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What lies behind the buzzword «mindfulness»? And how can it change us? We have selected some interesting practices that will help make life brighter.
Mindfulness has become a buzzword, if not a commonplace. Everyone around is advised to learn to “be here and now”, books have appeared devoted to the development of these qualities in oneself. Never before has the topic of mindfulness been so popular. What’s happening? Why mindfulness, how does it help and how does it affect life?
“The ability at any given time to give oneself an answer to four questions: who am I? where am I going? how am i going? why am I going? — this is awareness, — say the spouses Ekaterina Inozemtseva and Dmitry Yurchenko, who themselves have been looking for a way to a conscious life for many years, and now share their experience with others. “If every time you doubt what you are doing, or when you feel an internal imbalance, answer these questions for yourself, everything falls into place.”
“My husband and I came up with the practice of 21 insights. “Insight” can be translated as “insight” or “flash of the day”: it can be an event, word, quote, conversation or own thought that struck you with something and led to reflection or reflection. “Hunting for insights” during the day greatly develops awareness, ”say Dmitry and Ekaterina.
The development of awareness affects all areas — from health and success in work to mutual understanding in the family.
As a result of practice, sensitivity to oneself and any kind of relationship increases, a person learns to notice the important and discard the superfluous. Everything unnecessary goes away, life becomes more effective, yours, real.
How to measure your awareness? To begin with, build your own scale from 1 to 10. Unit — «I act automatically, do not get involved in the process, perform the usual mechanical movements.» Ten points — «I am clearly aware of myself and my path.»
Ekaterina and Dmitry came to the conclusion that awareness is different: mental, physical, sexual, behavioral, intellectual, bodily, visual, intuitive, and even olfactory. For each type of awareness, based on the experience of joint relationships and mutual development, they came up with a developing practice or exercise. In their opinion, the development of awareness is the fastest way to make life more fulfilling, bright, meaningful. And this affects all areas — from health and success at work to mutual understanding in the family.
We have chosen practices for the development of five types of mindfulness for the readers of Psychologies. Everyone can measure their effectiveness personally for themselves, observing the dynamics of their own «index of awareness» during the day.
1. Type of awareness: sleep
Practice: sleep in separate beds.
What opens: understanding the criteria for healthy sleep that are important to you, understanding the same criteria for your partner, realizing the need to find a compromise between your expectations, forming a joint ritual that will significantly affect the quality of sleep and rest.
How to practice: answer yourself the following questions. What room does your partner like to sleep in? In cool or warm? What kind of bed does he like — hard or soft? What underwear? Smooth or soft? With a book or without a book? Pay attention to what position you and your partner fall asleep in, what do you need to fall asleep quickly — hugs or freedom? Do you/he/she have a personal bedtime ritual? General ritual? What about awakenings? Discuss it, determine the most important thing for you and your partner (for example, for one of you — cold air, and for the other quiet music when falling asleep), try it once or make it a rule for 21 days.
2. Type of awareness: emotional
Practice: within 7 days, in response to internal irritation or resentment towards a person, mentally send him 7 sincere compliments.
What opens: change in relations with oneself and the outside world, acceptance, understanding, the ability to see a person in front of oneself, and not an act.
How to practice: keep track of your thoughts from the category: “what a terrible skirt she has on” or “well, what a terrible belly”, not yet realized. Through pain, work through ambiguous situations of your assessments: how not to condemn a mother yelling at a child on the playground? How not to condemn a colleague who violates deadlines? Alcoholic on the subway? Rudeness in the store? How not to condemn yourself if you acted not very well or completely dishonorably? The primary awareness of condemnation and then the search for sincere compliments with their evidence will help in practice.
3. Type of awareness: mental
Practice: planning for the future based on your real desires and goals for the future, not past experience.
What opens: getting rid of the fear of starting something, understanding the various ways for self-realization, sometimes requiring even a change in life trajectory, getting rid of the “excellent student syndrome”.
How to practice: agree with yourself before the start of any new project that you are taking on a new activity for yourself, calling it an experiment (and not “a lifelong task that must be completed without fail at any cost”). To say several times that this is just an experience to be gained, not necessarily showing a certain result.
4. Type of awareness: intuitive
Practice: dedigitalization (turn off any electronic means of communication for 36 hours, do not use the telephone, Internet and TV, minimize communication with the outside world).
What opens: the ability to pay attention to oneself, to shift the focus of attention from external sources to internal ones, to see oneself from the inside, in isolation from the usual external reactions. In place of irritability, constant dissatisfaction and struggle with oneself comes self-confidence and self-confidence.
How to practice: turn off all possible communication channels, if possible, do not plan anything for this day, and if meetings are already scheduled, learn to act without the usual means of communication, relying on preliminary agreements and intuition.
5. Type of awareness: physical and bodily
Practice: identify and find orthopedic shoes that fit your feet. To carry out a thoughtful self-massage of one part of the body, you can start with the feet.
What opens: understanding the real needs of the body not in general, but in its specific part, recognizing oneself “in parts” with an understanding of what makes life filled with pleasant sensations, understanding that joy is in the details, and happiness is the way to it.
How to practice: when doing a massage, listen to your feelings, and then describe them on paper, compare physical sensations with the habit of analyzing with your mind.