Mindfulness Practice with Listening

Mindfulness is awareness.

When you walk the path of awareness, you are bringing a systematic consciousness to the experience of living that only makes living more vibrant, more real. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living  

Being fully aware is a powerful response, that can open up new opportunities for growth as you learn to use the wisdom of your body and mind to face your stress, pain and even illness.

How do we bring mindfulness into our daily lives?

There are numerous strategies for bringing mindfulness into our daily lives such that we are not just reacting mindlessly to the external world but moving inwards to tap the resources within us.

You can tune in to your breathing…You can tune in to your standing, walking, listening, speaking, eating and working…You can tune in to your thoughts, moods or emotions…You can tune in to your bodily sensations like the air on your skin or the sounds of nature, light, color, form or movement…

In our last session, we tuned in to our breathing. The exercise was an invitation for us to pay attention to the flow of our breath as we inhale and exhale and to notice how it made us feel. Paying attention in such an intentional way often leads to deep relaxation which will help us center ourselves calmly and respond consciously in the world instead of reacting automatically and mindlessly.

In this article, we will tune in to both our breath (as we did last week) and to sounds far and near in order to bring mindfulness and greater awareness to our living experience.

 Let’s begin by sitting comfortably and firstly concentrate on our breathing and then focus our concentration on the sounds around us.

Mindful journaling is a powerful tool that supports freewriting (also known as heart writing). Writing about what you are sensing right now, right here in the quiet of your mind, may excavate deep seated emotional themes and barriers. Come back for our next article to learn some positive techniques on freewriting.

 #JournalWithCollins is proudly presented and prepared in collaboration with Shalini Damodaran, an established Mindfulness practitioner and teacher. For more information, please visit https://shalinidamodaran.com/.