How to practice mindfulness with five different exercises
Mindfulness is a state of being focusing on sensory awareness and the present moment. It can involve meditation, sensory focus, or breathing exercises. With mindfulness, you may achieve a state of calm and concentration by training your attention and practicing acceptance. Several studies have noted the physical and mental health benefits of this practice.
By learning how to use mindfulness, you can improve your breathing techniques, relaxation methods, mood, and focus. Beyond mindfulness meditation, you can try many different mindfulness techniques, and they may differ from what you perceive the practice to be.
How to practice different mindfulness techniques
Mindfulness can involve purposeful attention to thoughts, feelings, or bodily sensations that occur in the present moment in a non-judgmental way. It has roots in Eastern Buddhist practices. However, Western culture has borrowed and modified the practice by removing specific spiritual tenets.
In the 1970s, mindfulness became a tool for psychologists to use as a therapeutic intervention for managing symptoms like stress, anxiety, depression, or worry. This therapy practice is referred to as mindfulness-based intervention and is effective in alleviating intense emotional states. If you are living with stress and anxiety and are looking for techniques for coping, the following exercises introduce ways to practice purposeful attention each day.
Mindfulness in music
You can use music to practice mindfulness by paying close attention to your sensory input when creating it or listening to it. Musicians practice mindfulness when practicing or performing due to the intensity of concentration it takes to produce music. Listening to music with this same focus can refine your ability to pay attention to the present moment purposefully.
As a specific exercise, consider choosing an instrumental song. Listen closely and focus on the different elements that make up the track. For example, you can pick apart the different instruments you hear, such as drums, guitars, banjo, keyboards, or string instruments. You may listen to the same song multiple times and pick a different element of the song to focus on.
On the first listen, you might notice the drums. On the second, you could focus on the bass or piano. You can concentrate on one instrument and tune out all the others. When you practice mindfulness while listening to music, it can enhance your senses. You may also be developing fine attention to detail and improving your focus.
Organization as mindfulness
Mindfulness exercises can involve practical life tasks like organizing and cleaning your work or home environment. Regardless of your style, organizing can be a form of mindfulness. For example, perhaps your office is in complete disorder. The following is a mindfulness-based technique you may use to organize the space:
- Observe: Observe the state of a surface in your office. Mindfully take note of each object sitting on it. Stay in the moment and notice the shapes and colors of the items in the space. Don't focus on organizing. Remember to take a deep breath when you feel the urge to hurry.
- Imagine: Close your eyes and imagine what you would like your desk to look like. Take several deep breaths in and out. Once you have a clear picture of your ideal workplace, open your eyes.
- Touch: As you go through your desk's contents, look at each item mindfully. You can carefully observe each item and place it into two sections labeled "Keep" and "Throw away."
- Organize: Once you have the pile of items you are keeping, organize where you want to put them. It can be helpful to put the paperwork in various file folders that are clearly labeled.
- Let Go: Throw or give away the items you are not keeping. Letting go of items you are not using is a type of cleansing exercise you can relate to, allowing extraneous thoughts or feelings to flow through your mind.
Cleaning up can be stressful for many people and may seem mundane or boring. With mindfulness, you can calmly organize the space around you and refine your ability to be present at the moment while completing an essential task.
Mindfulness during meetings at work
Whether you are meeting with your colleagues in person or through video chat, incorporating mindfulness into your meeting may be a fun challenge. Active listening, sometimes called mindful listening, can be one form of mindfulness that benefits you when talking to others.
Try practicing active listening by observing interactions at work. For example, when you are at a work conference, observe the voices you hear. During discussions, you may notice that many people have the chance to express their opinions. You can engage in mindfulness by listening to the different intonations and inflections in each participant's voice.
Other ways to practice mindful listening may involve focusing on the words you hear without judging them. Take a step back before reacting and emphasize the importance of the pause. Pausing can allow you to perceive another person's point of view before judging or reacting. If someone says something that seems offensive or makes you want to respond, you might have the impulse to offer your opinion quickly.
