Great for the holiday season, winter vacation, and all year round.
Purpose: Developing and nurturing a personal mindfulness practice can be fun, empowering, enlightening, grounding, healthy, and calming.
Your goal over winter break is to practice a little each day.
Remember don’t strive for perfection only progress. And there is no one right way to do this. Just do it and see what arises and shifts for you.
To Do:
1. Make a short journal entry after each practice. Include date, time, and which practice you engaged in.
2. You may select any type of mindfulness practice from the list and any other mindful meditation practice you would like to try or already practice.
Menu of Mindful Meditation Practice Suggestions.
Breath Practice-notice the natural rise and fall of the breath, count the breath cycle, slow inhale-slower exhale, box breathing.
Super Senses-Eyes open or closed. 4 things you can see, feel, hear, smell.
Body Scan-Sitting or laying down scan your body from the top of your head to your toes. With non-judgment notice where you feel muscle tightness or soreness. Breath into those places while releasing the tension as you scan.
Loving Kindness Meditation-Bring to mind a person who is easy to love, one who is neutral, a difficult person, and yourself. Think of each of these people one at a time as you offer the following phrases to teach one.
As you do so imagine them happy and smiling. Try not to think about what may annoy you about them. And try to genuinely cultivate compassion and non-judgement towards them.
Phrases:
May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. Nay you live with ease.
Mindful: eating, walking, brushing your teeth, driving, phone use, communicating, basically anything.
This just means to REALLY focus your attention on what you are doing while truly noticing everything you can about it. Example-Mindfully washing the dishes by hand. Even if you don’t hand wash dishes, imagine feeling the temperature of the water, the smell and slipperiness of the soap, the texture of the plate, the sponge, the smell etc.
It is weird and cool how doing this will CALM YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM, lower stress, anxiety, and reset yourself. And that’s the point.
Be curious, experiment, and have fun with this.