• When you are eating, do you really notice that you are eating?
• When you are boiling the kettle, are you simply waiting for it to boil or are you doing 10 other jobs?
• When driving, are you concentrating on the driving, the radio or your shopping list?
• Having read an article in the paper, do you remember the details or have you forgotten them because your mind was elsewhere?
• Do you plan your shopping list when you are talking to someone that you consider boring?
• What happens when you sit and listen to nature? Do you suddenly think of all the things that you “should” be doing?

You can learn the art of Mindfulness by participating in an 8 week Mindfulness course. See Courses for details.

Try the following:
 
PAUSE

Pausing helps to interrupt movement – mental (thoughts), physical (the body) and emotional. It helps us to step out of our automatic rushing forward.

Pausing helps to stop the urge to be “doing” and allows us to drop into the place of “being”.
It allows us to really meet experience, not through how we think things are, but through experiencing what is actually happening. Pausing is the space that can be created in the midst of turmoil. It takes a huge effort and a lot of energy to stop the momentum of a large objectrolling down a hill, so too, it takes a lot of effort to stop the habitual forward push of mind habits. It takes energy to steer ourselves out of deeply worn ruts – mental, physical and emotional.

Pausing is not about time, it is about Mindfulness. When taking the time to pause, many things may be revealed to us – joy, happiness, sorrow, anger peace, gratitude, compassion and more.

RELAX

Relax is an invitation to calm down, to notice the stress and tension that are present, and to choose ease.
Relax is a chance to notice what is tense and to soften and open to the tension, the holding, the discomfort. Observe the possibility of accepting your experience in this moment.
Simply allowing things to be as they are, adding nothing extra, just letting go into this moment, no grasping, no backing away, no clinging - simply staying in this unfolding moment.
Relax invites us to release habitual thoughts and to relax tense muscles.
When we meet our experience with acceptance, strong emotions and thoughts loose their power as they are not acted upon out of reflex.

To learn more techniques for letting go of tension, for recognising how the body and mind are at any given moment, consider participating in an 8 week Mindfulness course. See Courses for details of the curriculum covered in a course.