Skill Exercise: Mindful Breathing
Skill Sheet: Detached Mindfulness
What is Mindfulness?
- Meditation skills that are utilized in spiritual, medical and wellness settings
- Useful in reducing symptoms of emotional distress, chronic pain, addiction
- Key to experiencing compassion, connection and empathy
- Snapshot of what exactly is happening at a precise moment outside of what happened in the past or what will happen in the future
- Awareness of sensations
- Noticing without judging (good or bad) yourself, the circumstances, or other people
- Time never stands still and every second is unique
- Allows us to move past good or bad thoughts that do not serve us and to see situations with fresh perspective
Mindlessness
- The opposite of mindfulness
- When our mind is thinking about something else or many different things
- Being far more critical of ourselves than we would ever be of another person
- Thoughts that we have all responsibility for something and that we must go it alone
- Distraction, disorganization, doing one thing while thinking of another, lost in thought
- Jumping to conclusions without having evidence or not considering it
- Lacking awareness of details…failing to notice conversation, surroundings, sounds, smells, colors or textures
How Can We Move Into Mindfulness?
- Focus with intensity on 1-3 physical objects that are right where you are
- Eye Movement
- Mindful Breathing that allows you to focus on your breath
- Engage in a mindfulness skill such as counting backwards from 10,000.