Peace of Mindfulness
By Jules Delorme
You’ve probably heard a lot about meditation and importance of Mindfulness lately. Studies have shown that simple mindfulness exercises can improve your mood, your ability to sleep, your overall health and even help with weight loss. There’s more and more research to show this to be true. You may have taken classes in meditation and Yoga in order to help with your mindfulness. If you have, that’s great. Keep doing it. But, be aware that, while being mindful for a small part of your day is great, the goal is to be more mindful throughout your day and throughout your life. So meditate. Take a Yoga class. But being mindful is actually a much more simple and far less complicated than most of us think it is. In fact simplicity is the entire point. In this multi-tasking busy for busy’s sake world just simplifying is the most important part of mindfulness practice. That means nothing more or less than just doing what you’re doing and nothing else. Eat when you’re eating. Exercise when you’re exercising. Be with someone and nothing else. Put down the phone for a few minutes. Turn off your computer for a bit. Turn off the TV once in a while. Read a book and just that. Just read the book. Best of all take a few minutes to just breathe, to just be aware of your breath. Don’t fix anything. Don’t time it or count. Just feel yourself breathe. If you have time lengthen the breath after a while. Allow a natural pause on the inhale and lengthen the exhale a bit. Don’t rush into that or jump ahead. Observe first. Then make small adjustments. Be aware of your spine and try to lengthen it. You don’t need to take a special position. You don’t need to close your eyes. You can do those things but you can just as easily just take a really good look at a tree or the sky or a spot on the wall and do nothing else, and get great benefit from doing small simple things throughout your day. Listen to someone who’s speaking and do nothing else. Not only will you truly hear other people, you will find calmness and a bit of peace by making a point of doing that. Pet your dog or your cat and do nothing else. You will get closer to them and improve your health. Eat your food and do nothing else. Don’t rush it. Don’t try to get it done with. Actually taste and smell and really sense your food. You’ll be amazed at how hard it is to overeat and how much more you’ll enjoy your food. These are all acts of Mindfulness. These and so many other things that you can do are forms of meditation that can improve your mood, improve your health and make you a better and more interesting person. It really can be that simple. Not easy. Definitely not easy. But simple. And very effective.
~ Jules Delorme is a Personal Trainer & MMA Coach,
julesfdelorme@gmail.com