A moment of Mindfulness
A Moment of Mindfulness
By Angela Englander February 10, 2015
Mindfulness is a practice that can easily get forgotten when life gets busy, when we are stressed or nervous or frustrated or simply too busy or rushed. When we are on overdrive our system may feel sped up, as if we have had too much coffee, or perhaps you needed the caffeine to get your system pushing past your limits in the first place. This chronic pushing ourselves and going beyond our limits may make sense in the context of our busy lives and our busy culture but does it make sense biologically and from an evolutionary lens?
When we stop listening to our body’s signals we tend to fill up with stress hormones and exhaust our body’s natural storage of hormones and enzymes. In the moment we feel alive and have the energy to attend that extra meeting, run that race, stay out at that party, or get in to work a little early for a meeting. In the long term your adrenal glands (the ones responsible for your energy hormones) can literally burn out. Taxing these organs leads to feelings of exhaustion, depression, apathy, avoidance, weight gain, trouble sleeping, and a number of diseases. This adrenal fatigue also leads to boredom with life, increases risk taking behaviour, reduces impulse control and can lead to putting yourself or others in dangerous situations just to feel alive. The numbing between the adrenaline rushes and the feelings of exhaustion when not in over drive make it that much harder to switch gears, and who wants to slow down when life can be so exciting?
If you do find yourself wanting to slow down, to allow your body system’s to naturally rebalance and avoid diseases, or if you want to feel naturally calm and content, this moment of mindfulness is for you!
Sit comfortably in a chair or on the floor, this comfort is very important because I’m going to encourage you to spend an entire minute in this position during your mindfulness. Put your phone aside and remind yourself that for the next minute you are just going to slow down and be at peace. Take a deep breath, feel the life giving energy entering your lungs. As you exhale blow the air slowly out of your mouth and focus on what the air feels like on your lips. Is the air warm or cool? As you continue breathing take a moment to focus on your back, is your spine straight? Are you leaning to the side or backwards of forwards? Without judging yourself just take a moment to notice what your body is doing. As you take another deep breath focus on your gratitude. Find one thing that you are really grateful for and focus on that thing for the next thirty seconds. If you can’t think of something to be really grateful for, you can be grateful that you can read, you are able to breath, and you are alive. These everyday blessings that we so easily take for granted are gifts. Take a moment to notice how privileged you are to have these blessings. Take a moment to be thankful and really feel that blessing of having these gifts. Thank you for spending this moment of mindfulness and I wish you peace on your healing journey. If you have any questions please e-mail me angela@waystowellbeing.ca