Summer is filled with wonderful moments! Time with our family, our friends, our favorite past-times.
How can we make these moments last? Easy! Take a deep breath and let it all in. Take a moment to notice all of your senses… what can you feel, hear, see, smell and taste? Breathe in the richness of the moment and let it sink in.
(video 55sec) Here is the third body strength exercise that Personal Trainer, Joey Hunter, challenged me with. She asked me how long can I hold 3 simple exercises & what goes through my mind as I do them?
I decided to see what would happen if I did each exercise a second time while practicing mindfulness. Would it change my experience? Would I be able to hold it longer?
Above is the third exercise, a plank, done ‘normally’ and while voicing my stream if conscious.
Below is me doing it mindfully! (video 1:16min)
Try this yourself! On your hands and the balls of your feet, hold your body as straight as you can and and see how long you can hold it. Then do it while practicing mindfulness meditation and see if you can hold it longer.
(video 49sec) Here is the second body strength exercise that Personal Trainer, Joey Hunter, gave me. She asked me how long can I hold a few simple exercises & what goes through my mind as I do them?
I decided to see what would happen if I did each exercise a second time while practicing mindfulness. Would it change my experience? Would I be able to hold it longer?
Above is the first exercise, a wall squat, done ‘normally’ and while voicing my stream if conscious.
Below is me doing it mindfully! (video 2:04min)
Try this yourself! Put your back against a wall, thighs parallel to the ground and see how long you can hold it. Then do it while practicing mindfulness meditation and see if you can hold it longer.
(video 2:38min) Personal Trainer, Joey Hunter, gave me some body strength challenges: how long can I hold a few simple exercises & what goes through my mind as I do them?
I decided to see what would happen if I did the exercise a second time while practicing mindfulness. Would it change my experience? Would I be able to hold it longer?
Above is the first exercise, a static arm hold, done ‘normally’ and while voicing my stream if conscious.
Below is me doing it mindfully! (video 3:57min)
Try this yourself! Hold a water bottle at arms length & time how long you can hold it. Then do it while practicing mindfulness meditation and see if you can hold it longer.
(video: 5:31 min) Does mindfulness ever become permanent? Will I ever be mindful all the time with out having to practice it regularly?
Well yes. And no.
Yes in that you can reach a stage where mindfulness is something you’re doing all of the time, as a behavior, a habit or an state of being.
And no in that until it becomes an ingrained habit, you need to keep reinforcing the behavior by practicing it!
Why? Because your brain learns and changes based on your behaviors. What you do today is changing your brain. You’re either creating & maintaining neurological structures for mindfulness today or you’re creating structures for something else.
Thanks to Dr Lara Boyd on TEDxVancouver for making the relationship between our daily behaviors and our brain so clear.
(video: 2:49min) Every 3 months or so I drink a cup of coffee (love the bitter + sweet!)… and then remember why I don’t do it often! I get super jittery, my mind goes 3-million miles an hour and I can’t concentrate! Yikes!
Yesterday, I had this experience while working at a coffee shop, and after struggling for a while I stopped and practiced mindfulness for a few minutes.
Whew! That 3-minutes saved my day! After that I could focus again. I was really thankful to have that tool handy.
Next time you can’t concentrate, take 3-minutes to practice, and see if it helps!
(video: 9:44) Confused? Angry? Guilty? Sad? Depressed? Anxious?Overwhelmed? …?
What to do?
Mindfulness gives us a great tool: notice how you feel. Feel it. Observe it from the inside – feel how it feels to feel what you are feeling. What does it feel like to feel confused right now? What does it feel like to feel angry right now? Ask and feel and remember the whole time that you are asking the question, that you are exploring, that a part of you is doing the noticing, the observing, the exploring and taking notes.
This is incredibly powerful because it allows us to feel what we’re feeling and learn from it at the same time.
Maybe all we learn is what it feels like to feel confused. Already this is a million times better than being lost in confusion, where confusion is our entire experience & we can’t gain from it because we’re drowimg in it.
Bringing in the noticing is like popping our heads out of the water. Suddenly we have a bit of breathing room. We’re not drowning anymore. We can look down and see that we’re up to our neck in confusion. We have a whole new perspective on the situation. We can see that we’re in it versus being overwhelmed by it.
And then what?… You’re welcome to watch the video for my recent experiences with the next steps.
(3:16min) Another way to bring mindfulness into your daily life through walking is to count each step. The idea is that if you are aware of yourself enough to count your steps, then you are being mindful. I your mind drifts off and you lose count, simply bring you attention back to walking and start over with your counting.
Meditation Practice: Walking with Awareness
Be kind and gentle, remembering that noticing that your thoughts is an important part of the practice.
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(8:34min) Want to bring mindfulness into your daily life? One way to do that is to walk mindfully. Most of us walk at least some every day, to the front door, to the coffee machine, the elevator, the bathroom, across the street, etc. This meditation helps you bring mindfulness into your daily life by practicing walking mindfully, noticing every step. Begin by practicing in a quiet place, getting used to it, creating a new habit and then begin taking a few mindful steps every day. You could pick a daily walk, like walking to the bathroom or your car, and take 3 mindful steps every day when you do that. When that is easy, do 5 and then 7 and so on. Soon you will be taking the whole walk mindfully and noticing how this simple exercise affects other parts of your day as well.
Meditation Practice: Walking with Awareness
Be kind and gentle, remembering that noticing that your thoughts is an important part of the practice.
To Download:
Click on the Download button below.
If it does not download automatically:
Note that you are welcome to download and share this files as many times as you like provided you do so in it’s entirety and it is used for personal or educational uses only (no commercial uses).
(video: 2:45) Having a hard time sticking to your New Year’s resolutions?
You want to start running, but you can’t get out of bed? You want to practice meditation everyday after lunch, but you’re just too busy?
The trick is to remember why you want to do it… BEFORE you do it. Laying there in bed, motivate yourself by remembering how good you feel when you exercise. Let tuer good feeling motivate you to get up and go running! Sitting at lunch, remember how calm and collected you feel when you meditate. Let that sense of peace motivate you to take a few minutes before you rush off.
You know you’ll feel better! Remember that feeling before you do things and mer that good feeling be your motivation!
Happy New Year!
