How to Remain Mindful Throughout Your Day

Mindfulness as a practice has been around for a long, long time but only somewhat recently has it made its way into Western society. With a rapid rise in mental health disorders like anxiety and depression in North America, the need for mindfulness is huge.

It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in work, commitments, and being overly busy. Living life this way for any length of time leads to stress, disease, and mental illness.

Let’s dive into some of the benefits a mindfulness practice provides, and also some great tips on how to remain mindful throughout your day.

Health Benefits of a Mindfulness Practice

• Stress Reduction — research shows that a consistent mindfulness practice helps reduce stress and improves emotional well-being. It does this by reducing cortisol levels which is the body’s main stress hormone.

• Lowers Blood Pressure — studies reveal that meditation and mindfulness can lower your blood pressure. Practiced on a consistent basis, this is extremely beneficial.

• Decreased Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke — by lowering your blood pressure, you can reduce your risk of stroke and other heart-related ailments.

• Better Mental Health — mindfulness has become an integral part of treating mental illness and has great effects on those suffering from anxiety and depression.

10 Ways to Remain Mindful Throughout Your Day

• Breathe — Incorporate moments of deep breathing throughout your day. Close your eyes and follow each breath into and out of your belly.

• Focus — Instead of multi-tasking and becoming unfocused and stressed, learn to focus and complete one task at a time.

• Slow Down — Trying to accomplish everything super speedy leads to more mistakes and higher stress levels.

• Release Emotions — Emotions are human, suppressing or blocking them leads to disease and mental illness. Learn to recognize an emotion that arises, let yourself feel it, learn what you need to from it, then release it.

• Connect With Nature — Nature has serious healing benefits. Step outside at least a few minutes each day and breathe deeply.

• Eat Well — Don’t eat and work. Don’t eat and scroll. Make yourself healthy and nourishing meals and enjoy them slowly and without distraction.

• Take Breaks — If need be, schedule in a few breaks during your day, they need only be a few minutes. Take this time to check in with yourself and breathe.

• Release — Become aware when judgement crops up, whether of yourself or others and practice releasing it. Judgement helps no one.

• Connect With Your Senses — Practice connecting with each sense separately and calmly. It’s a practice that grounds you and brings your mind to a calm state.

• Just Stop — Sit. No phone. No device. No music.

Just be.