Mindfulness is the practice of cultivating more awareness and being conscious of the here and now. There are many benefits to developing your own mindfulness practice, including improved physical health, reduced stress levels, better sleep and overall greater wellbeing. Meditation can be a helpful tool to develop a more mindful lifestyle. But what do you do with the other 90% percent of your day? If your only mindfulness practice consists of 20 minutes on a meditation cushion, but stops the moment you get up, you will not notice much of a difference in your general sense of wellbeing. Luckily, there are many ways in which you can incorporate mindfulness in your daily life, and we have gathered 5 easy practices here for you.
1. Mindful Morning Routine
Starting your day off right can make a huge difference in the way you feel throughout the day. Begin your morning with some quality you time to set yourself up for an amazing day. Make your space sacred, burn some incense, light a candle, and make yourself a cup of tea. Get into a comfortable seated position and take 10 deep belly breaths. Scan your body up and down, feeling into every body part. How is your body feeling today? Can you notice any stiffness or stuck energy? Breathe into it and acknowledge how you feel. Once you have a good idea of how you are today and you feel grounded, it is time to set your intentions for the day. What do you want to achieve or cultivate today? It can be as simple as being present and calm throughout your day.
2. Mindful Eating
A big part of our daily routine is preparing and eating food. If we can cultivate more mindfulness into our relationship with food, we can create greater awareness of our eating habits and enjoy the process of preparing and eating food much more. One of the ways through which we can start a mindful eating practice is by taking more time for the whole process and including all the senses: seeing, smelling, feeling, hearing and tasting. Additionally, expressing gratitude for our meals and all the ingredients can inspire greater awareness. Do you want to know how to do this exactly? Read about mindful eating practices, tips and follow a guided mindful eating practice, all in our article on ‘Mindful Eating’.
3. Mindful Movement
One of the benefits of mindfulness is developing a better mind-body connection. Being in your body is grounding and makes you feel connected to yourself, to mother earth, and to other people. One way of incorporating this into your daily life is to ask yourself every couple of hours: ‘How is my body feeling?’, ‘What emotions am I experiencing?’. You can set a reminder on your phone to do a body check-in as often as is convenient for you. This way you will practice being in your body regularly. After a while, it will become natural for you to do this without any incentive to do so. Other ways of cultivating mindful movement is by:
Going on walking meditation,
Joining or doing your own ecstatic dances,
Practicing body-scan meditation.
4. Mindful Reflection
When you become more present in your daily life, you will notice more of your habits and thought patterns that you might find to be confronting. The challenge is to not judge yourself or get stuck in the loop of the ego, but rather observe without judgment and attachment. Before you can change anything, you must accept it to be true. You can never change anything you do not accept to be true. That is like trying to move an object that isn’t there. How will you pick it up and where will you put it if you don’t know where it is, to begin with? Therefore, a daily reflection practice can be a valuable addition to your daily mindfulness practice, so you can work through whatever you become aware of. One way of doing this is by journaling. If you feel resistant towards journaling, maybe you can let go of your expectations of what journaling is or should be. Here are just a couple examples of unconventional journaling:
Daily emotions: write down the 3 main emotions you felt during the day,
Drawing: draw yourself, anything from your day or anything that comes up,
Gratitude journaling: read our full article here for more information.
Article Source: https://www.heartandsoulretreats.com.au/blog/5-easy-mindfulness-practices-for-daily-life