Saturday, February 21, 2015

CREATING A SPACE FOR MINDFUL MOMENTS

CREATING A SPACE FOR MINDFUL MOMENTS

In the busyness of life we often face anxiety, depression, deadlines, and every kind of stress.  Stress happens because the mind has overtaken the act of living and has been bombarding us with constant fear stories.  Not realizing that the mind has taken control of living our life, we focus our emotions on all the fear stories the mind feeds us.  This has made us lose trust in ourselves, our fellow beings and life in general.  Trust is the root and support of life; when we have lost trust, we tend to wander hopelessly, trapped in our problems, stressed by constant thoughts of fear and overwhelmed by anxieties.

Mindfulness is the art of connecting with the present moment. Observing our thoughts, feelings, and sensations we become aware of them and are able to manage them better.

Our emotions have power, they are creative energy, mindlessly investing our emotions on fear thoughts we lose our power.  We need our power to make right decisions in life, to live from the place of wisdom. The mind does not know the present moment, it can only store data about the past and create fear stories of the future. The past and the future are stories of the mind they are not present in the here and now.  Whereas life is the present moment, the here and the now.  It is time we practice to live in the present moment which is our place of power.

Mindfulness helps us to stop the fear stories of the mind and live our lives from the place of peace and wisdom.

One of the simplest techniques of mindfulness that I have come to love is sitting quietly and observing wandering thoughts as they drift through the mind, here the intention is not to get involved with the thoughts or to judge them.  Just by being aware of the thoughts, the thoughts dissolve and vanish.  We become a witness of the thoughts, the moment there is a witness the thoughts just vanish.  As we practice witnessing we come to realize that thoughts are simply mental dramas that do not have to control us.

Mindfulness can also be practices while doing simple day to day activities, like walking, eating , washing dishes, cooking etc.  Consciously focusing on every moment of the activity and fully participating in the feeling brings greater harmony, peace, and fulfillment.

For example while walking, taking time to mindfully notice how the feet touch the ground and move one after the other, noticing the swing of the arms,  mindfully noticing helps one to be in the moment, with no chatter in the mind. This surprisingly makes us more alert to everything around us.  We slow down and we enjoy the mindful noticing.  The noticing brings healing and awakening to the cells of the feet and strengthens our connection to the Earth.

In my experience I have also noticed that mindfulness brings healing from pain.  For example if I have pain in my feet, I do not reach out for painkillers, instead I reach out to my feet, I sit quietly for sometime, touch my feet lovingly and connect mentally with the pain and just be there with the pain.  My being there consciously with the pain surprisingly helps the pain to dissolve, sometimes messages, insights are given to manage the pain in a better way.

Let us choose to create a space for  mindfulness in our busyness, in order to give ourselves the grand gift of stress free lives.
Blessings!
Premlatha Rajkumar
 © 2015 P Rajkumar

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