The Essence of Mindfulness Exercises
A few words about practicing mindfulness:
Mindfulness exercises are good practice to calm yourself and collect yourself and bring yourself for the present moment. They offer a chance to pause and practice focusing and engaging in the moment. Remember, that mindfulness exercises are a practice, sometimes they are easier and sometimes more difficult. Also, they may not always make you feel good. The goal is awareness and attentiveness. It is ok if you feel uncomfortable either doing some of the practices or as a result of some of the practices. It is essential to self-knowledge and personal growth to push through the discomfort to become more aware of yourself and more able to attend to the moment or what you choose to attend to. It becomes an exercise to strengthen your will and self-control as well as your self-knowledge. Keep at it when it proves difficult and learn from those experiences, often the difficult times can teach us the most! You may even find it helpful to write down some of your observations after doing your mindfulness practices.
To benefit the most from these practices, it is important to not let our mind wander down paths of distractions or judgments. Often the mind calls up other thoughts or worries or events from our days that you may want to think about. Resist the urge to engage in these distractions. You can always go back to them later, but for the few moments you spend on mindfulness, bring yourself to be fully present. It will teach you how to be more present in other circumstances too. Also, a word about judgments: it is important to not judge yourself or the practice. It’s ok to notice if you have judgments, but again, don’t engage in a dialogue with them. You may find yourself thinking critical thoughts about your abilities or physical body or feeling anger about your circumstances that come to mind when doing some of these practices. All of these things are ok to feel, however, you will find great benefit from learning to just notice and be aware of these urges. By increasing your awareness of, rather than engaging with, the judgments you can move towards greater control of happiness and joy in your life. It can change your perspective and even your self, if you allow it.