Mindfulness Practices for Mental Health

What is Mindfulness ?

Mindfulness is a type of meditation which brings your awareness to your present thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations without judgment. Mindfulness can help you experience thoughts and emotions as if you were a mere observer.

Mindfulness Benefits

Mindfulness can: help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, , improve sleep, and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties.

Mindfulness improves mental health including: depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, couples’ conflicts, anxiety disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Benefits of Mindfulness

9 Attitudes of Mindfulness according to Jon Kabat-Zinn

1. Mindful Attitudes of Non-Judging: Mindfulness is cultivated by assuming the stance of an impartial witness to your own experience.

2. Mindful Attitudes of Patience: Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.

3. Mindful Attitudes of Beginners Mind: To see the richness of the present moment, we need to cultivate what has been called a “beginner’s mind,” a mind that is willing to see everything as if for the first time.

4. Mindful Attitudes of Trust: Developing a basic trust in yourself and your feelings is an integral part of meditation training.

5. Mindful Attitudes of Non-Striving: Almost everything we do is for a purpose, to get something or somewhere. Meditation is non-doing.

6. Mindful Attitudes of Acceptance: Acceptance means seeing things as they actually are in the present.

7. Mindful Attitudes of Letting Go: We tend to hold on to certain thoughts. Cultivating the attitude of letting go, or non-attachment is fundamental to the practice of attitudes for mindfulness

8. Mindful Attitudes of Gratitude : So if you increase your positive thoughts, like gratitude, you can increase your emotional and physical sense of well-being.

9. Mindful Attitudes of Generosity: Practice being generous with the feeling of being deserving yourself.

Mindfulness Exercises for Beginners

1. Two Minute Mindful Breathing -

2. The Basic Body Scan Meditation -

3. Three Mindful Breaths -

4. Mindful Walking Meditation -

5. A Gratitude Meditation -

6. The Mindful Eating Exercise -

7. A Guided Mindfulness Exercise for Anxiety, Stress, and Sleep -

8. Mindful Listening Practice -