Mindfulness is more than just a buzzword – it helps to slow down our everyday life and reduce stress. We show what is behind the concept, how it improves our quality of life and how you integrate mindfulness exercises into your everyday life.
In everyday life, we usually rush from one situation to the next, think about what’s going on at work at breakfast and plan what needs to be done in the evening at work. If we are honest, our thoughts are rarely actually in the here and now. This causes stress that has a negative impact on our health. In extreme cases, this can be too Burnout, depression, Anxiety or panic attacks. Mindfulness meditation is supposed to be one way, this Counter stressto live more balanced, relaxed and healthier.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a form of meditation and originally comes from Buddhism. To be mindful means to experience moments consciously and to listen to your inner emotions – without any evaluation. This is how you protect your psyche and slow down your life.
Mindfulness Training: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
In the western world, molecular biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn is considered a pioneer of mindfulness practice: With his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) method, he made mindfulness meditation acceptable to us.
The MBSR is an eight-week mindfulness training where you learnto pay attention to physical sensations, to notice physical states and finally – that is the most difficult thing – to look at emotions. The crux of mindfulness is to perceive without evaluating. This creates a gap between stimulus and reaction.
You can imagine it like this: If you are afraid of an exam, but only observe and not evaluate this feeling, you will not trigger a reaction or stress. In this way, mindfulness training helps to avoid stress in certain situations. The MBSR training is scientifically well researched and evaluated and should also help people without a spiritual connection with various problems (more on this below).
Learn mindfulness
In addition to the numerous courses in which you can learn mindfulness and the many offers for mindfulness meditation, you can also easily complete various mindfulness exercises at home.
Most of these mindfulness exercises can be easily integrated into everyday life. This way you can calm down and relax every day, perceive the here and now and live more consciously. We briefly present a few of them here.
(Photo: unsplash / CC0)
1. Mindfulness exercise: pause
Between the different sections of our packed day, it is easy to pause to recharge your batteries and relax.
Take at least one minute to pause several times a day. To do this, sit or stand comfortably and watch how your breath flows. Focus your attention on your body: you can focus on the places you are currently feeling or simply perceive your body as a whole. Then watch your feelings, ask yourself how you are doing and see what happens. Remember not to evaluate, just to observe. It may be difficult at first, but it gets easier as time goes on.
(Photo: © vesersenior – photocase.de)
2. Mindfulness meditation: walking consciously
You can use the time you walk to focus and calm your thoughts. Walking is such an automated movement that we hardly notice it. Walking meditation is about that.
(Photo: © Dirk Hinz – photocase.de)
Concentrate on walking on the way to shopping, to the subway while climbing stairs or walking. Notice when your feet touch the floor, which muscles relax and unwind. Watch your pace: are you slowing down or going faster?
In this way, you consciously maneuver yourself into the here and now and give your worries a break – this has a relaxing effect.
3. Mindfulness training: breathing consciously
For the Breathing exercise you can schedule a little more time, it takes about ten to 20 minutes.
To do this, sit up straight and relaxed with your eyes closed and concentrate on your breath. Watch how you inhale and exhale without changing your breathing or controlling it. Let the breath come and go at first. Then notice where it is most clearly felt, how it feels on your nostrils. Then watch your chest as it rises and falls, expands and contracts.
(Photo: © Flügelfrei – photocase.de)
If you notice your thoughts wandering, let them go and go back to watching your breath. Allow the feeling of mindfulness a little after the end of this exercise and take it with you into your day.
4. Mindfulness Exercise: Eat Mindfully
Breakfast or lunch is also suitable for training mindfulness. Feel yourself before the meal: Are you hungry or have an appetite? In what mood are you sitting at the table? Look at your food, how it looks and how it is composed. Then concentrate on the process itself, smell your food, watch carefully how you bring your food to your mouth, how it feels, how it tastes. Chew consciously and slowly. Be mindful of at least the first five bites of your meal. When you’re done eating, watch how your body feels now: Are you full? Do you feel satisfied
(Photo: CC0 Public Domain / Unsplash – Khamkhor)
This mindfulness exercise not only helps you eat more consciously. It also creates awareness of the foods we eat and the amount we eat. In hectic everyday life, we often eat our meals on the side – without noticing what we actually eat and where it comes from.
5. Mindfulness meditation: be thankful
This mindfulness exercise is particularly suitable for the evening, just before going to bed.
Go through your day: Think about what moved you and what experiences, people and things you feel grateful for today. Then concentrate your perception for at least 20 seconds on the things you are thankful for. This relaxes and increases your awareness of the beautiful things that you encounter in everyday life.
(© .. Andrea .. – photocase.de)
Numerous other mindfulness exercises can be found in books or on the Internet, more tips and information on the subject of mindfulness and minimalism, for example on the blog Simply conscious.
Mindfulness: scientifically not recognized for a long time
Mindfulness practice is an integral part of new behavioral therapy procedures and is used by doctors and therapists in the United States and Germany. With chronic pain, depression and stress, a positive effect is already well documented. Some doctors meanwhile even let patients meditate on serious physical illnesses. It turned out that meditation, in addition to conventional medical treatment, helps to strengthen the patient’s immune system, which is permanently weakened by stress.
For a long time, mindfulness meditation was placed in the esoteric corner. Numerous scientific studies and studies have now confirmed their positive impact on health and well-being. Since then, health insurance companies have also shown interest in mindfulness training and subsidized mindfulness courses as part of prevention.
(Everyday) mindfulness and minimalism
Live more consciously and concentrate on the essentials are with mindfulness as well as with Minimalism in the centre. So the two concepts are mutually dependent. By practicing mindfulness in everyday life, you avoid unnecessary impulse purchases, for example, because at that moment you ask yourself consciously: Do I even need this? Why do I want it?
(Photo: CC0 Public Domain / Unsplash)
In addition, minimalism, as a countermovement to constant abundance, aims to free itself from ballast. What happens here materially also affects the psyche. Because if you own little, you also have to worry about little and worry little. This is exactly what mindfulness exercises are about: throwing off ballast in the form of stressful thoughts. Because the less you ponder certain things, the more you can concentrate on the here and now, i.e. on the essentials.
This is how mindfulness is sustainable: Those who are more careful with themselves and their environment consume more consciously – and maybe less. Living mindfully also means valuing things and moments more and not having to constantly chase after the new and better.
What does mindfulness mean to you? Do you practice mindfulness? Do you know exercises that are easy to implement? Write to us in the comments!
Read more on Techzle.com:
- Minimalism: 3 methods for beginners
- The smartphone diet: how it works and what it brings
- Gentle tourism: 15 Utopia tips for sustainable vacation
German version available: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction: Living in the Present