How To Practice Mindfulness? Mindfulness is the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of your conscious thoughts, emotions, and daily experiences on a moment-to-moment basis. Basically, mindfulness means not only being aware of events in your life but, also and controlling your daily experiences.
I have discovered in my meditation studies, there are hundreds of how to practice mindfulness methods from cultures around the world. One challenge many have is how to become more mindful to experience this method through simple mindfulness techniques. I have some very simple and straightforward techniques you can use today.
28 How To Practice Mindfulness Techniques And Ideas To Enhance Your Life
In addition to breathing meditation, there are simple how-to practice mindfulness techniques that will help you enhance your awareness and become more mindful. So much is going on around us at all times, yet most of the time, we move through the day on autopilot.
It’s time to wake up from our daily routines and begin to change our lives for the better.
Check out this 3:00 video of simple how to practice mindfulness techniques from Men of Mastery on how to practice mindfulness anytime, anywhere. Good to know information!
VIDEO: How To Practice Mindfulness
Use this simple how to practice mindfulness technique every day to meditate anytime, anywhere. The benefits of daily mindfulness meditation practice are incredible, but you must become a consistent practitioner in order to experience them.
How how to practice mindfulness throughout the day?
Method 1: A Waking Single-Focus Object Meditation
The objective of this how to practice mindfulness technique is to remain fully awake throughout the whole session.
You focus on one object purposefully until you reach the point where you’re no longer thinking about anything else. You just observe. You’re not analyzing, processing, reading into, or otherwise interpreting what you’re seeing.
Instead, you just allow yourself to observe an object in front of you and take in as much information about the object as possible. The key here is to do it in a systematic and methodical way.
Step 1: Select A Location Where You Won’t Be Distracted Or Disturbed For 15 To 20 Minutes
If you have gadgets or have mobile devices that send out all sorts of notification sounds due to email or social media, you need to turn them all off. It’s time to disconnect from the world as you know it. Making small changes in your life will pay off big time for you down the road.
Remember, you’re just doing this for 15 to 20 minutes. It’s not that long, so you can afford to turn off all your gadgets. Start small, finish big with your new and improved life.
Step 2: If Possible Sit For Maximum Comfort
You don’t have to sit like a Buddhist monk or use the lotus position. There’s no need for overly dramatic body positioning. It’s okay just be comfortable. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t be so comfortable that you fall asleep.
You need to be comfortable, but at the same time remain fully awake. This is why I insist that you should keep your back straight. Don’t slouch. Again, this is just going to be for 20 minutes, so I’m sure you can handle not slouching for 15 to 20 minutes.
Step 3: Keep Your Eyes Open? I Thought This Was Meditation
Unlike other how to practice mindfulness techniques that require you to shut your eyes, this technique allows you to keep your eyes open. In fact, it requires you to keep your eyes open because this is not going to work if your eyes are shut. This is the fun part!
Make sure your eyes are fully open, and then effortlessly and naturally scan the scene in front of you. You’re not looking for anything in particular. Just allow your eyes to go around the room and just take in everything. Just look at everything as much as you can. You can do one pass or two passes.
As you are scanning the room, take a deep, slow breath. Repeat that as your eyes scan slowly across the room. Take a slow deep, breath. Keep repeating this breathing pattern. Don’t focus on your breath. Just focus on what you’re looking at as your eyes scan. Remember, your eyes aren’t settling on any object yet.
Step 4: Eventually, Let Your Eyes Relax And Settle On A Single Object
There is no right or wrong answer here. It doesn’t really matter what kind of object your eyes settle on. As long as it feels natural, or you’re not forcing it, it’s okay.
Maybe your eyes will settle on the floor or on a doorknob. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s natural, and you allowed your attention to settle slowly and gently on a particular object, then you’re ready for the next step.
Step 5: After You Have Selected A Single Object, Thoroughly Observe It.
This is very important. You must observe it. You’re not describing it to yourself, analyzing it, interpreting it, or figuring out what it means.
You’re not even cross-referencing it to things that you’ve seen or perceived in the past. You’re not doing any of that. Don’t do that. Instead, choose to observe each and every one of the basic elements of the object.
Pay attention to its shape. Take note of how light bounces out of it. Pay close attention to the specific colors on the object. Observe its texture, and so on and so forth. In other words, keep your observation shallow in terms of what you can see in front of you. Focus on what you can see in front of you, or what’s right there.
Don’t read into the object, try to pick it apart with your mind, and assume all sorts of things. You’re not doing that. Instead, you’re just observing and taking in as many details as possible, but you’re doing this on an element-by-element basis.
