath, the feeling of your feet against the ground, sounds, a conversation you're having and so on. Acceptance means postponing judgement for at least a while. We usually judge through statements of condemnation or approval that we make to ourselves in our heads. So you could think of acceptance as inviting silence into your mind for a while. So, Return. Invite silence.

3. At the start of every day, form the intention to be mindful.
Form the intention before your feet touch the floor when you get up in the morning. This could be a simple as telling yourself, "I intend to be mindful today." Far better than grumbling on the way out of the bed!

4. Return to awareness of your breathing for a least a minute whenever you notice an hour has passed.
It is said that mindfulness is easy to do but hard to remember to do. Most of us are surrounded by reminders of the time, so resolve that whenever you notice an hour has passed you will come into awareness of your breathing for at least a minute. You don't have to be exact: just guess it. Your mind will drift even during that short time so bring your attention back without complaint or self-criticism.

5. Build mindfulness reminders into your day.
To do this, choose one or two routine activities which you normally do with little awareness of the moment. Let them remind you to be mindful and do them in awarenness. Examples: Brushing your teeth, boiling the kettle, starting the car, entering passwords, washing your hands, washing dishes, preparing food, eating, moving from room to room, showering, opening your door on the way to/from work.

6. Use a free mindfulness resource.
You'll find many free mindfulness resources on the internet. Thousands of people receive a brief daily mindfulness reminder in their email from myself. It's called The Daily Bell, even though it doesn't actually ring, and you'll find a sign-up box on the front page of this blog or on my website at www.padraigomorain.com You can also email me at pomorain@gmx.com and ask me to sign you up.

For more ideas try these posts on this blog:
A mindfulness routine
Morning grouch? Try a mindfulness routine
Mindful walking from The Irish Times

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