Take a moment to stop and breathe as a part of your mindfulness practice. Remind yourself that you can respond when you have gathered your thoughts. You do not have to react; instead, take time to say what you want mindfully. After taking a moment to manage your emotions, you may feel better able to communicate clearly.
Mindfulness during exercise
Physical exercise is another place to implement mindfulness practice into your life. Whether biking, walking, on a treadmill, or doing yoga, you can try mindfulness. The following are several ways to integrate your mindfulness practice into your workout.
Set a goal
Mindfulness may help you focus on your exercise goals and increase your confidence. You may feel more comfortable structuring your workout when you have a clear objective. For example, perhaps you choose to run for 30 minutes. Once you set your objective, you can decide what purposefully focused mental exercises you want to combine with the workout.
Focus on your breath
Physical exercise can be challenging. Try to focus on your breath to stay on target and circulate oxygen. When you practice mindful breathing, it calms your body and mind. Mindful breathing exercises can help you gain the mental strength to keep working toward your goal, even when you feel you want to stop.
Observe your environment
Many people take part in nature hikes as part of their exercise routine. In these circumstances, observing the sights, sounds, and smells around you can make your workout more fun. It may allow you to engage your senses and see parts of your environment you may have overlooked before. After your walk, you can also practice mindfulness meditation on the ground. Studies show that being in nature has mental and physical health benefits, so you can take advantage of being outside to practice your mindfulness exercises for the week.
Pay attention to your thoughts
Acceptance
Another principle of mindfulness is acceptance of yourself, your environment, and reality. Whatever you think or feel, it may be real to you. Mindfulness exercises can help you embrace yourself. During your workout, you may have tension or pain in your muscles. You can accept that. If you need to take a break from your exercise routine, accept your need for a break. Accepting yourself may empower you and give you the confidence to better your physical health at your own pace.
Self-compassion during meditation
Other short mindfulness exercises can help you throughout the day. Practicing self-compassion is one way to help yourself work through times of self-criticism, perfectionism, or shame. When you are in a negative mindset, you may be more critical of yourself, including how you look or think. Harsh self-criticism can perpetuate negative thinking patterns. Taking time out of your day to practice mindfulness and self-compassion can help you manage these thoughts. Below is a common self-compassion practice you can try when going through life's difficult moments:
Imagine a situation in your life that is stressful. Try to feel the emotions and uncomfortable sensations in your mind and body when you think of it. Once you envision the situation, tell yourself:
- This is a moment of pain.
- Emotional pain is often a part of life.
- May I be kind to myself?
After you say these phrases to yourself, place your hands over your heart and feel the warmth on your chest. After you connect your hands to your heart, ask yourself:
"What do I need to hear right now to express kindness to myself?" Then say, "May I give myself the compassion I need." Another mantra you can repeat is, "Even though I'm experiencing pain, I love and accept myself as I am."
Does mindfulness have to be complex?
Mindfulness meditation does not have to be complicated. You can integrate many exercises into your daily life and partake in mindfulness for a few minutes each day. For example, consider taking a minute during your workday to stretch, yawn, and take three deep mindful breaths. This short practice can count toward your meditation routine. Mindfulness can be added to many daily activities if your intentions are in a place of mindfulness.
Counseling options
If you are experiencing anxiety, stress, or other symptoms that are interrupting your routine, or you'd like to learn more about managing these symptoms, consider making an appointment with a professional therapist. Mindfulness and meditation are interconnected, and you can learn their value in counseling. When you connect with your therapist, you can work together on strategies to help you stay in the moment and practice non-judgment.
If you can't fit an in-person appointment into your schedule for any reason, you might also benefit from online therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of counseling incorporating mindfulness-based practices into a subtype known as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). This form of therapy can be practiced online for those who need the convenience and availability that virtual therapy provides. For example, in a clinical trial published in JAMA Psychiatry, psychologists reported that people with residual depressive symptoms who participated in online MCBT experienced a reduction in these symptoms up to three months post-treatment.
If you struggle with staying in the moment, consider talking with a provider through a platform like BetterHelp. You can choose between phone, video, and chat sessions and receive worksheets or journaling exercises focused on mindfulness.
