Stress Reduction

There are many words from other languages that we don’t have an equivalent word for in English. Like the German word ‘schadenfreude’, which means to take pleasure from the misfortune of others, or the Spanish word ‘sombremésa’ which is used to describe the time spent after a meal, talking to the people you shared the meal with. Although we are familiar with these emotions or situations, somehow having a singular word for them can make them more tangible; naming such things can help us become more mindful of them.

The Danish and Norwegians have a concept known as ‘hygge’ (heurgha). It’s used to describe things or situations which give us a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. ‘Hygge’ is an integral part of Danish life, and so it may come as no surprise that Denmark is considered to be one of the happiest countries in the world.

My Danish friend, Daniel says: “You can make something hyggelig; you tidy your home, you bring cake for your class, you light candles, etc. And something can be hyggelig too; an old house, or a bench in a park, or a campfire... It's very ingrained in the language and social interaction/tradition but we're also very relaxed about it in the everyday. It can range from the very small to the big things.”

So how can we use mindfulness to help us bring more hygge into our lives?

One way is to bring awareness to what makes us feel nice and cosy, and then to consciously incorporate more of those things into our lives. For example, if fairy lights make us feel happy, we can hang some in our bedroom, or if we haven’t seen our friends for a while we could invite them to our home for a candlelit meal. Or we can just set aside some time to snuggle up under our duvet and read a good book.

Another way is to be more mindful of the hyggelig things that are already around us! We can, for example, slow down and savour a lovely cup of tea, take time to enjoy a beautiful scene, or delight in the warmth of a knitted jumper or blanket.

How do you cultivate cosiness in your life? Leave a comment sharing your best hygge moments!

Find out more about our mindfulness courses and workshops.

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There are so many benefits to be gained from regular mindfulness practice. Research has shown that mindfulness meditation can improve learning processes, memory and emotional regulation (just to name a few things!) by prompting changes in different regions of the brain. However, in the same way that it can be difficult to get into new exercise or healthy eating habits, it can be hard to turn mindfulness into a daily practice, even if we know how much we will benefit from doing so. Once we’ve gotten into the swing of things, maintaining a regular mindfulness practice becomes much easier. But what steps can we take when we’re first starting out that will help us incorporate mindfulness into our daily routines?

Using Your Phone as a Mindfulness Prompt

The simplest and easiest way that we can become more regularly mindful is to set an alarm on our phone or watch. By setting alarms to go off at certain times of the day, our present mindful self can remind our future self (who might have become a bit mindless by that point) to take a pause and breathe.

How long we choose to pause for is completely down to us, but even if we’re working at our desks when the alarm sounds, we can take a moment to adjust our posture and let go of any tension we’re holding in our bodies, so that we can continue with our work in a more present mindset.

It’s best to choose a gentle alarm tone, rather than something that will jolt or aggravate you when it goes off. Experiment with setting alarms at different times of the day, maybe focusing on times that you know you could particularly use a mindfulness prompt, for example on your commute to work, at lunchtime, or as you’re winding down in the evening.

Find out more about our mindfulness courses and workshops.

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Making Time to Sit

Even though we know that meditation is good for us, we can probably come up with lots of reasons not to do it. When faced with the choice between watching our favourite TV show and sitting for 20 minutes in silence, the TV show is probably going to seem more entertaining! Once we’ve gotten into a regular meditation practice, the benefits we feel from it will motivate us to make time for it. Yet until that happens, we might need to give ourselves a little push to make the effort. Setting a regular time for meditation can help us do this.

Pick a time of the day that you’re most likely to be able to stick to. For example, if you’re always rushed in the mornings, it might be better to choose a time in the evening when things aren’t so hectic. It might be useful to start off with a short amount of time, like five or ten minutes. You can then increase your meditation time once you start to get comfortable with it. Try your best to sit down to meditate every day at your chosen time, even if you don’t feel like it sometimes. Just remember, it will get easier the more you do it.

And if you do miss a day? Or two, or five? It’s okay! Go easy on yourself. Just try to keep that intention going, and start over again if you need to.

