Mindful Me

Through my recently discovered love for yoga I was introduced to the concept of mindfulness. Having purchased a few books on the topic (see below) I feel that I have now grasped a basic enough understanding to where I can begin to implement it in my daily life. For those of you that have not come across the concept before, the slightly watered down explanation is that it is the practice of living in the current moment, where the past no longer affects us and the future has yet to happen and therefore is not worth worrying about. I will admit that the first few chapters I read about how things are only bad if the mind believes them to be so I was slightly sceptical. However, the more I read the more I realised this to be so. For example, if I encounter a bad customer at work instead of carrying the experience through to my interaction with every other customer for the rest of my shift I find that I can now get past it by thinking that that moment no longer exists and therefore is not relevant to the present moment, also long breaths in followed by long breaths out always seems to help. Another part of the practice of mindfulness is that you take time to notice things rather than simply rushing through life. You appreciate the things that are around you rather than living life in your own head thinking about what you have to get done throughout your day or any number of things that you may at that moment be worried about. The idea is that whatever you are doing you do just that, so if you are walking you just walk and notice, if you are eating, you eat and notice the tastes and the smells rather than just shovelling it down because of how busy you are. Basically the aim is to quieten the mind as much as possible because the theory is that if you have a busy chaotic mind your life will follow suit. I personally never believed that there was such a thing as a quiet mind, when I would ask my husband what he was thinking and he would reply nothing I never believed him because my mind simply was never silent. Now I feel that I am taking steps forward to achieve this, to not be as stressed or as worried about things. So this morning while I was taking a walk through the park I decided to do it mindfully. I noticed leaves and flowers I had never seen before. I saw beauty where normally I would have just walked past and seen nothing. I noticed confetti on the grass from a wedding just passed, I saw spots of colour scattered throughout the green and noticed how perfectly the trees were placed. Now that I have started practising mindfulness I hope to be able to incorporate it more and more into my own life because I really can see that a mindful life can make a happy life.