Takeaway
How do you feel while doing a mindfulness exercise?
Mindfulness meditation may not feel the same way each time. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), mindfulness means an awareness of your mental states and external surroundings. This means that what you feel during mindfulness exercises may vary a great deal depending on what’s going on in your life.
Although consistent meditation practice may lead over time to reduced stress and a calmer, more relaxed frame of mind, you might not feel that way while you’re working at it. It’s common to experience frustration or disappointment when you start practicing mindfulness and immediately feel your mind wandering. Some people may feel dismayed when they begin to notice how much mental chatter their minds produce.
Other experiences during mindfulness exercises may be more pleasant. Feelings like peace, contentment, clarity, and bliss are not uncommon, especially in people who have been practicing for a while.
Many people also experience things during mindfulness meditation that are very different from the feelings normally encountered in day-to-day life. These can include things like odd bodily sensations, an expanded sense of self, or a feeling that time is passing more slowly.
What happens when you practice mindfulness every day?
Daily practice of mindfulness may offer a variety of benefits. These can include:
- Increased self-compassion
- Lower levels of depression
- Reduced tendency to worry
- Improved mood
- Stress reduction
- Relief from chronic pain
- Better self-efficacy and psychological resilience
- Improved ability to overcome fear
Some people may get discouraged if they find that it’s hard for them to stick to a daily schedule of mindfulness practice. However, some studies suggest that intermittently performing mindfulness activities may offer helpful benefits, even if you’re not able to do so every day.
How might you use mindfulness in your own life?
Practicing mindfulness may not need to be limited to blocks of time set aside for meditation. Researchers and practitioners have developed many simple mindfulness exercises that can be incorporated into ordinary activities. One example is mindful eating, in which you try to focus your attention completely on your food and the experience of the meal. Another is mindful walking, which involves paying attention to your physical sensations, surroundings, and feelings while moving.
Developing greater mindfulness may be able to help you in a variety of ways during your daily life. People with high levels of mindfulness may be more aware of their own unhelpful habits of thought and behavior, enabling them to make better choices in everyday situations. Studies suggest that:
- Mindfulness may reduce negative reactions to stress cues
- Highly mindful individuals may make better eating choices
- Mindfulness might help people avoid dwelling on negative thoughts and feelings
- Those with high mindfulness may be less angry and aggressive
In other words, mindfulness might improve your ability to recognize knee-jerk reactions in time to change them. If your spouse says something hurtful in a moment of stress, maintaining a mindful state of awareness might help you recognize that they probably didn’t mean it.
What is the purpose of frequently doing exercises of mindfulness?
In general, the goal of consistent mindfulness exercises is to help increase a person’s trait of mindfulness — their overall tendency toward mindfulness in everyday life. The exact definitions of this quality may vary, but research suggests it may have three distinct components:
- Acting with awareness, or remaining attentively focused on what you’re doing and experiencing
- Nonjudgmental acceptance, or observing your thoughts and feelings without self-criticism
- Present-moment attention, or remaining aware of what’s going on in the moment instead of fixating on the past or future
Different individuals may have different reasons for wanting to cultivate these qualities. However, as described above, psychological studies offer evidence that higher mindfulness may be linked with many positive outcomes, such as improved well-being and better performance in a variety of areas.
How can the practice of mindfulness help a student prepare for an exam or assessment?
Meditation practice may help students by improving focus and mental flexibility, as well as by reducing test-taking anxiety. Working toward better mindfulness may have both long-term effects on cognitive performance and short-term effects such as boosting self-confidence and relaxation.
A student consistently practicing meditation may study more often and more effectively, with a greater focus on the material. They may also be less likely to doubt their own abilities, which might decrease procrastination.
What are the benefits of utilizing mindfulness when responding to a person in distress?
Adopting a mindful attitude may help you react calmly and rationally when interacting with someone in distress. People who are experiencing pain or challenging emotions may lash out at others, even those trying to help them. This could be alarming, aggravating, or hurtful. Mindfulness might help you notice and defuse your initial negative reactions to this behavior and continue to offer the best help possible.
