Anxiety Mindfulness Practice August 18, 2021 By Sara Martin 0 Comments

14 Simple Mindfulness Practice Exercises

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Concentrated Mindfulness Practice – 5 Senses

(The mindfulness exercises can be spoken/recorded as a script)

Sit or lie in a comfortable place. You may soften your gaze or close your eyes. Start with bringing your attention to your breath.

Breathe deeply into your belly, expanding your diaphragm counting four beats in through your nose, PAUSE and four beats out through your mouth. It may help to place your hands over the base of your ribs and feel the expansion in and out.

Do three or four cycles or until you can stay focussed on just noticing your breathing without your mind wandering off.

Breathe IN, two, three, four; PAUSE and OUT, two, three, four. In, two, three, four…

Keep breathing.

Mindfulness Practice [Top Tips]

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What is Mindfulness?

Whether it is a professional athlete; a rock star, a Mum in her fitness gear or the chilled-out guy who is cultivating an organic veggie patch; everybody seems to be practising mindfulness. It is not just for Zen Buddhists and yogi masters, and whilst mindfulness is a type of meditation, you don’t need to be an expert to incorporate the principles into your life.

The reason why so many people are doing it is because it has some solid research to prove its effectiveness as an adjunct to your lifestyle or as part of many mental health interventions. But how do you do mindfulness practice?

Growing Scientific Evidence for Mindfulness [Exclusive Tips]

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Mindfulness can relax you and regulate your emotions in the short term, but it can also change your brain permanently if you approach it as a form of mental exercise.

What is the Scientific Evidence for Mindfulness?

Studies show that when we intentionally turn our focus onto mindfulness our brain changes activation and with repetition can change brain structure. This is neuroplasticity, or how the brain can change in response to our experiences, both positive and negative (Mindful.org, Sept, 2019).

Neuroscience research shows that the brain continues to grow and change over our lifespan (neuroplasticity) and we are not ‘hard wired’. When we experience repeated experiences, the brain neural pathways thicken which changes brain chemistry and anatomy.