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Mental Health
Modern mindfulness
Mindful: Samantha Flook
to ourselves, in times of change, reaction or discomfort, and connect with that slow, deep, grounding breath of breathing in for four seconds, holding for two seconds and out for four seconds. This helps to create presence, and an association to focus back within the moment and to a choice of what I can do and what I can choose.
Remind us
Simple things remind us of all of the feelings we are capable of experiencing. We can go about our days doing much of the same thing, and feel as if we aren’t experiencing anything new, which is where we can feel stuck, directionless and overwhelmed. It is not our external experiences that ultimately change our experiences for us, it is our choice to do differently, to experience differently.
It is that choice to stop and observe a flower on your walk, to sit and observe the colours and completely taste every texture and flavour of your meal, to feel the sun on your face when you step outside, or to stop and listen intently to the words another is expressing to you.
Each day you have the opportunity to
see yourself and your experiences in a new light and perspective. To get started I have included one of my favourite mindful tasks below; mindfulness of body awareness. Our body is a two-way street: what happens
in our body has a significant effect on our mind, and what happens in our mind has a significant impact on our body. Being able
to react towards our sensations without judgment will help us build awareness around unpleasant situations, clearing our minds for more in-depth exploration. We must embrace our curiosity towards what these sensory reactions are, what they mean, and question why we have never honestly thought about them in this way, which
helps to alleviate stress and anxiety. 21
Man Anchor facilitator Samantha Flook says there are simple techniques we can all implement to ensure we do not become
verwhelmed by the stresses of daily business life.
oAs we learn to navigate and adapt to immense amounts of change, responsibility and isolation, it is in the times where we have
We must remember that we play the most important part in our experiences, and that we are technically only doing something, until we are not. For example I am only worrying or comparing until I am not. What am I doing when I am worrying and comparing, what am I doing when I am not?
For a pattern to continue it has to be validated with the same choice or response, to put it simply, when we do the same, we experience and receive the same, so when we learn to create little pauses in the times we find ourselves the most overwhelmed
or reactive, we create the space to offer ourselves a new, different, more supportive response and choice forward.
Simple explanation
A simple explanation of mindfulness that I give to clients is “Non-judgemental attention to everyday experiences.” Over time, we develop associations, beliefs, labels and meanings
to things in our lives and that includes our feelings. Mindfulness helps to grow our awareness with a more curious and observant approach, learning to remove attachment and judgement, to instead create separation between ourselves and our thoughts and feelings, as if seeing and viewing them for the first time. This helps us to sit with, feel and experience a vast array of feelings and emotions, as is the human experience.
We must remember that no emotion is good or bad, right or wrong, simply signs and signals guiding us to listen and support us to grow and evolve, when we have the strategies in place to effectively decide what thoughts and feelings are worth listening to and engaging with and which ones aren’t.
When we are in a fear or stress response, we are usually trying to control what we can’t, which limits us from making a self-respecting choice in the moment. A start for me with clients is to begin with mindful breathing. We have to create a base to learn to come back
to sit with ourselves when we can find ourselves going into the what ifs,
ruminating on past experiences, and often drifting far away from our present.
As human beings we spend an immense amount of time trying to avoid discomfort, change or that which might cause us
hurt, pain or rejection, but what we must remember is that most of what we think and believe to be true, isn’t always, and is usually a reflection of a past experience.
In essence, we either have really good evidence to back what we are thinking or feeling, or we are just feeling lack within ourselves, so go searching for information to back our judgements, making what we think and feel to be true, to make the discomfort of the unknown a little more comfortable.
So, the questions of how do I actually determine whether this thought or feeling is valid or true or not in essence becomes how do I come to the conclusions that I do?.
When we learn to make more compassionate, open and supportive responses to our thoughts and feelings, this is where we can find ourselves experiencing a completely new way of viewing ourselves and our experiences.
Do differently
When we begin to do differently, we see and experience differently and often surprise ourselves about how truly capable we are and to do this, we need to learn to start simply and make our toolkit realistic.
Mindfulness is more than just being present, it offers a realistic starting point, to interrupt unhelpful patterns and behaviours that lead us to over-think, compare, judge, criticise ourselves, and the painful list goes on.
Mindful Task: Tap-in for mindfulness of body awareness
First: Come back to taking your deep inhales and exhales, in for four seconds, hold for two, out for four.
Tune in: To the part of the body where you are feeling the emotion, choose
to observe it without attachment or judgement, just curiosity.
Ask & accept: Ask yourself what you are feeling, but instead of “I am” turn that
into “I am aware that I am feeling”. The aim is to dis-identify from our feelings, and choose to observe them as if we
were watching TV, as external to us, something that comes and goes.
Prepare: By breathing in deeply, with intention again into that part of the body Investigate: Further compartmentalising, get curious about where this emotion
responded from; ask “Is this emotion present to me now or is it a response to a thought from the past or a reaction to a thought from the future.”
Negotiate: Create a supportive step forward from this feeling, coming back to asking what next step will respect my needs moving forward, and turn that what if, into a what can I do?
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