Beginners guide to mindfulness
“Peace makes you strong, hate reveals your emptiness, kindness feeds your happiness, anger reveals your fear, love makes you free”
Mindfulness is essentially focused awareness on the present moment. When you are just getting started with mindfulness you will be learning how to practice intentionally focusing your awareness. It can be applied to any act. In the context of holistic wellness + mental health it is typically about breath awareness, thought awareness, and body awareness. The basic mindfulness practices of breath/thought/body awareness have been proven to improve mood, decrease pain, and reduce stress.
Usually, a beginning mindfulness practice starts with focusing awareness on breath. Keeping your focus there will give you a lot of information about your thoughts. Usually, your mind will want to push forward, take up space, and be the center of your awareness. You may observe that your thoughts are active to the point of distraction, and the mental chatter is difficult to quiet down. Try be to be patient with this first awareness, and trust that in time, the ‘monkey mind’ will calm down.
Changing the Brain
“Our brain connects and regulates our bodily functions through the spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and an information superhighway known as the vagus nerve”
The brain’s physical structure and the body’s biological processes can change in response to breath awareness + intentional thought. Neuroscience has proven that thoughts have a direct effect on physical experience. It is now known that new neural pathways are formed when a person focuses the mind, and connects that awareness to the physical sensation of intentional breath. This means we can directly affect depression, anxiety, pain and stress.
So what does this mean for old mindsets and maladaptive coping mechanisms?
Yes, they can also change.
2 Beginning tools
It all begins with the breath when first learning mindfulness. Shallow and short breathing patterns signals the sympathetic nervous system into stress response, which over time leads to less control of stress levels. Deep diaphragmatic breathing activates the vagus nerve and stimulates the relaxation reflex. Through practicing breath awareness you can learn how to change your breath pattern which can help you deactivate the stress response cycle. Remember to be gentle with yourself as you get started. Remind yourself that you are learning a new skill, and just like all the other times you have learned something new it takes practice.
Belly breath
lie on your back and place a hand on your stomach and a hand on your upper chest.
If you have been holding your stomach in invite it to release and let go. Allow the belly to soften.
Take a normal breath in. Notice which hand is moving. If your top hand moves you are breathing into your chest, and if your bottom hand moves you are breathing into your belly.
On the next breath invite your inhale to fill your lungs and as you do this let your belly expand, soften, relax. This will cause the breath to move past the hand on your chest without lifting it. As the inhale fills the lungs the belly expands lifting the hand that is resting there.
Relaxing Breath
Inhale through your nose counting to 4:
I am breathing in-2-3-4.
pause
Exhaling through the mouth counting to 8:
I am breathing out-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
pause
Repeat the breath cycle 2 more times. On the next round try inviting in the awareness of expanding as you inhale and lengthening as you exhale. Then, check in with yourself. What do you notice? Try to practice this breath awareness several times a day. Remember, this is your new tool for deactivating the stress response cycle. Try intentionally using it if you are about to interact with something or someone that typically triggers anxiousness or stress.
authored by: Mary Mccrystal, PhD, LMFT
