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Bringing attention to the present moment and being present in it in a relaxed and nonjudgmental way is the essence of mindfulness (mindfulness) practice. It allows you to cope with stress, anxiety and pain, to better understand yourself and others, to live your life more fully.
Three experts offer exercises that allow you to be present in the present moment and reduce stress levels.
Exercise 1: «Ground in your feelings»
Jean-Gerard Bloch, rheumatologist
“Whether you are standing or sitting and where you are — in line, on the subway or bus or in the office — put all your attention on the soles of your feet: what areas of them are in contact with the floor? What do you feel? Strong pressure or weak?
You don’t need to evaluate it, you just need to feel it. If you do this exercise every day for 20-30 seconds, gradually increasing the time, it quickly calms, and also makes it easier to return to your feelings and ground in reality, while thoughts, on the contrary, take us away from it.
Exercise 2: «Seeing for the first time»
Jasmine Lénard, psychotherapist
“Look at everything that is around you, as if you had just arrived on Earth. No titles, no ratings. Consider the colors, the material, the lines, the curves, the relief, the reflection of light, as you would in a contemporary art exhibition where everything has a place.
Every time you have an obsessive thought or a value judgment, let it go and return to visual perception, practicing to look at everything to the smallest detail: a speck of dust on the floor, a thread of clothing, the tip of a hair …
This exercise breaks mental associations and immediately brings us back to the present moment. It also allows our consciousness to get out of its habitual mode.
After all, usually consciousness constantly evaluates the environment, and this tendency to evaluate, categorize, compare, prefer and deny lies at the basis of many of our problems. Meditation helps you get out of this lifestyle and develop an open mind.”
Exercise 3: Deal with Painful Emotions
Helen Philip, clinical psychologist
This exercise is done in four steps.
Step 1 Recognize the presence of a strong emotion. Give yourself time to feel what is happening to you: what are your bodily sensations? Where are they located? In the stomach, in the throat, in the chest? ..
Step 2 Accept this emotion. Don’t try to deny it or fight against it: let it take you over, be with it, name it.
Step 3 — Explore this emotion. What thoughts come up with it? What other sensations? Do you recognize them? Are they familiar to you? The purpose of this is to go deeper into the emotion, to direct all your conscious attention to the physical and mental experience that it offers you, but to analyze effortlessly, just feeling it and noticing the sensations.
Step 4 Don’t define emotion. The previous stages allow you to become aware of your emotional habits and how we lock ourselves into unpleasant emotions due to constantly repetitive thoughts. To continue to move away from the emotion and deprive it of «identity».
Gradually expand your consciousness, paying clear and conscious attention not only to those areas where this emotion manifests itself, but also to the body as a whole, and then, gradually, to your surroundings, to sounds, to the landscape.
This exercise will help you find other ways to express yourself, such as voicing your disagreement or frustration, rather than chewing around in circles.”