This is very important in learning how to practice mindfulness. Instead of just observing everything all at once, choose to observe the object based on its elements. You can start with a shape, then you can go on to how the light bounces off of it, and afterward, you can move on to color, and so on and so forth. Go from element to element, but you have to do this slowly.
If you do this right, you will reach a point where you’re not thinking about anything else except the element of that object that you are choosing to observe at that present time.
Step 6: Revert Back To Normal Waking Consciousness
Start the process of going back to your normal consciousness by dialing back your observation and zooming out. When you zoom out, you go from looking at how light bounces off the surface of the object to the overall shape and appearance of the object. You then zoom out again, and you start seeing the whole scene within the room. You zoom out again, and you see the whole room.
Slowly start looking at other objects and allow yourself to take faster, shallow breaths again.
While you were closely observing the object, your breath was deep and slow. Now, you’re using your normal breath, which is shallow and fast. You should also just allow your eyes to move around the room. You’re back to your normal consciousness. The total time for this should be around 15 to 20 minutes.
More How To Practice Mindfulness Techniques
If greater well-being isn’t enough of an incentive, scientists have discovered that mindfulness techniques help improve physical health in a number of ways. Mindfulness can: help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, and much more.
Body Scan Meditation For Sleep and Stress Reduction
5-Minute Mindfulness Body Relaxation Scan Meditation
This mindful meditation is useful in releasing tension at the end of a day and in helping you fall asleep easily.
Tension can frequently settle in specific areas of the body, such as the shoulders, bringing on aches and fatigue. This will draw attention to trouble spots and help you relax.
Sit or lay anywhere you are comfortable.
Close your eyes and breathe in and out for 5 minutes to enhance relaxation.
Shift your focus to your body.
As you breathe, become aware of various body parts. Start with the toes and feet. Move to the ankles and up the legs. As you notice any tension, breathe into it, then exhale.
Keep breathing as your awareness moves past your hips to your torso. Breathe into any tension that you may notice. Keep breathing and notice your arms, hands, and fingers. Continue to breathe into spots that feel tense.
As you continue to breathe, move your awareness to your shoulders, neck, face, and skull. Breathe slowly into any tension spots.
Spend as much time on any tense spot as is necessary. This is a wonderful exercise to relieve tension, calm your mind, and hone the way we deal with stress.
Breath Counting Meditation: How to Build Your Mental Power
As with the other meditations, sit comfortably and practice the basic breathing meditation for five minutes to relax.
Take a deep breath and inhale. Wait for a second and exhale while counting out the number 1 in your mind.
Take another deep breath and inhale. Wait … and count out the number 2. Continue doing this until you have counted to number 10.
Repeat this counting process by starting with the number 9 and going backward to 1.
If at any time during this exercise you lose track of a number, start over from the beginning.
As you get better, you can increase the base number to 20, or even 30.
How To Practice Mindfulness To Face Daily Challenges
Sit comfortably and enjoy five minutes of mindful breathing meditation.
Now, imagine you are in a peaceful, beautiful place. It can be a place you’ve been to or a place you can imagine in your mind. Create a place that is very relaxing and soothing. There’s no place you’d rather be right now.
Look around and vividly experience the sights, sounds, and colors around you. Notice how your body feels. Allow yourself to become lost in the beauty of your special place. Take all the time you want.
Make this your place of peace and comfort, you can’t do this wrong, this is your creation of happiness.
Notice the sense of peace and calm flooding through your body. When you are ready to leave, take a deep breath and open your eyes. You are now ready to face the challenges of your day.
How To Practice Mindfulness Related Questions:
How long should I do mindfulness meditation? If you are just starting out with mindfulness or anyhow to practice the mindfulness method, I recommend you meditate for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes every day anytime or place.
You can start with even less. Maybe try it for 1 minute in the morning when you first wake up. And when you can sit still and relax for that period of time, move to 2 minutes and work your way up to a time you feel comfortable with up to twenty minutes.
How to practice mindfulness for anxiety? By focusing our attention on the present moment using our breath, mindfulness counteracts anxiety and stress. Understanding how to practice mindfulness can be an important tool for helping you to better focus on the present moment. Research has proven that mindfulness is extremely effective and helps us reduce anxiety and depression.
What mindfulness does to the brain? MRI scans show that after an eight-week course of mindfulness practice, the brain’s “fight or flight” center, the amygdala, appears to shrink. This primal region of the brain, associated with the fight or flight response as well as fear and emotion, is involved in the initiation of the body’s response to stress.
