Mindfulness in Daily Life Activities

Debra Kowalczyk, MA, LCPC

The use of mindfulness can be incredibly helpful in decreasing symptoms of anxiety and depression, including spinning or ruminative thoughts, and is not difficult to access in your daily life activities. This article will look at simple ways you can perform mindfulness, or become more present and peaceful, on a regular basis without great inconvenience or difficulty. Mindfulness activities can help reduce the levels of cortisol in your brain. High levels of cortisol produce troubling feelings of agitation, nervousness and even low mood. Reduced cortisol levels through mindfulness means restored peacefulness and emotional regulation.

Probably the simplest way to become more mindful every day is to tune into any of your five senses in a number of different ways. A practice known as Grounding 3-2-1 can be useful to guide you through this exercise: After a deep cleansing diaphragm breath, close your eyes and listen closely for 3 things you can hear. Then open your eyes and name two things in your immediate environment that you can see. Finally, touch one thing you can reach, such as your chair or a table, or put your feet on the floor so that you are in “touch” with your immediate surroundings. Purposefully using your senses in this way can help you to become more aware of what is actually gong on right now, drawing you into the present and away from the past or the future where your thoughts can take on a life of their own, often landing in worst case scenario thinking.

Here are a few more ideas. While eating a meal, pay specific attention to every bite, and allow your senses to become very aware of what is in front of you. Pay attention to the smells of the food, and allow the appearance, colors, flavors and textures of the meal bring you back into the present moment. Or take a mindfulness walk, where again the senses can guide you towards great enjoyment of nature and the world around you. Rather than find yourself lost in your thoughts wondering how you got through your walk, look around and identify interesting things on or near your path: listen for bird calls, the sound of water, or the sound of your feet on the pathway, pay attention to smells of the seasons, and pick up and touch items of interest like leaves, stones, shells, or pine cones and feel their textures on your fingertips. You will be surprised at how relaxed and centered you may feel at the end of a walk like this.

Today, there are a number of helpful apps that provide short or longer guided meditations to help with mindfulness. Many are just five minutes long and can be used for settling the nervous system in the middle of the day during a lunch period or at the end of a work day. Insight Timer, Calm or Headspace, to name a few, provide general meditation training classes, or specific meditations for issues like anxiety, panic, building self esteem, and becoming more self compassionate through loving kindness practice. Some even provide sleep music, which resets the brain waves from daytime active alpha waves to deep sleep delta waves. This sleep music can be played to fall asleep but also upon reawakening, to return to sleep more quickly.

Lastly, another helpful mindfulness practice to manage uncomfortable thoughts or feelings is loosely known as “sitting with” your thoughts or feelings. This can be accomplished with a “Three Minute Breathing Space.” (The Mindful Way Through Depression by Williams, Teasdale, Segal & Kabat-Zin.) For this practice, sit or stand in an alert manner, close your eyes and bring your attention to your inner experience and ask yourself what you are noticing right now, including the thoughts going through your mind, the emotions in your awareness, and any bodily sensations you are feeling in the moment. Acknowledge without judgment what you are feeling, even if an unpleasant thought or emotion, or uncomfortable or tense body sensation. Next, bring your attention to your breath. Follow your breath in and out, noticing the sensations in the body. Then begin to expand your awareness to your entire body as a whole. If you become aware of feelings of discomfort or tension, begin to breathe into these areas. You might say to yourself, “It’s OK…whatever it is, it is already here, let me feel it.” (Williams, et all) Embrace the thoughts, emotions and sensations without negative judgment of yourself. Observe the sensations as you continue to breathe into them.

Just this new nonjudgmental relationship to what is happening within yourself in the here and now can transform the whole experience into something fresh or new. You may learn that you can tolerate the discomfort, or that the discomfort dissipates as you breathe into the space. You may even gain an understanding that you are not your thoughts or your sensations, but something more or different than that. A new sense of peacefulness is likely to occur as you gain these insights.

Try any of these mindfulness activities to quiet your anxious or agitated brain. Feel free to contact any of our counselors for more information or assistance in learning how to apply these techniques in your life. The techniques in this article are not meant to be a substitute for medical care. Please contact your physician for severe symptoms of anxiety, depression or other mental health issues.