Yes, today is the, so called, ‘Blue Monday’, the third Monday of January, which in 2019 is the 21st of the month and I’m told by certain ‘experts’ that I’m likely to be miserable, worried and possibly depressed, for a number of reasons. I will have failed my New Year resolutions by now. I’m
Mindfulness and Stillness Mindfulness is often seen as an activity in which stillness takes precedence. Perhaps, however, there might be two ways of looking at this stillness. On the one hand, physical stillness is a very calming thing. Allowing our body to have some degree of quietude allows our minds to become more still too.
All in the mind? – Opening ourselves up to a different approach Medical research suggests that we can use our mind and our mind/body connection to be aware of painful feelings as they arise and to, in effect, stop struggling with them. When we use our mind to become aware, as in mindfulness practice, then
Most people think of mindfulness within the confines of sitting still for a period of time. But, in fact, carrying out mindfulness when walking can be incredibly beneficial. We regularly undertake a brief walking meditation during our mindfulness teaching sessions, when members of the group are encouraged to be fully aware of their bodies and/or
Think of the time you ate your lunch today or yesterday. Did you stop to look at the colours and shades in your food? Did you notice it’s aroma? Were you aware of the texture and taste of the food in your mouth as you slowly chewed? Were you aware of how it felt to
In today’s world, anyone might think that gaining material possessions is the key to happiness. Adverts on the television, at the cinema, at bus stops, on the internet constantly tell us that all we need to do is buy this appliance, get that product, wear these clothes or eat this food and we’ll have the
I find mindfulness to be very useful component of my performance coaching work and I’d like to share a little about using it to greatly increase our chances of successful coaching outcomes. Flow State We can probably all remember times when we were totally absorbed in something, perhaps eating a particularly delicious meal or being
Emotional intelligence (EI) can be thought of as the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups. Having a high level of emotional intelligence can be far more useful in helping us to have a happy, healthy and stable life, than any amount of traditional, cognitive – problem
Why would we want to? The rapid growth in mindfulness based interventions (MBIs) in recent years has created a healthy demand for teachers of mindfulness. John Kabat Zinn’s 1991 book ‘Full Catastrophe Living’ documented the birth of the Stress Reduction Clinic at The University of Massachusetts Medical Centre and the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)