Mindfulness isn’t just something we practice when meditating: anything we do throughout the day, we can learn to do mindfully. Once we learn to bring mindfulness into our everyday lives, we can reduce a lot of the stress, anxiety, depression and anger that tends to build up when we go through life relatively mindlessly.

It would be great if we could go about our whole day completely mindful, bringing our full attention to whatever we’re doing, while we’re doing it, and not getting carried away by distractions or thoughts of the past or about the future. But although mindfulness sounds simple, it does require effort. It takes a continual effort to notice when our mind’s started to wander and keep bringing it back to the present, and it’s not something most of us can do all day long. Read the rest of this entry »

In previous posts, we looked at the importance of giving ourselves time outs, as well as other techniques to manage stress and anxiety. Another great way we can keep things like stress, anxiety and depression from building throughout the day is to start bringing mindfulness into our everyday life.

We often talk about two broad categories of mindfulness practice. Formal mindfulness involves setting aside some time specifically for practicing mindfulness as we do when we engage in mindfulness meditation. Informal mindfulness, on the other hand, refers to finding ways to incorporate mindfulness into our daily lives. Read the rest of this entry »

In a couple of recent posts, we looked at some things you can do to help stop stress and anxiety from becoming overwhelming, and to give yourself a breathing time out from stress, anxiety and depression. In this post, we’ll look at a couple more techniques you can use to manage stress and anxiety, and to help your emotions from becoming overwhelming if you’re experiencing depression or anger.

The first is called the Three Minute Breathing Space, and it was developed as part of the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy program for people with depression. Like the Breathing Time Out, it’s a way to bring your attention to the present, give yourself a break from whatever stress or emotions have been building up, and then return to the rest of your day, more refreshed and focused on the present. Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent post we looked at a couple of exercises you can use to help stop stress and anxiety from becoming overwhelming. Another technique you can use throughout the day to manage stress and anxiety, and to help keep strong emotions and feelings of depression and anger from becoming overwhelming, is to give yourself a Breathing Time Out.

Just as a time out can be an effective way to help children calm down when they are acting out and starting to get out of control, when our thoughts and emotions start getting carried away, a time out is a great tool to help calm ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Often, the more technology we have in our lives, the more difficult it is to practice mindfulness. Our computers, laptops, cell phones, HDTVs, iPods, tablets and whatever other new gadget comes along, offer us so many different ways to stay busy and distracted all day long, allowing stress and anxiety to build as we go about our lives without being mindful.

But as people recognize how difficult it can be to stay mindful in our digital world, applications are being developed to help prevent us from getting too caught up in all the technoogy that surrounds us, and offering ways to come back to the present and be more mindful. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mental Health Foundation in the UK has developed a Be Mindful webpage that is an excellent resource for information about the benefits of mindfulness. The following quote is from their webpage:

How you handle the way you feel plays a big part your mental health. In difficult times, it is not unusual to focus solely on negative thoughts and feelings and become consumed by them.

 

Mindfulness helps you change the way they think, feel and act. It helps you to break free from a downward spiral of negative thought and action, and make positive choices that support your wellbeing. Read the rest of this entry »

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an approach to therapy based on the mindfulness-based stress reduction program (MBSR) developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. MBCT adapts MBSR to treat depression by incorporating aspect of cognitive therapy into mindfulness and mindfulness meditation. MBCT is also helpful in helping deal with anxiety and panic.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a relatively recent type of therapy that combines aspects of cognitive therapy with the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program created by Jon Kabat-Zinn. MBCT was developed to help people struggling with depression, and it is also helpful in treating anxiety and low self-esteem.

The following description of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and how it helps people overcome depression is taken from the MBCT webpage of Mark Williams, one of the developers of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. His book The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness expands on the information below.

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The benefits you can experience from learning to become more mindful are virtually limitless. Mindfulness allows you to relate to and deal directly with whatever is happening in your life. Instead of struggling to escape, suppress or avoid distressing thoughts and feelings, mindfulness helps you approach whatever is going on in your life, in your thoughts, and with your emotions, without becoming overwhelmed.

When you start being more mindful and start living in the present moment, you’ll experience your life more fully, and become more in touch with yourself, who you are, what is important to you, and what you want out of life.