6 Beginner Mindfulness Skills
Do you feel like your brain is just not cut out to be mindful? Think again. If you feel scatter brained, overwhelmed, or just have have a racing mind - welcome to the club! The truth is, anyone can do it. One of the hardest parts can be not knowing where to start. If you want to try out mindfulness and improve your mindset, then scroll down and check out these 6 beginner skills!
These skills come out of the Dialectal Behavior Therapy- Core Mindfulness Skills. They are broken down into two categories. WHAT and HOW skills. If you haven’t already guess it, the WHAT skills are simply what you will be doing and, the HOW skills are how you do it. We broken down these two skills into 6 techniques.
WHAT Skills
Take hold of your mind
The WHAT skills are broken down into 3 techniques.
OBSERVE: Be curious about what you feel. Notice how you feel without passing judgement or trying to change it in some way. Almost as if your feelings flow in and out of your body like waves. What do you notice through your sense of touch, smell, sight, sound and taste? Do your best to be like a non-stick pan, letting things slide off of your body and your emotions.
Describe: Use words to describe your experience. If a feeling or thought arises, or you do something, acknowledge it without passing judgement. For instance, say in your mind, “My stomach muscles are tightening”, or “A thought that I am worthless just came into my mind.”. Do not be overly elaborate with words, or magnify a situation with words. Try to avoid emotional words. Try to avoid emotional words and being overly elaborate or magnifying a situation with words. Let go of your emotions about being “right” or about someone else being “wrong” while searching to describe your experience.
Participate: “I am one with the force and the force is with me.” . Ok, so unfortunately this is not Jedi training. But we are aiming for something very similar. Participating means being one with your experience, completely forgetting yourself. Allow yourself to be natural in the situation and continue to practice these skills until they become a part of you. Practice: 1. changing harmful situations 2. Changing our harmful reactions to situations 3. Accepting yourself and the situation as they are.
HOW SKILLS
Become a silent observer
The next few techniques provide us with structure for HOW to be mindful during an activity.
One-Mindfully: Do one thing a time. While you are doing this one thing, do not think about other things. If you notice your mind wander, notice it and gently bring your attention and focus back to your activity.
Effectively: Focus on what works. For instance, stay away from “right” and “wrong'“, “should” and “should not”, and “fair” and “unfair”. Let go of unhelpful feelings or thoughts of vengeance, useless anger, and righteousness.
Non-judgmentally: See but don’t evaluate. Take a nonjudgmental stance. Focus on the “what” rather than the “good” or “bad”. Detatch from your options from facts, from the “how, what, when, and where.”. Accept each moment for what it is; just as grass accepts the rain, sun, snow, and the steps that fall upon it. When you find yourself judging, DON’T JUDGE YOUR JUDGING!
These are skills that you can practice anywhere and anytime. Just as an example, you are sitting next to the water at Monocacy Park in Bethlehem. While you are sitting there listening to the water flowing down stream focusing on the sounds, sights, smells, and maybe even the feeling of the water. Right in the middle of feeling all mindful, your mind starts to think about work the next day. Acknowledge that your mind is drifting and gently bring it back to the sound of the water and continue with focusing on your senses and how you are experiencing your surroundings. Another option is to seek out mindfulness classes like this one offered at the Hot Yoga Hut of Bethlehem . As always, you are more than welcome to send us any questions you may have about mindfulness/ meditation through our social media pages.
Have a great weekend and stay PRESENT!
Office is RE-OPENING July, 22, 2020: If you haven’t already, read our recent blog post regarding our office opening procedures.
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