Mindfulness can be defined as being fully present in the moment, experiencing what is with a curiosity and without judgment or pre-conception.
Perception is experiencing a part of what is, that part that is regarded as important in the moment. Seeing through the lens of expectations from the past, rather than with the wide-eyed innocence of a child.
Expanding one's experience
By training your mind to be more mindful, you can learn to see more of what is. To expand on your experience. Begining afresh, the act of being mindful involves redirecting attention in a way that looks to perceive more of what is. It means giving the time to be fully present and directing all one's senses to what is.
The exercises we use encourage you to both experience and practice mindfulness in a wide variety of setting, helping you to discover and immerse yourself in the sensations of being mindful.
As a result you will experience the pure pleasure that can result, the wonder and the inspiration. But rather than explaining we encourage you to try, and then to reflect together with us.
This hopefully will ignite the desire to build on the practice, and strengthen the abilityto use it in different moments of your life.
The raisin exercise
Possibly one of the best known mindfulness exercises, this is a simple exercise that, by using a food allows you to include the sense of taste in your exploration. This is useful and you will notice how it is part of how children naturally explore their world. Watch as they spontaneously place so much in their mouths, much to the horror of their parents and quite often to other spectators. But try this exercise and we can reflect later why it is actually just part of being mindful.
This is just one way of practicing mindfulness, and an opportunity to experience the practice itself. Allowing the raisin to become the focal point, you can fully experience it in the moment.
Listening to how your body responds, you will notice how your senses bring attention to the raisin, and how to non judgementally consider various parts of the experience.
If you are looking to manage your weight you will also begin to consider non judgementally how the food makes you feel. Whether it satisfies your hunger or not. Perhaps whether you were even hungry in the first instance. You can even begin to mindfully consider how it feeds your needs, both physical and emotional.
But it is of course not just eating where we need to be more mindful, and where mindfulness can benefit us. In fact mindfulness is useful in everything from stress management and life pleasure to problem solving. So let's take a look at some of the other mindfulness practices.
Discover Simple, accessible, meaningful practices.
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