Mindfulness in every day life: some taster excercises

Following on from my last blog post about some of the benefits of mindfulness, here is a short post sharing some easy ways in which you can experience mindfulness in your everyday lives. 

There are two ways in which we can practice mindfulness: 1) using formal mindfulness meditation practices, and 2) using mindfulness within our everyday lives and activities.

In this post, I’m going to give you a snapshot of number 2 above (what mindfulness in the ‘every day’ could look like).

I’ll introduce you to some short formal mindfulness meditation practices in future blog posts. 

The Habit Releaser

We are creatures of habit. And habits keep us stuck in that ‘autopilot mode’. When we are in autopilot, we stop noticing a lot of what is going on in our external, and internal worlds.

In some ways, functioning on autopilot can of course be really important. It is efficient as it saves us from using too much brain power on routine tasks like tying our shoe laces, or walking down the street. We can easily do A LOT of things without bringing much clear awareness to what we are doing.

However, the downside of being in autopilot is that if we stay in this mode TOO much, we can miss out on a lot of life. We can also miss noticing a lot of important cues in our bodies and minds that might need attending to in new ways (for example, we can fall into negative thinking habits).

So, this week I invite you to break some daily habits. Take a different route home, sit in a different chair in your meeting at work, or go to a different café for your morning coffee.  And notice what that’s like. What do you notice around you? And what do you notice in your thoughts and bodies?

Breaking some routine habits in this way is a great start to bringing more awareness and more mindfulness into your every day.

Mindful teeth-brushing

Another good way to step out of the ‘auto-pilot’ is to pick a routine activity that you do EVERY day like brushing your teeth. Then deliberately and intentionally bring your attention to the activity of doing it.

Sounds a bit weird? Let me explain what I mean…

If you are anything like me, you will probably brush your teeth whilst multi-tasking in some way. That might be physically doing something at the same time (like looking for your keys), or it might be mentally multitasking (like thinking about something you need to add to your shopping list). Either way, when was the last time you simply focused, fully, on brushing your teeth?

To do this, it’s helpful to engage all of the senses. Slow down the movements of putting the toothpaste on the toothbrush; pay attention to the sensations in your body and arms as you move the toothbrush around your mouth. Bring your focus to the sensations of taste, smell, sound and touch or movement. Focus too on what you can see.

When your mind wonders (which it will) just gently notice that your mind has gone off somewhere else and bring it back to the task of attending to the sensations of teeth-brushing. It’s interesting how much there is to notice when we bring it into our deliberate focus.

These two examples could in some ways feel silly or insignificant to start with. So, it might be helpful to know they are examples of everyday mindfulness tasks taken from the standard 8-week Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Course (MBCT). There are huge benefits that come with experiencing new ways of relating to habitual patterns of behaviour and habitual patterns of thinking. These simple exercises are a great way to start trying that out.