Tips to help with your mental health #3 - Mindfulness
Perhaps you’ve heard of mindfulness before but are unsure what it is or how it can help with mental health. Well let’s start at the beginning with why mindfulness is so important in our modern lives. Take a few moments to reflect around how much you have on your mind on an average day; work, relationships, family, children, finances, health, home maintenance, cooking, politics, crime, the environment, emails, text messages, social media, and so on.
The fact is that in todays modern world our minds are constantly engaged with an endless list tasks, thoughts, worries and issues. The reality is that we don’t get a chance to switch off and relax our minds. The result is a steady release of natural body chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol which causes us to feel increasingly anxious, stressed and go to that flight or flight state. Over prolonged periods, this can have a huge impact on our mental wellbeing, leading to angry outbursts, depressive episodes, severe anxiety, burnout and potentially looking for unhealthy escapism in things such as food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, etc.
So where does mindfulness come in? Well mindfulness is about being able to calm and relax your mind and allowing all those worries, fears, thoughts and anxieties to just drift away for a short time by focusing all your senses onto just one thing.
For example, on mindfulness courses a typical exercise would involve taking a small square of chocolate. Rather than quickly eating it while your brain is busily focusing on a million other things as you may normally do, you’d be instructed instead to first look at the chocolate, to observe it and focus on its appearance, noticing different patterns and textures that you may never have seen before. Then you’d go on to smell it, taking time to really note the different scents of the chocolate. You’d then be asked to notice the feel of it in your hands, the texture, the temperature, the sensation as it begins to melt. And then finally being instructed to place it in your mouth. But even then, not chewing straight away but allowing it to sit on your tongue and being aware of the various flavours that are released and the feeling of it on your tongue.
In the example above, you’re focusing all your senses and awareness on that small square of chocolate. This not only makes the experience of eating that chocolate even more enjoyable, but it also acts to calm and relax the mind as you are focused on just one thing versus the usual million thoughts in your head while you would be stuffing that chocolate in your face! You can repeat the same at home with any item of food!
Similar exercises can be done whilst you’re out and about. If you’re walking somewhere, become aware of the churning thoughts in your head and refocus on the sound of birds signing, or the feel of your feet on the floor with every step you take, the movement of trees and vegetation in the breeze or the shape and colour of a leaf or even just the sensation of breathing in and out. The more you can focus all your senses on one thing and the longer you can do it for, the more your mind is freed up to relax, to calm down and take a break from the pressures of the modern world. Doing this regularly then helps to combat that rise in those bodily chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol and thus ensuring better mental health.
As part of my own mindfulness practice, I regularly spend a minute just focusing on my breathing before starting every client session. The difference between when I do this and when I don’t are always remarkable to observe!
There are many mobile apps, websites and Youtube channels out there that offer guided mindfulness sessions, ranging from just a few minutes up to an hour so there is always time to include some mindfulness in your day. If you’ve never done mindfulness before, why not give it a go? Experiment with just 10 minutes of mindfulness a day for two weeks and see how you feel at the end of it!
As always, if you need any support with your mental health, or if you want to find out more about mindfulness, our experienced team of counsellors and psychotherapists are here to help you, so feel free to get in touch!