Find a Meditation Buddy

Sometimes sharing a routine with a friend can make it easier to stick to. It’s so tempting to make excuses and reasons not to do something when it’s just us, but we generally don’t like to let our friends down. We tend to make more of an effort to stay on track with our plans when we know that someone else is also benefiting from it. Plus the social side of it might make it more enjoyable if we don’t like sitting alone.

Alternatively, if you want some guidance and a structured routine, it might be beneficial to join a regular meditation group. Here at The Mindfulness Project we host a weekly evening meditation for people who have completed an 8-week Mindfulness Course. Check out our calendar for more information on what’s coming up at our space!

Find out more about our mindfulness courses and workshops.

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Do you ever feel like the Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland? Always looking at the clock, feeling that there’s no time?

That eternal sense of ‘I must rush on to the next thing’. Work and family commitments, household chores, even scheduled leisure time activities, can all give us the feeling that there’s a never-ending list of things to get done.

Rather than living from a place of presence, we find ourselves caught up in our mental to-do list, always missing the present moment experience, always thinking ahead to what’s next in line. This way of being can cause a lot of stress and tension in our lives.

It can also leave us feeling detached from what really matters to us; that we are not living fully, only existing to achieve this task, and then the next, and the next.

But the practice of mindfulness can provide respite from this sense of needing to rush. By reconnecting with ourselves and the moment, we can give ourselves the gift of greater peace of mind.

Resistance to Slowing Down

When we’re feeling rushed, the thought of taking a moment to pause may at first seem impossible. It might even add extra tension: “Not only have I got this, this and this do to, but now I’ve also got to take a few moments to breathe? Yeah right!” It’s natural to feel some resistance to it, after all isn’t it just piling on another task for us to complete?

If we see mindfulness as something to achieve then of course this will just add to our sense of not having enough time. However, those moments of feeling overwhelmed are the perfect moments to take a breather.

Imagine a traffic jam; all the lanes are closed, and the cars are just piling up behind the blockade. The mounting fumes from running engines, the noise from car radios, the stress of being late, of being stuck, it all just keeps growing and growing.

Then someone opens one of the lanes and the cars start passing through.

Then another lane is opened, and before long the traffic is running smoothly again.

This is what we do when we take a moment to slow down. Rather than making the problem worse, it helps everything run more efficiently. Our rushing thoughts are the cars in the traffic jam, clogging up our experience, and our mindful moments are the opening of the lanes to let them through.

Find out more about our mindfulness courses and workshops.

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Noticing the Signals

When we’re caught in our to-do list, it’s like we’re living in a trance, missing everything around us and disconnected from our feelings and needs. But thoughts like “there’s not enough time” provide signals that tell us we’re not present.

That’s not to say that such thoughts mean we’re doing anything wrong. In fact, they’re a totally natural response to the stressful lives we lead. Yet if we become attuned to noticing these types of thoughts, plus feelings of tension or tightness in the body, we can start to use these as cues to slow down, breathe, and reconnect with the moment.

What’s Important Right Now?

“The most important thing is remembering the most important thing.”

-- SUZUKI ROSHI 

If we’re feeling stressed and rushed, it’s likely that we’ve lost sight of what’s really important to us. It’s useful to take some time to reflect on what is truly important to our hearts.

Is it really having a spotless home, working into the evening, or constantly pleasing others?

Or is it things like spending quality time with our loved ones, cultivating compassion for ourselves and others, and building a life around our true values?

We might tell ourselves that once we have done all the things we need to do, then we will become attentive to what really matters.

Yet how likely is it that our to-do list will shrink without some intention on our part to make it so?

If we knew that today was our last day, would we still feel we had time to rush?

Or would we realise that our time is precious and that it matters to us to pay attention to the here and now?

Not out of some sense of ‘should’ or ‘ought to’ – which is where our rushed feelings come from – but because it personally matters to us.

We have responsibilities. Practicing mindfulness won’t magic them away. However, we can hold the intention to pause and appreciate the moment, even if our appreciation is only for little things like a smile from a stranger, or the sun shining.

