3 ways to reach mindfulness
There is one flaw in our system, in today's world we interpret the simplest thing as a danger to our lives. Stress or misunderstandings or misperceptions can play a part to caress this flight-or fight response in the wrong way.
Emotions put us over the edge and once mixed in with our sympathetic system, it becomes a concoction of disaster. You want to create a barrier between the bond of these two things.
Adopt meditation and deep breathing like your own children. In my case, I wouldn't know what having your own children feels like, but my nephews drive me crazy.
1. Meditation
This task allows you to disconnect from thoughts, feelings, or sensations. It relieves your body of these life tortures. One simple meditative tool is sit in an upright posture on the floor in a quiet room. After you have the time and place down, you want to close your eyes and breath in and if you notice a sensation, feeling or thought, then you break your mind from that and go back to breathing.
2. Deep breathing-
We are always complacent with our breathing. We fail to realize there is a proper way of breathing. We usually don't give ourselves enough time to expand our lungs. We breath in quickly and breath out quickly. We do not give ourselves the luxury of keeping enough air in.
step1 Squeeze in your abdominal muscles
step2 Breathe in 5 secs until your lung expands to point of opening up your lower and upper chest.
step3 Hold your breath for 5 secs
step4 Breath out 5 secs.
Using deep breathing enabled me to make a breakthrough in anxiety management.
3. Being nonjudgmental towards emotions
We are not stable in mindset when we are not in line with our emotions. We have to sit with our emotions as we accept them. We need to acknowledge their existence. We can not consider our feelings as foreign. Otherwise, your feelings will explode to get out of your body to express themselves at an irrational level.
Those feelings can come in control through the following steps:
so step 1 Acknowledge the emotion you are dealing with.
( eg. I am angry.)
step 2 Accept it. How can you accept the emotion? You do it by not reacting to it , dismissing or suppressing it.
( eg. I am angry. I will not tell you ( speaking to emotion mentally) are wrong to be angry. I can not ignore as if you do not exist.
step 3 Realize it is not easy doing this. You will need to do this more than two times.
Do this when you are in a state of calm.
This third way is completely new to me. It has helped me become more rational in emotional response. I can not say I have completely wiped out my moments of anger, but I can say I have changed enough to make more space for happiness. We can not completely get rid of anger because this emotion is needed in the right circumstances.
References:
Davis, Martha, PHd & Eschelman, Elizabeth Robbins "The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook "6th Edition p30-34
Klemanski, David H. PsyD & Curtiss, Joshua E. MA 2016 "Don't Let your anxiety run your life" p.151-169