Mindfulness
Learning to be mindful takes practice
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Mindfulness can be practiced in any situation and can be formal (e.g., seated mindful breathing practice) or informal (e.g., mindful eating, or mindful practice while brushing your teeth). If you are new to mindfulness, it can be helpful to start by listening to a guided recording and following along. For that reason, we’ve provided four recordings here to support your new mindfulness practice:
- Mindful Movement
- Mountain Meditation
- Observing Physical Sensations
- Sorting
We recommend you try out each one. They can all be used as part of a regular practice, but you might like one of them more than the others – that’s ok! Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you going:
Steps for mindfulness practice
- Choose the mindfulness recording that you want to practice along with today from the options below.
- Select the recording from the ‘Mindfulness practice’ drop down list in the blue box.
- Get into a comfortable position, gently close your eyes, press play, listen, and follow along with the recording. Thoughts may come and go. Let them. If you get carried away by a thought, take note of it, be thankful that you noticed, and return to following along with the recording.
- When you’ve finished the practice, take a note of how long you’ve been listening to the recording and practicing mindfulness. The time will be shown next to the play button of the recording that you listened to. If you’ve listened to multiple recordings, or the same recording more than once, add up the minutes for a total time. If you find it challenging to listen to a whole recording to start with, that’s fine – you may want to set a time limit for yourself, starting with a 5-minute practice. As you practice more, you can gradually extend the time to 20 minutes or more.
- Select the time duration from the ‘Duration of practice’ drop-down list in the blue box.
- If, during the practice, you notice anything that seems important to you, including thoughts or feelings, make a note of them in the “Notable occurrences’ box.
- Finally, press on ‘log your activity’. This will save a record of your practice and your notes so you can look back and see how often you’ve been practicing mindfulness. You will be able to see the details of the recording you listened to, how long you listened to it, and any notes you took when you click on the date of the practice in the list below. You will also see a check mark for each day you practice on the calendar at the bottom of this page. This is an easy way to see how regularly you are practicing mindfulness.
We hope you enjoy practicing being mindful!