Mindfulness in action - incorporating mindfulness to your activities
Mindfulness In Action techniques
These techniques are useful for bring mindfulness into the activities of everyday life. Like the Mindful Check-In, Mindfulness in Action techniques can enhance pleasant experiences including bringing forgotten positive experiences back into awareness. You can try this when:
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Walking in a park
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Watching children play
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Listening to the birds
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Smelling the flowers
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Eating
If we deliberately focus on the sounds of the birds in the morning and focus on the breath at the same time we can find our ears, hearts and minds opening up to the experience in ways that many of us have forgotten about in our speedy noisy world.
We can use repetitive environmental as cues to remind us to take several mindful breaths:
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Waiting for phone to be answered
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Waiting at a red traffic light
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Walking
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Stacking the dishwasher
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Listening to Music
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Getting Dressed
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Sitting bored in a meeting
We can also train ourselves to bring mindfulness into repetitive stressful moments. This will help us to handle those moments better. For example you might:
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Notice how tight you hold the steering wheel when driving.
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Become aware of what happens to your breathing or voice tone in an argument.
You can also deliberately bring detailed mindful awareness to the body sensations that go with such as thoughts, emotions or impulses. As you practice this you will discover how these physical sensations drive your behaviour even though they had previously largely operating under the radar. This is a wonderful aspect of Mindfulness In Action as we slowly develop much more choice as to how to respond to the inevitable trials and tribulations that we all experience on a regular basis.