More Mindfulness Exercises

Mindfulness is a method of fully embracing with minimal resistance one’s current life situation and internal states. One can bring about increased awareness to any activity. Here are some examples:

Being Mindful of Emotions
With Mindfulness Meditation, one can learn to be less judgemental. Being less judgemental helps to bring about a more relaxed state. One can learn to watch anger and other emotional states with compassion. This enables one to eventually let go of these states or, at least, keep from intensifying them.

Being Mindful of Eating
Increasing one’s awareness of eating may benefit those who are trying to make changes in their eating habits. Here is how to increase your awareness of eating:

• Look at the food you are about to eat. Focus on what it consists of. Ask yourself,"Do I still want to take this food into my body?"
• Pay close attention to every bite. Food eaten mindfully will be easier to digest and you will be less likely to overeat.
• Just after eating, notice how the food you ate affects your digestive system. Does it agree with you? Notice how you feel when eating a low fat meal versus a high fat meal...a candy bar snack versus a raw vegetable snack.

Mindful Stretching Exercises
Gentle stretching and strengthening exercises done very slowly with moment to moment awareness of breathing and of the sensations that arise is yoga. Yoga seeks to unite the body, mind and spirit. This can result in improved health and vitality.

Mindful Breathing and Sitting as a Meditation
Mindful breathing and sitting (meditation) helps to relax and focus the mind. Just 5 minutes a day can make you feel more refreshed and energetic.

Here are some guidelines for practising mindful breathing and sitting:

• Make a special time and place for “non–doing”.
• Adopt an alert and relaxed body posture.
• Look dispassionately at the reactions and habits of your mind.
• Bring your attention to your breathing by counting silently “1” on inhalation and “2” on exhalation, “3” on inhalation, etc. When you reach number “10”, return to number “1”. (If you go beyond the number 10, then you know your mind has wandered).
• When your mind wanders, name what it wanders to and come back to the breathing.
• Once you have practiced focusing on your breathing, you can use sensation, sound or watching thoughts as your point of concentration.
• You cannot prevent stressful situations in life, but you can control your reactions to them. Practicing mindfulness can help.

From the teachings of Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Floating Leaves
A distancing technique where you mentally place your thoughts on leaves and watch them float away from you.
Randy Burgess

Just Sitting
Sit and watch your mental movies come and go, without getting involved.
Randy Burgess

Selfless Watching
Simply sit and watch your thoughts, watch your breathing, etc. Jibber-jabber comes and goes, but your awareness remains, silently watching; this realization of an unjudging, non-verbal constancy is called “self as context.”

As with many mindfulness exercises, this is similar to some Buddhist meditation techniques. In Buddhism, meditation is a key technique for severing identification with your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, so as to lessen the clinging and aversion that cause suffering. Traditionally, the idea has been to keep diligently working at your meditation until you reach enlightenment, although some Western authors place more emphasis on simply learning to ‘let go’, and downplay the enlightenment goal.

Mindfulness exercises in ACT and DBT however aim to teach via the experience that “you” are bigger than any feeling or thought, no matter how terrifying or ecstatic.
Randy Burgess