Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the simple awareness of the present. When you’re mindful you’re observing your thoughts and feelings without judging them good or bad. It’s like watching a sport you’ve never seen before; You are just observing without having any attachment to the teams. When you’re practicing mindfulness you are aware of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations happening within your mind and body.

In mindfulness we use the breath to be the focus point. You inhale focusing on the cool air flowing into your nostrils, filling your lungs, and expanding your stomach. You exhale the warm air by focusing on your stomach collapsing, and the warm air exhaling from your mouth. This simple exercise helps us to stay in the present. When a thought or feeling enters our mind, we acknowledge it. It’s there, but we don’t attach any good or bad judgements. When you are practicing mindfulness you’ll probably get anxious, instead of thinking “why am I always anxious?!”, we can knowledge it and say “well there’s that anxiety again!” focus on the sensations that anxiety brings, and draw our attention back to our breathing. Our breathing brings us back to the present. When practicing mindfulness you might feel that you’re being trolled by your mind. All these crazy thoughts start creating a roller coaster in your head. Our instinct is to judge every thought in our minds as either good or bad. Thoughts are thoughts and don’t hold meaning until we give it meaning. When we think, we are just thinking. We don’t need to assign judgements to our thoughts when we are practicing mindfulness. Instead of becoming frustrated with ourselves, we can be aware that we are having wild thoughts, and go back to focusing on our breathing. You might be thinking “man that sounds pretty hard!” It can be challenging, but that’s why it’s called a practice.

This course will teach you basic mindfulness techniques and exercises you can implement in your daily work and personal life.

Below are some mindfulness breathing practices you can start using today for a more aware and quiet mind.

Warrior Breathing Excerises:

Life Force Breathing Exercise

Purpose: to relieve stress, anxiety, and anger.

Start by sitting up straight in a quiet place or outdoors.
You can close your eyes or leave them open.
Imagine that you are sitting inside a blue circle.
The blue substance inside the circle is the life force and see it swirling and pulsing around you.
Take a deep breathe in.
When you inhale imagine you’re inhaling some of the life force pulsing around you.
Let the life force flow within your body, into every organ, and every cell.
Hold the breathe in for a few seconds and let the life force soak up all the anxiety, anger, resentment, doubts, worries, guilt, shame you harbor inside.
Exhale and let those emotions flow back into the life force circle and watch them disappear.
Feel yourself becoming lighter, freer, and calmer.

Do this 5-10 times with each inhale and exhale being one breath. Do this exercise whenever you are experiencing anxiety, stress, and/or anger.

The Cabin

Start by sitting up in a quiet place.
Relax.
Close your eyes.
Breathe in deep through your nostrils
Focus on the sensation of the cool air passing through your nostrils
Focus on your lungs expanding bringing the fresh air to every cell in your body
After a moment exhale the warm air from your mouth, releasing all the stress, anxiety, anger, regret that was stored within your body

Imagine you are sitting inside a small wooden cabin inside of a deep winter forest.
The cabin has a small bed, kitchen, and couch
There are two small windows that allows natural light to shine in
Through the windows you can see it is snowing heavily
You are sitting in front of a roaring fire in the fire place
You are warm and safe
You hear the crackling of the woods as the fire burns
You hear the wind of the snowstorm rustle the evergreens surrounding the cabin
The fire warms your body
You have no distractions, no worries
It’s only you, the cabin, and nature together all in harmony
You take a deep breathe in smelling the burning wood of the fire, the oak from the wood of the cabin, and the evergreens outside the cabin
The aroma grounds you
It enters every cell of your body and breathes life
It soaks up your fears
You exhale your fear into the atmosphere
The fire has burned it away
The winds has carried it away
Slowly bring yourself back into the present.
Open your eyes when ready.