Turning Mindfulness From a Chore into Practise
If kale is the latest super food to nutrition then mindfulness is the equivalent to stress management. There is compelling evidence of the myriad of benefits to this archaic practise of turning your attention to the present moment. Like all skills if you don’t put in the practise, then it won’t deliver on all its promises to alleviate anxiety, improve relationships and cultivate positive emotions.
If there is one place you want to bring your calmest self, it is parenting. It makes sense that learning to focus on being more fully present would sharpen your observation skills of what exactly is happening between you and your child, at any given moment. Being mindful means you are able to observe your judgements as they arise and at the same time be more tuned in to what is happening for your child. It is easy to fall into auto pilot or react from past experiences (perhaps from how you were raised).
The motivation to give mindfulness a go is studies such as Meppelink (2016) who found that parents who were linked with a mental health service due to the stress of parenting a child with a mental health issue were found to experience a significant reduction in parenting stress and lowered mental health pathology indirectly after they attended 8 weekly mindfulness sessions along with daily practise.
If sitting still with your breath makes you want to run for the hills, then keep reading as there are lots of informal ways to practise.
You can literally turn any activity into a mindful practise by several anchor points. Notice the sensations of eating, showering, playing, lying in bed, you name it and all it takes is considering what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Pair it with taking a couple of deep breaths from your belly and your practising mindfulness!
Mindfulness is like a muscle , each time you practise you strengthen the connections to your top brain (rational thinking)and shrink the fight or flight response (bottom brain), that is a great for when you are really in danger but it is otherwise sending you off on wild goose chase.
