Tuesday 21 January 2014

Another mindful moment

More as a reminder to myself than anything. Recently I have noticed anxiety creeping back into my life. And I'm not having it. So I need to get back into the positive mindful habits that I've let slide because my mood has been kinda low (anxiety decreases, mood drops, mood improves, anxiety increases... go figure lol).

Anyway, with this in mind I figured I'd choose a really simple one. It involves breathing. And most of us do that already, so:
- as always, sitin a comfortable position away from distractions
- close your eyes or let them settle without focusing on anything
- draw your attention to your breathing, you don't need to change it (though actually it's surprisingly hard not to!)
- start to count your breathes in 1, out 2, in 3 etc.
- when you get to ten stop and start again at one
- if you notice your attention has drifted and you've either stopped counting or have counted too high, don't worry just bring your attention gently back as soon as you realise
- after whatever period of time feels comfortable return to just feeling the sensations of breathing again before focusing back in on the world around you and opening your eyes

I'll be honest I can't remember where I heard this one. It may have been therapy or online or on one of the team billion different apps I've tried. So sorry I can't credit it to anyone.

There are several breathing based exercises, I like them because you can do them anywhere easily and subtly. This is nice if you want to use them to calm down outside of a specific meditation type session.
Similarly one of the simplest and most helpful technique I've been taught for those situations is 4-6 breathing. The name pretty much says it all; count to four as you breathe in, pause, count to six as you breathe out, pause, repeat.

Maybe I'll start posting these more often to prompt myself. If I do i'll try to include some different styles. I tend to stick more to observation type ones and steer away from visualisation and body scans and such. For no other reason than I get on better with that style, everyone is different.

In nail news, today I wore lemming polish perfect purple which came from the same mystery bag as moody blues. It's also scruffy looking because I'd worn it all day before I remembered to take pics lol. X

Ps. Yea my right hand was less battered than my left... But I struggle to take photos of it lol.

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