Five Mindfulness Practices
Article by Jason Brown - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!
Follow along and consider this your first mindfulness exercise.
Take a deep breath, breathe out, and relax. Quiet your mind; feel your senses.
Mindfulness meditation has been proven to provide enormous psychological benefits for both individuals as well as the larger communities who participate in it. Through mindfulness, you can learn to become fully present with the moment and accept all of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. Eliminating resistance to all of the elements that create your experience of life can bring about a sense of inner peace and improve your overall well-being.
While this may sound like a very worthwhile goal, it can be tough figuring out how to start on this journey of developing mindfulness. If you are seeking to start practicing mindfullness, or even just breathe new life into your existing practice, here are the five steps needed to help you create a meaningful routine:
Set your Intention
Once you’ve decided that you want to practice mindfulness in your day to day, it’s important to define why you’re doing it and what you hope to get out of it. This will help give you an objective to focus on as well as provide you with some motivation to stick with it. This doesn’t have to be anything overly complex and for some, it might just be to learn to live in the moment a little bit more. For others, maybe life has been overwhelming lately and you really need help finding your inner peace. Whatever the reason, setting an intention for your practice of mindfulness will help you get the most out of it by defining a goal you can work towards.
Mindfulness has become somewhat of a buzz word and a sort of “trendy” thing to try out, but this does not necessarily have to degrade the actual value it can provide in your life. By creating an intention that is meaningful to you, you can develop an authentic and powerful practice that has the potential to be a transformative force in your life.
Create realistic expectations
Many people equate mindfulness to the idea of spiritual enlightenment or reaching some sort of Buddha-like state. While mindfulness may be the first step on the path towards enlightenment for some people, it does not necessarily have to represent embarking on a grandiose, spiritual journey of that scale for all. There are benefits to practicing mindfulness in any stage of the game.
That being said, it’s not realistic to expect that 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation a week will turn you into a sage overnight.
However, it may in fact help you find a little more equilibrium in your life. You may have also heard of stories of monks reaching nirvana by sitting and meditating under a tree for some period of time. It might be true that a number of individuals experienced something like this, but these stories can easily be misinterpreted to view mindfulness or meditation as nothing more than a tool to help achieve some specific state of being. Mindfulness is not a means to an end, but rather it is a practice that provides you with value for as long as you are engaged with it. It’s not some pill you swallow or thing you try once that changes your perception of the world forever, but rather mindfulness is like a muscle that you develop through regular use and exercise.
Be Consistent & Disciplined
If you want to turn your intention into a reality, it’s going to take some consistent effort. It’s important to commit yourself to a regular mindfulness routine that will help you to internalize your practice. For some people, this might mean making time at the beginning or end of every day to sit and meditate. For others, it might mean spending 20-30 minutes a day reading some enriching material. It could even be a routine of sitting quietly with no distractions to enjoy a peaceful breakfast before starting your day. Whatever you choose to commit yourself to, the important piece is that you stay consistent with it. Like with most objectives, discipline matters. As previously mentioned, mindfulness can only add value to your life for as long as you continue to practice it, so it’s essential that you create a routine that you can stick with over time.
Create Accountability
When starting any new habit, it’s important to create a system of accountability in order to keep yourself on track. This is particularly true with something like mindfulness where the effects can initially be very subtle or hard to measure. Therefore, creating a system that will push you to stick it out during the initial phases of developing the habit will help you reach the benefits that long-term commitment can bring to your life. One way you could do this is by setting a goal to practice mindfulness meditation for 10 minutes a day and then keep track of how many days in a row you’re able to stay with it. See if you can keep the streak going for one week, then two weeks, and then a month. Next thing you know, it will have become integrated into your normal, daily routine. Another way you can approach accountability is to find a friend who is willing to take this mindfulness journey with you. Check in with one another on at least a weekly basis to see how each of you has been able to follow through with your practice. Not only can this keep you accountable, it is also motivating to connect with someone embarking on the same journey as yourself.
“Eliminating resistance to all of the elements that create your experience of life can bring about a sense of inner peace and improve your overall well-being”
Incorporate Mindfulness into your Daily Life
Practicing mindfulness can be as easy as simply living in the moment and being mindful of your breath
For practicing mindfulness to have significant effect for you, it's important not to fall into the trap of viewing your practice as separate from the rest of your daily life. There are many ways to mindfully meditate, and while you may have certain times of the day or certain activities you commit yourself to for developing mindfulness, the idea is that you will progressively start to become more mindful throughout your overall life.
It’s easy to view meditation as isolated from everything else you do during the day, but imagine what it would be like if you approached all experiences with the same openness and deliberateness that you bring to your meditation. You might slowly start to realize that being more mindful has helped take the edge off of some of the situations, responsibilities, or tasks that normally cause you stress, all unconsciously. Try imagining the 10 or so minutes you set aside each day for deliberate mindfulness as the “recharging” moments that carry you through the stressful parts of your day.
Practice makes Perfect
Mindfulness is intended to bring lightness, relaxation, and peace to your life. It’s not entirely necessary to view these 5 steps as firm rules for your practice These five suggestions can kickstart your practice to turn an idea into a sustainable routine. There is definitely a science to the power of mindfulness meditation, but there is also an art of how to incorporate it into your life and get the most out of it. Above all else, take the liberty to be creative and experiment with finding a routine that can help bring more peace and joy to your life.