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CAN YOU BE ‘in the now’?
What once sounded like a New Age-y concept – mindfulness and paying attention to the present moment – has proven a powerful weapon in the battle to keep calm and stress levels balanced in our everyday lives.
Mindfulness is a buzzword you may have heard, but may not be entirely sure what it is – or how it could impact your life in 2015.
It is essentially a way of reducing stress and anxiety through a number of techniques like meditation, breathing exercises, gentle yoga and so on. The Be Mindful project from the UK Mental Health Foundation notes:
It helps us become more aware of our thoughts and feelings so that instead of being overwhelmed by them, we’re better able to manage them.
Essentially, it has you step off the mental treadmill for long enough to get some insight into your feelings, good and bad.
A study from Oxford University just last year found that online meditation guides and emails can “significantly decrease” stress, anxiety and depression at the end of a 10-session course.
And adopting something like regular meditation into your routine can actually cause beneficial structural changes in the brain in as little as eight weeks, neuroscientists have found.
But I’m Irish – do we meditate now?
Someone who has been working in this area for decades is Josephine Lynch. She notes that there is an important piece of research due to emerge from St Vincent’s Hospital which measures the introduction of therapies and tools related to bio-social medicine – harnessing mind and body – against a number of medical benchmarks.
“The main way in which mindfulness can help us,” says Lynch, “is to teach us an appropriate response to what is going on in our lives. It’s not about trying to ‘fix’ somebody; the appropriate response is sometimes getting up and doing something about it but the appropriate response is sometimes to sit with it and feel the tension and anxiety and fear and breathe with it. It’s about learning wise-appropriate action.”
And not only can that impact on our own emotions, says Lynch – who co-founded mindfulness.ie – but the positive effects can ripple out to those in our social circle and beyond.
It’s not a selfish thing. It helps us consider our interactions, be less judgemental, more kind, more empathetic, it improves our communications with others.
And who is seeking out these tools?
It turns out it can be helpful to all ages and stage in life. “I see a lot of young people, people under stress at work, people being asked to live with a lot of change,” notes Lynch.
Can I have a crash course in this?
There is a short tutorial in the brilliant Irish online wellness workshop which is called ‘Mindfulness Minute’. It teaches how to incorporate a mindful minute at points through your day – this is literally a minute where you get to slow down, focus on just ‘being’ and shake off the stress of whatever your day has brought up to that point.
There is also a live workshop and printable PDFs to help you develop a personal toolkit to fit in five mindful minutes each day.
This is a great starting point, although it requires consistency and practice for it to yield results – those worksheets can really help you keep track of how you’re doing and motivate you to stick with it, as you see yourself progress.
Relaxation podcasts, meditation apps and other companion tools are a great way to help you keep an appointment with yourself to relax. In its simplest form, here’s a quick fix breathing exercise podcast from the Mental Health Foundation. It lasts for just under five minutes.
Practice, practice, practice
Finding these moments of mindfulness – be it through meditation, or gentle yoga or some other mind-body exercise – sounds restful, right?
Well, just like any other muscle, it has to be developed. This means sticking with it. Josephine Lynch has some practical tips for those finding their mind wandering:
RESOURCES TO HELP YOU DISCOVER MINDFULNESS:
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When’s the ukraine elections?
@John Smith: great point
@John Smith: You don’t conduct elections during an invasion, it is written into the Ukrainian constitution.
@John Smith: Do you think the russians would allow Ukrainians in the occupied territories to vote?
Do you think these should be denied representation in parliament?
The UK did not hold elections during WWII either.
@John Smith: I knew the first comment would be a putin apologist. Sad.
@Ted Daly: A Putin apologist? Putin is a dirt bag just like Zelenskyy.
Two little dictators, maybe Napoleon complex.
@John Smith: Zelensky is freely elected by the Ukrainian people. And Ukraine’s president is not a ruler with tyrannical powers. It has a parliament too, one with real legislative power.
The last Ukrainian president was impeached by that parliament, when he tried to sell out Ukraine to the russians.
Anyone who believes or claims otherwise is giving away that they *are* a Putin apologist, and have been taken in by russian propaganda, and/or are such propaganda spreaders themselves.
@John Smith: Where are you getting the idea that Zelenskyy is a dictator. Tomorrow you’ll be posting that he’s an irrelevant mouthpiece.