We tend to think of life as a long journey spreading out in front of us, but actually life is a succession of these small moments. If we notice them and feel grateful for them, we may still have our to-do list, but the ‘doing’ of life can become less an automatic chore and more an active, conscious, and hopefully enjoyable engagement with our own hearts and the world around us.

Find out more about our mindfulness courses and workshops.

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‘Momo’ is a magical film about our fear of losing time. Although it was made in 1986, this subject is still just asrelevant as it was back then. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that Michael Ende (who wrote the novel which the film is based on, as well as ‘The Neverending Story’) couldn’t have guessed that twenty-nine years on his wisdom would be needed now more than ever before. As a society we are obsessed with ‘saving time’.

Think of the countless apps and technologies which have been designed to help us manage time. We count the minutes that we work, exercise – even meditate! We can instantly communicate with people who live on the other side of the world. We can pop food in a microwave and eat it five minutes later. And yet, who feels that they have more time? If anything, we feel we have less than we ever did. If you do too, then Momo is a must-see film.

Momo starts off as any typical children’s film would – innocent and sweetly fanciful. We meet the heroine, Momo, when she is discovered hiding away in a hole by the side of the road, on the outskirts of an unnamed Italian city, by a kindly road sweeper. She is quickly accepted into the lively community there, and they build her a home. While the people around her get caught up in anger, doubt and arguments – like we all do – she brings a sense of calm wherever she goes.

She is the embodiment of mindfulness: compassionate, non-judgemental and perfectly present. Her curious nature brings joy to everyone, and it seems that everything is wonderful… until the Men in Grey arrive.

This is where the sweet children’s film takes an all-too-grown-up turn. We instantly recognise these sinister Grey Gentlemen from the ‘Timesavings Bank’, who start advising the townspeople on how they could spend their time more efficiently – for how many of us have our own internal Grey Gentlemen? They analyse the time the people spend on sitting with friends or gazing out of the window reflecting on their day, and tell them how they are wasting valuable seconds here, there and everywhere. They are very convincing, and it’s not long before the people start acting differently; they become rushed, agitated, unfriendly. They no longer do things for the enjoyment of it, but for how much money they can make and how much time they think they can save. And this means they no longer have time for the free-spirited Momo. Even the kindly road sweeper says he has to work a late shift, “just this once”…. However, it doesn’t end there. I won’t spoil the film for you, but let’s just say I didn’t call Momo the heroine of the story for no reason!

Perhaps the most prominent lesson of the film is to take time to appreciate all the little moments of life. Unlike the Grey Gentlemen, who frantically try to ‘save’ time by rushing, Momo notices, and therefore appreciates, everything around her. Many of us have certainly fallen into the trap of thinking that we never have enough time. And yet, practicing mindfulness helps us to see that this simply isn’t true.

The ‘Three Step Breathing Space’ approach can help us re-centre when we get caught in a mental rush. This works firstly by becoming aware of our experience in the moment; what are our current thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations? Next, we redirect and focus our attention on the physical sensations of breathing. This way we can use the breath as an anchor, bringing us back to the present moment. We’ll probably find that our mind wants to wander, but we can gently keep bringing our focus back to the breath.

Lastly, we expand our attention to our whole body, feeling the sense of our attention encompassing our whole being. This helps us acknowledge and accept everything that we are experiencing in the moment. By doing this practice regularly, we can notice more and more quickly when our attention is on rushing, rather than appreciating what’s around us. Like Momo, we can start to take more joy in the birds singing in the trees, the sun and the clouds in the sky, or the breeze on our faces. Far from being a ‘waste’ of time, noticing these seemingly small moment are what makes life worthwhile.

ohannes Schaaf does a wonderful job directing this film, and Radost Bokel plays the part of Momo totally convincingly. The Grey Gentlemen are genuinely creepy, not just because we may recognise their plan to account for every second of every day within our own lives – they’re also pretty creepy to look at! There are also truly heart-touching and insightful moments where the film expresses mindfulness teachings we may already be familiar with, but have probably never seen portrayed in such a creative way. Momo is a special film, and is bound to leave you with a refreshed sense of how time should really be spent.

Start or develop your mindfulness practice with a course, workshop or drop-in session. 

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