So what I hope to give you with this session is seven extra ways to add mindfulness to your day.
This is for anyone who is already meditating as a daily routine,
For example in the morning or at night.
You've established a meditation practice but you want to add more mindfulness to the day.
You want to take the benefits off the mat and into your real life or you want to find the benefits of mindfulness throughout the day and you're looking for little extra ways that you can be mindful ongoing.
Because it's one thing to be mindful and have a you know quote unquote good meditation session.
If the benefits don't translate into your everyday life there isn't the biggest point to it.
Over time you will see improvements regardless of when and where and how often you practice.
But ideally we are reminding ourselves to be mindful as often as possible throughout the day thus extending our total time being mindful rather than being lost in the world or in our mind.
So with that said if you haven't already established a morning or night time meditation practice do so.
There are talks up here and elsewhere that you can find to help establish those routines.
But let's assume you have and you want to add some more to your day.
The first one I would suggest would be to add a mindful breath as a trigger to something that you do daily.
This could be picking up your phone to send a message or look at social media.
As you go to pick up the phone that is your trigger to take a breath.
Just one slow mindful breath observing your thoughts,
Emotions,
Feelings in the moment.
Observing your body and what your body's senses are picking up in the moment.
Just one slow mindful breath.
You can choose whatever trigger you like.
The phone works,
Door handles work or any other thing that you do regularly throughout the day.
It's not a big break it's just one breath.
The next way you can add mindfulness to your day would be to mindfully consume that first cup of coffee.
I know myself and a lot of people love that morning coffee but we have it with a bit of distraction.
We just get it into us for the caffeine.
But what if you took that time instead of getting it and consuming it,
You took that time to actually take a look at the coffee,
To smell it and to taste it.
Even just one mindful sip.
The third way that we can extend upon this is every time we're eating to use the act of eating as a mindfulness practice.
To eat even just that one or two first bites of our food focused on the sensation,
Focused on the taste,
Focusing on the feelings of satiation in our bodies.
If you do exercise daily rather than just losing yourself into music or the space just take a breath,
Take a moment to feel your body moving,
To feel your body picking up the weights,
To feel the weight of the weights,
To feel your body puffing in breath.
Now yes you might want to put on the music and sort of get into the zone but every time you move your body that's an opportunity to feel the body that you have to connect,
To embrace the moment of movement.
Once again I'm not saying to do this through the whole session,
Just like I'm not saying to be mindful with the entire coffee or every coffee or every piece of food.
Rather I'm saying just to use it as a trigger.
Just do one set,
Just do one movement mindfully.
Another way to bring mindfulness to the day is during those house tasks,
The cleaning of the dishes,
The vacuuming,
The mowing the lawn,
All of those mundane quote-unquote boring tasks.
In my experience these are moments of repetitive freedom and there's bliss to be found there.
If you're mowing the lawn for 10,
15,
20 minutes that's time that you can sit and just observe your mind.
As you're going through the motions you can choose to let your mind wander and simply watch it.
It's like cleaning,
Mowing,
Vacuuming,
All of these things are options to continue and extend a meditation practice.
If you allow yourself to get through that first initial burst of boredom,
Settle into it and be mindful.
If you have a pet,
Take a moment every day to just sit with them 10,
20 seconds,
Not much,
Just mindfully acknowledge your pet.
Pat them,
Feel their fur and just embrace them.
Once again it's not much,
It's just a little bit to add this trigger during the day to just be mindful.
You see your dog,
You see your cat or your other pets,
You just take one moment of mindfulness to embrace them.
Our goal here isn't to be mindful every moment all throughout the day but rather it's to find little moments throughout the day that we can be more mindful.
A breath here or there,
Returning back to the practice.
If you've established a routine or a ritual of daily mindfulness meditation you will find that it gets easier and easier to fall back into that head space,
Easier and easier to fall back into that head space during the day because you've better conditioned your mind to be mindful and thus in this way there's synergy between the mat time,
The morning mat time,
Your daily meditation and these brief moments of mindfulness that you can attain throughout the day.
Give it a try and if you discover any other moments that you can attain mindfulness throughout the day let me know.
Cheers.
