Mindful Monday

“Self-compassion involves treating yourself the way you would treat a friend who is having a hard time-even if your friend blew it or is feeling inadequate, or is just facing a tough life challenge,” says Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer. Yet, typically we do not treat ourselves as well as we treat our friends. Through self-compassion we become an inner ally instead of an inner enemy. 

This meditation accompanies our 9 August No 22 Guide and Podcast on Self-Compassion. It provides the opportunity of finding a way to be with yourself as you are and for who you are and not who you think you should be. By being present in the moment in awareness of the breath, thoughts, feelings, you can be curious and compassionate to what is around you. This meditation can be done anytime and it is a sitting practice. 

With the pandemic forcing us to spend much of our time indoors, we are at greater risk of living increasingly sedentary lifestyles. And even before the pandemic, many people spent too long sitting without a break. It’s well known that sitting all day is unhealthy and can have a host of long-term, detrimental effects on our bodies. Adopting a sedentary lifestyle has been linked to a slower metabolism, thinning in the regions of the brain responsible for storing memory, as well as an increased incidence of depression and anxiety.  As studies show that both the duration of how much we sit at a time and the total amount of time we sit overall can be problematic to our health. By embedding movement into our day as a regular routine it’s a way to care for our body and mind.

This meditation accompanies our 2 August No 21 Guide and Podcast on Moving Well.  Mindful movement shows you a way of coming into the here and now, by focusing in on the range of feelings and sensations in your body, through mindful movement. It allows you to explore with curiosity and without judgment all the sensations that arise moment-to-moment and may enable you to connect with any stress responses present in your body. 

A Most of us know that we should be eating for optimal health. Sometimes this is hard to put into practice with busy lives, focusing on our changing relationship to food can be difficult and challenge us. After all, our eating habits evolve though a life time of experiences, they carry associations, emotions as we tend to respond on autopilot rather from a place of awareness and choice. Some of the mindful tips in this Podcast might assist you to bring awareness and attention to your eating habits.

This meditation accompanies our 26 July No 20 Guide and Podcast on Healthy Eating.  It provides the opportunity to set an intention for the day around health and well-being (although it can be anything), and to consider 3 feelings that you could bring into your day as you embed your intention thorough out the day. Setting an intention strengthens the brain centers’ connections, assists your actions, words and responses to be compassionate, thoughtful and mindful. This meditation can be undertaken at home first thing in the morning or as soon as you arrive in the office. 

Anger is a natural and sometimes unwanted or irrational emotion that everyone experiences from time to time. It has evolved as a way of protecting oneself from harm. It’s the trickiest element in our human, emotional inheritance. It’s an inner fuel that offers an addictive rush It can ruin any situation. If it stays locked up inside, it can make us sick. It also has awesome power. Anger is a strong and fascinating emotion - rich and complex. There’s a lot to learn about what’s going on beneath our outbursts. 

This meditation accompanies our 19 July No 19 Guide and Podcast on Working with Anger. It’s called Simple Awareness, and it invites you to just be aware and rest in awareness. Awareness of breath, sound, thoughts, feelings and awareness of the awareness – not to explore, add to, accept or judge anything. This meditation can be done sitting or lying down. 

Amanda Gilbert the author of “Kindness Now” says “Kindness is what the human heart is made of. It gives us the wisdom, strength and perseverance to face our most vulnerable and difficult life moments. And it guides us in uncovering the bottomless depths of our love, our compassion and our most genuine dreams and intentions. Through kindness we realise healing is possible, feeling good is possible and meeting our full authentic selves is possible.” We all already have the innate kindness within us – kindness is like a muscle we just have to exercise it. Kindness itself has a ripple effect on others and it leads in turn to more kindness. 

This meditation accompanies our 12 July No 18 Guide and Podcast on Being Kind. The meditation nurtures the quality of kindness that already exists within, whilst being with whatever is present in the senses, thoughts or emotions without judgement. The intention of this practice is to cultivate loving kindness for yourself and others.