How many times have we allowed ourselves to be pulled into dealing with the things that matter least?
Our cell phones, our televisions, our emails, can distract us from the present moment. Their call is piercing and insistent. These distractions are a magnet calling us away from our present moment – our child’s question, our spouse’s needs, our inner yearnings and churnings.
When we are not paying attention to the present moment, we are absent from our life. Mindfulness is a way to fully experience ourselves and our world. As we quiet the mind and go within, we practice noticing how we feel in any given moment, making contact with our Spirit, our highest and best self.
We ask ourselves, “How am I doing, really? How’s it going right now? What is the most important feeling I am experiencing right now?
You don’t need to do a formal meditation for this to be effective. You can sit down right where you are, for one minute, close your eyes, and breathe. Mindfulness is about feeling where you are right now.
Mindfulness Break
1. Close your eyes, turn away from your computer and just breathe. In and out. In and out. Notice if you are grounded to the earth. If not, then put on a new grounding cord and feel your body sink deeper into the chair as you release some tension from your body. Feel all the tension leave your shoulders, your neck and move down your back, and be pulled down to the center of the earth.
2. Bring all of your awareness to the center of your head. Feel that space between your ears, behind your eyes. Allow all your focus to be centered right there. Breathe.
3. Then, as you sit quietly, you might notice that there’s a longing in your heart, or an emotion surfacing in your stomach or your throat. You don’t need to do anything about whatever it is that you find. The goal isn’t to figure out a plan or to allow the emotion to take over, but rather to check in with how it is to be you –right here, right now.
4. Say hello to that energy, that emotion. That’s all. Allowing the emotion or the longing to be there that’s the most important part. Validate exactly where you are right now.
5. Breathe. Can you name that emotion or feeling? That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to fix it, or come up with a plan of action. Just be aware that’s all.
6. When you are ready, open your eyes.
This mindfulness break allows you to bring your awareness back to your present time reality. From this space of awareness, you can consciously choose the action that is in alignment with your present time needs. You are without judgment, fully aware, fully alive and experiencing.
This is mindfulness in action.
Mindfulness is being consciously aware of your present moment. The past is the past, the future has yet to be written, but right here, right now, is where we experience life. Being present to that experience without judgment is mindfulness. And from that space of presence we live a richer, fuller life. Every two weeks or so I send out additional information via email about the topic at hand. Subscribe and come with us on this journey of discovery – uncovering the essence of who you truly are. Blessings!
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