Employing some type of mindfulness-based therapy might be particularly helpful for care providers such as:
- Nurses
- Doctors
- Social workers
- Hospice workers
- Home caregivers
People in these kinds of roles can be particularly vulnerable to burnout due to the sustained emotional strain of caring for people in distress. Clinical trials of techniques like mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) indicate that these therapies can help care providers remain mentally resilient in the face of the frustrations inherent in their jobs.
What are the benefits of mindfulness at work and how can we train ourselves to be more mindful in the workplace?
Many companies encourage mindfulness practice among employees, based on the idea that it could improve their performance. Behavior research offers some support for this idea. A 2017 meta-analysis of the scientific literature suggests that mindfulness can have a wide variety of benefits that may be helpful in the workplace. These include:
- Greater confidence
- Better management of emotion
- Reduced anxiety and depression
- General improvements in mental health
- Lower burnout rates
- More engagement at work
- Improved social interactions
- Better job performance overall
More mindfulness may also be linked with better job satisfaction as well as improved performance.
Interventions to improve workplace mindfulness can take a variety of forms. For employers, it might mean providing employees with time and space for meditation breaks during the day. Offering guided meditation classes and other educational resources could also help promote mindfulness.
Individuals can also practice mindfulness for improved work performance on their own. This might involve daily meditation practice during free time, as well as brief activities like walking meditation that enhance mindfulness throughout the workday. Short, scripted meditations such as the “three-minute breathing space” may fit easily into even a busy schedule, with potentially positive effects on mental wellness.
Employees could also try to adopt mindful attentiveness while performing everyday tasks. The effects of simply sitting in a comfortable position and taking a few minutes to observe yourself and your surroundings without judgment can be surprisingly powerful.
How can the practice of mindfulness improve personal well-being?
Experimental trials of mindfulness interventions suggest that they can improve various measures of emotional health and well-being, such as:
- Stress reduction
- Positive emotion and mood
- Personal flourishing
- Self-compassion
Psychologists have offered several theories for how meditation might achieve these effects. One possibility is that by engaging multiple aspects of attention, mindfulness meditation reduces the tendency to ruminate (dwell on) negative aspects of life. The practice may expand a person’s ability to focus on the totality of their experience rather than just the things with which they’re dissatisfied.
Mindfulness meditation might also help practitioners construct more balanced and helpful views of themselves. Many people may feel dissatisfied in their lives due to negative ideas about their own failures and limitations. Repeated meditation practice might provide the mental flexibility needed to dismantle these harsh self-judgments.
Another possibility is simply that mindfulness practice produces tangible improvements in people’s lives. Someone with chronic pain who finds that a quick mindfulness-based body scan reduces their pain and distress might see an immediate, obvious link between mindfulness and well-being. The same could be true for those who successfully use mindfulness to enhance their self-confidence, work performance, relationship quality, or other aspects of their lives.
How can practicing mindfulness positively impact one's self-esteem?
Investigations into the effects of mindfulness practice have found that it may be able to modify a person’s sense of who they are in a variety of ways. Many of these effects may be helpful to self-esteem.
For example, the practice of mindfulness appears to decrease negative rumination on past experiences. This might defuse a person’s tendency to critique themself harshly for prior mistakes or misdeeds. Meditation may also help to break dysfunctional beliefs such as persistent pessimism.
Finally, meditation may help practitioners adopt an attitude of self-compassion. This means they’re able to look at their own shortcomings in a more gentle, forgiving way, potentially improving self-esteem.
How can mindfulness help with self-control and success?
Studies of mindfulness have found that it appears to reduce the tendency toward various kinds of impulsive behavior. This may be due to its ability to alter the way people react to strong feelings. People higher in mindfulness may be better at assessing their own emotions and deciding how to act in response.
It’s also possible that the consistent practice of mindfulness can act as a form of self-control training. By choosing to sit still and meditate each day, even when you’re distracted and your mind wanders, you may be developing greater self-discipline. This could be a valuable quality for the pursuit of any long-term goals.
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