Little Miss Inventor - Part 5 - The Beginning of Mindfulness

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So my psychologist is now teaching me the in's and outs of mindfulness. Apparently I need to 'live for the moment'. One suggestion to get me started was to think about what I am doing when cleaning my teeth! So I need to feel the bristles of the brush on my teeth, what the toothpaste is like and not next I'm going to do this for 30 minutes and then I'm going to do this for 15 minutes. You get the theory? Well it's worth a go and we'll see. There's also an app called 'Headspace' to look at. Next session we are going to do some exercises that psychologists uses, so there will be updates and no doubt I'll try and invent / tweak this strategy. Be interesting to share examples with each other if you use this approach.

In fact I'll try a few more before I post this and then hopefully you can come up with some other examples as well....................

Ok, here goes! A few more actions have been undertaken and to be honest none of them have worked for me as yet, although I think it's a question of trial and error and not something that you can learn overnight.

Tried as per instruction above with psychologist in a proper session and worked a bit although the noise distraction didn't help. We were blowing away a balloon with a thought inside and being empty and thinking ourselves in the moment and trying to hear the things around us, take in the smell, our breathing etc.

I tried it during yoga but as I was trying to breath I was blowing away a balloon with a thought attached to it. But as with everything I learnt this was not a sensible way to go. With so many thoughts and so many breaths it was hard to remember which thoughts I had blown away and which I still needed to realise. Possibly not the way to approach it really. As too separates perhaps but not all together.

Then I tried it with a mindfulness colouring book. A couple of times I used a book which has you focus on a specific thing whilst you colour so you can remove yourself completely from the the environment around you through the art of colour. This did actually work a few times but sometimes the guidance didn't actually work for my mind and I found myself flapping around trying to find a quote or sequence to follow and ended up putting it down and just colouring in a standard book.

The headspace app didn't do a lot for me either. However, that doesn't mean that you won't like it and the first 10 3to5 minute sessions are free to try. The thing I did like about it was the sleep section. Loads of calming music and meditation. Annie-May found this a helpful tool to have in the locker in case insomnia or worries hit and a calming resource required.

However, as you will see there is a mindfulness blog already posted to this site by one of our contributors and they find it a really useful tool. So once again it's down to personal preferences.Contrasting results and not to be dismissed at all. Psychologist says it takes practice so if you think it will help you then you have to find the right way for you, follow your own pathway and see where you end up. Thinking that adding in a few minutes when out might be the best time for me but other strategies certainly out do this one right now but as with everything dip into and out of whatever works for you.