The rush of daily life, the busy pace of work, or other types of worries can detract many of us from the reality of the “moment”. Even so that sometimes we have a hard time understanding feelings and thoughts, and we lose our ability to focus day by day. People try to find different solutions to deal with such situations. Mindfulness, which we have been hearing a lot lately, is one of those.
But, what exactly is mindfulness?
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness means noticing and being fully aware of the moment you are currently experiencing, and perceiving it as well as your environment simply as they are. It can also be described as feeling the emotions and ideas as they develop in the moment, and understanding the needs of your body, which can be called “conscious awareness”. What’s more, mindfulness is a natural ability that early humans possessed, but it has been weakened due to modern city life. At this stage, mindfulness can be improved with various meditation techniques.
Although mindfulness is thought to be the same as awareness, they are quite different. Awareness describes the state of being conscious of a situation that has occurred or has occurred, while mindfulness allows us to evaluate the moment from an objective point of view.
So, how can you gain mindfulness? Here are some meditations to increase mindfulness:
How to Meditate for Mindfulness?
Mindfulness meditations can be done in different ways. However, their aim is the same; achieving awareness and accepting the moment as it is. Now, you can easily start your mindfulness meditation by following the steps below.
Step 1: Breathing With Mindfulness
- Sit upright. Keep your head up and open up your shoulders by relaxing.
- Breathe through the nose as you normally do, just try to be aware of where you feel your breath.
- Try to focus on your breathing again when other thoughts enter your mind.
- Make sure you are breathing naturally with high awareness, not forcing or controlling.
Step 2: Observing the Body With Mindfulness
- Be aware of your body as a whole.
- Observe the changes in your body.
- Keep your focus on your body, not anything else.
- If you experience discomfort or restlessness at some points of your body, try to direct your breath to these areas. Feel your breath reaching to that specific point.
Step 3: Listening With Mindfulness
- Listen to all sounds that you hear with attention.
- Notice how the sounds affect your mind. Keep listening to them.
- Pay attention to the loudness and the pitch of the sounds.
- Focus on the silence. Pay attention to the sound emerging from the silence.
- Keep your focus on the sounds.
Step 4: Observing Thoughts with Mindfulness
- Enter into your inner world.
- Observe your thoughts as if you are another person, be aware of them.
- While observing your thoughts, keep in mind that they are only thoughts. Nothing more.
- Watch them come and go, just like the sounds.
- Try to get away from your thoughts. Imagine you are watching your thoughts through a window.
Step 5: Creating Awareness with Mindfulness
- In this last step, try to notice where you most pay attention to. It can be your body, the sounds, or your thoughts.
- If you catch your attention drift away, focus on your breath, and try to start over.
- While strengthening your awareness, try to be aware of your surroundings starting from your body. Try to gain awareness of the smells, sounds, feelings and your body at the same time.
- Even if it feels hard at first, don’t give up. You might not hit all the spots in the beginning. Keep meditating, do not focus on success nor failure.
What Are The Benefits Of Mindfulness Meditation?
Mindfulness provides many benefits other than helping to increase conscious awareness by focusing on your breath, mind, body, thoughts, and sounds. Mindfulness;
- Helps you to increase the satisfaction you take from life.
- Helps you to focus on the moment. Which enables you to see the things you do better.
- Helps to lower the stress of daily life.
- Calms the soul, teaches you to be more relaxed and see everything from a more objective point of view.
Of course, seeing all these benefits is directly related to how often you repeat mindfulness meditation. So, if you invest in yourself and do not skip your mindfulness meditations, you will notice your progress on conscious awareness.