And yet Leo Vradkar ends up being the Taoiseach of this country having gotten less than 8500 votes in the general election of 2020.
Thank God we live in a democracy!
@Denis Slattery:
Leo Varadkar WAS elected by the people in Dublin 15.
Leo Varadkar IS the leader of Fine Gael.
The leader of the party DOES become Taoiseach.
It is indeed democracy.
@Denis Slattery: Coming 7th in his ward whereby he had to sweat the be re-elected. Yep, such a popular leader.
@KTH: He was declared elected on the 5th count after receiving less than 20% of the first preference vote. He wasn’t even the first choice as TD of over 80% of the voters in his own constituency .
The Fine Gael party got 20% of the first preference votes nationally and was the third largest party in terms of seats in the Dail behind Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein. . 80% of the voters nationally did not vote to put Fine Gael into government .
It’s a very peculiar form of democracy when the preferences of 80% of the voting public are ignored .
You would think a Professor of politics would be aware of the irony before writing an article on Putins sham election
@Denis Slattery:
“He was declared elected”
Re-read my post…
I rest my case.
@Denis Slattery: So you understand,why not say that.
@Daniel Roche: dont
I wonder if Putin reads many articles on the Journal? Or does he do what most of us do and skip over them until he finds one with the comments open? Hi, Vlad…
Puck Futin. Slava Ukraini.
@Roy Dowling: wrong
@Roy Dowling: no, free the 100 captive children, at this stage I fear waving a Palestinian flag is more important than abusing children in the dark underground of Gaza… Nobody knows anything about them right? Not even the people who live above the hatches of the tunnels…. Yeagh right!! Fight Israeli soldiers but don’t do exactly the same and abuse children yourself, whatever is the reason behind it. In more simple terms if you don’t understand that, if you condemn me for being an Israeli sympathiser I won’t abduct your children as reprisal, it’s that simple!!!
@peter willekens: No do the countless Palestinian children who are not hostages of Israel.
Because they have been murdered.
Murdered since the Israeli colonist first began attacking the Palestinian people to steal their land, and their homeland.
@John Smith: Why don’t you look it up and share with the class?
If you did, you easily find that as per Ukraines constitution elections are suspended due to the murderous invasion by Putin and his orc army.
I’d be of the opinion that you’re just trying to be clever. Ironically.
A mean the level hypocrisy shown by the west towards Russia is off the charts, the US is the last country to talk about fair elections, 2000 anyone.
@Marcus Maher – Triskellion Films: But 2008 was fair, right?
And 2012?
And 2016?
And 2020? Despite the attempts of the wannabe Putin?
And 1996?
And 1992?
And…
How can you compare the US – as bad as it is – to russia?
I mean, have you really no sense of proportion?
Putin, a weak man.
And you get clowns in the West idolising a literal tyrant that kills off or jails all political opponents and critics, while said tyrant temporarily stepped down to have laws changed to stay president indefinitely after…
Why are comments on Mr Putin allowed, but anything do do with the genocide in Gaza blocked?
I hope those people blocking American aid to Ukraine wont suffer nasty repurcussions in the future for causing a genocide….
@peter willekens: And let’s hope the Israelis are put in front on The Hague for their crimes against humanity, alongside Putin and his minions.
Whatever about the colour of Diane Abbot’s skin, she is without a doubt the thickest MP ever elected!
What a joke the Russian people are as bad as putin
This article is so misrepresentation of the facts of the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet union and president Putin,
Please anybody who wants the facts, follow professor Jeffrey Sacks, and listen to the this man who was part of the American administration during this time,
The writer of this article really must think people only get their news from RTE, BBC and CNN. Plus one of the seven owned news papers of the West.
What ever happened to doing some research. But I guess you don’t need to, when the article is already wrote for you, all you have to do is put your name to it,
Frightening to think you lecture at a university, my God it’s true as one professor said , students come out of university more stupid than when they went in, I can see why.
Bacon took his ‘Study after Velasquez’ gaping mouth from Potemkin film, there you go now.
“faux oppositionists”… “pseudo-challengers”, Goebbels would be so proud.
Meanwhile in Missouri over 23,000 dead people registered to vote in one week in February.
have your say