Main Mindfulness Techniques: How To Practice Them?
Why should you practice mindfulness? What are the main mindfulness techniques that you can apply to your daily routine? Find out how to practice it.
He mindfulness It is a state and/or trait that is achieved through the practice of meditation. This practice can allow us to focus on the present moment, adopt an attitude of greater acceptance, that is, without passing judgment, as well as help us live with a more open mind.
“Paying attention in a certain way, on purpose, in the present moment and without judgment”
Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990)
“Be aware with an open and receptive attitude of what is happening in the present moment.”
Relaxation technique: Although it is consequently achieved, it is not the final objective.
Blank mind: Many thoughts come, especially at the beginning.
Zen state: We are not looking for dissociation but rather to be more connected with ourselves and the environment.
Religion: It does not enter into philosophies, beliefs or religions even if it was originally linked.
Why do any of the mindfulness techniques?
Positive scientific results have been shown in numerous studies in different contexts: healthcare, school, family, corporate, sports…
Benefits:
Treatment and prevention of anxiety relapses, stress reduction
Sick leave and chronic pain
Improved attention, concentration, creativity and resilience.
Resources:
Improves the identification of emotions since with practice we increase the interval between stimulus and response loaded with interpretations that come from our experiences.
Improves the de-identification of thoughts. It is a tendency to think that we are what we think and that this is reality. With the practice of SDM we take distance and perspective, it makes us more aware since it improves the level of attention and concentration, reaching a higher level, leaving us off “automatic pilot”.
We go from reacting to increasing our freedom of choice if what we want is to generate a change in some area of our lives.
He goal of mindfulness It is achieving a deep state of consciousness during a session using several specific techniques to achieve it. Meditation is one more vehicle among others such as conscious breathing or body scanning.
There are 2 types of practices:
Formal: They refer to those that we develop in an environment prepared for it. As a recommendation, we should start with these by training attention and then transfer the learning to our daily activities in informal practices. First, short daily sessions of a couple of minutes, increasing their duration.
Informal: They are those that we include in our daily lives. The more we practice, the more we will see the benefits. E.g. While I enjoy with friends, at work, while I walk, I shower, I go out on a bike to the mountains…
What are the focuses of attention that we are going to develop throughout our practices:
The space that surrounds us, being aware of sounds, smells…
External objects: candle, light, pen…
Mental objects: imagine a beach, a wave…
The body: sensations of the body itself
Breathing: inhalation/exhalation
Thoughts and emotions
The most common postures should allow each person to enter a state of attention and observation, avoiding annoying postures. It is important to adapt to what is there at any given moment, always listening to our body:
Sitting on a chair or bench
Burmese
Lotus
Mindfulness techniques
Mental exercises indicated to combat “mindfull” either “full mind” that characterizes our daily lives. This type of meditation is key to alleviating those mental ailments that occupy our heads.
We sit down, we become aware that our back is aligned, our neck is straight with respect to our chin, we avoid crossing our legs/arms and elements that bother us.
Aim: Our breathing is going to be our main focus of training since it anchors us to the present, it is an experience felt in this moment.
Body scan linked to food
Regulating vitality is extremely important. For this we enter into a physical component, food and taking care of ourselves from it; Be aware of what we eat, what it gives us and how it makes us feel. This practice will help us self-regulate. There is also the mental component, how I relate to food and both internal and external experiences. It can be a great source of stress. Hence, the practice of body scanning has multiple benefits. To do this, we must become aware of body posture, sensations, identify emotions and tensions that our body harbors, use breathing to release tension and rebalance our body and mind, cultivate acceptance, etc.
Aim: Train the recognition and discrimination of emotions and body sensations at the moment they may arise.
As we see, mindfulness can help us improve in many areas. Furthermore, the mindfulness techniques They are accessible to everyone, whether experienced meditation practitioners or beginners.
