EXERCISING MINDFULNESS: WHAT IS IT AND HOW CAN IT HELP YOU?

Mindfulness, by definition, is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment. It doesn’t require you to block out your thoughts like traditional meditation; instead, you are to let them flow through your head without any introspection or lingering too long. The end goal of mindfulness is to relax your mind and body and reduce stress. It creates space inside your mind by letting all the unnecessary repressed thoughts and feelings out of their “lockboxes” and helps you focus only on the important ones. Mindfulness meditation is a great way to gain clarity, concentration, emotional resilience, and mental stability. 

Loaded and laden with overwhelming anxieties about examinations, finances, deadlines, social lives, meetings, home and families, etc, it is understandably difficult to focus on and incorporate mindfulness, that is, to reinforce the importance of emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being. But doing so would incise into you the very tool that would spark the beginning of a huge difference in your unhealthy habits and veer you on the path of attaining your full potential.  A lot of times, we get advice from our loved ones in times of distress to just “pause and breathe” and most times, in the frenzy of whatever turmoil we have found ourselves into, it feels like a load of nonsense. But when you peek past the confusion and cries, a moment of stillness is often the fastest way to a solution. As we get a closer look into our sensations and psyche, we notice positive reflections of this insight on our decisions and on the way we interact with our environment. Mindfulness makes more relaxed and self-affirmed humans out of the rushing, chasing, hamsters-on-a-wheel people that we are. Such stability of thoughts undoubtedly works in good faith for our blood pressure and sleeping routine.  

Most people in their entire lifetime allow themselves only a few moments of being alive; their spirits mostly withering at the looping forethought of complications and unanswered questions. Being mindful is to let go of those dilemmas that are or aren’t to come; to have a soft-spoken heart and eyes that are unclouded; to appreciate the cool winds mildly caressing your skin; to smile at the distinct rippling of a neighborhood fountain and to be content with just this grace of life—this breath.