Making the most of Mindfulness

Today’s post features an exploration into the ways practicing mindfulness is beneficial to us.

There are a large number of benefits that mindfulness brings to the table. This blog post covers the main benefits mindfulness provides. Because mindfulness works across the mind, body and the soul, we see deep impacts across all aspects of our existence. Nothing is left unblessed. It doesn’t take long to feel many of the benefits either, and what’s more, there tends to be a knock-on effect, where we feel benefits in one area of ourself (say, the mind) and not long after we feel it elsewhere (body and soul) even if the particular practice does not fixate on either of those parts. Remember, everything is interlinked, everything will meld, merge with one another. Everything gets rewired, not just the area we were working on/with. With this all said, let’s get into the good bits! Here are a bunch of benefits mindfulness can provide us.

It is super for soothing, calming and relaxing: Above all else, mindfulness is wonderful at guiding us to serenity. To calmness, to a point of relaxation. With a wide variety of ways to help centre us, to help guide us to points of calm, this is one of the best – and main – reasons why one should practice mindfulness. Anything from breathwork to journaling to visualization to embodiment and so on, almost every type of practice is fantastic at bringing us to a zone of peace. Lowers stress, anxiety and tension: Most, if not all types of mindful practices hold this benefit, especially when used in conjunction with multiple practices. This is because mindfulness guides us to relaxing our minds and our bodies. With relaxation, comes release of all the harsh, negative energies that are stored. Energetic blockages can be flushed out, allowing lighter, positive energies to flow throughout our vessel with ease. By alleviating the pressures of life, we remove ourselves from constantly being in a state of ‘fight or flight’. We soothe ourselves, which gives us the ability to move beyond ‘fight or flight’ and come to logic, reason and rationality. This is a much better frame of existence to reside in as we do not react from fear, no, we respond from love. It helps us find alignment: Mindfulness is all about balance. Truly being aligned means knowing that constant alignment is never guaranteed but that it is entirely possible to come back into an aligned existence. The various practices of mindfulness show us how to align our mind, body and soul on a singular level as well as a group level. It gives us ways to bring these separate sections together so that they may work in harmony. Should we ever fall out of alignment, mindfulness is there to help us realign. Boosts both our physical, mental and spiritual health: Mindfulness practices help us take better care of ourselves, by guiding us to gain higher awareness of what things work for us and which things don’t. Therefore, we become better equipped to remove bits and bobs that do not serve our purpose, which makes space for the stuff that does to come through. A good mindfulness routine will help us become healthier overall through dedication and discipline and through taking the time to listen to what your mind, body and soul needs, then going and getting it. We will feel less stressed, less tired, less anxious or tense, less unmotivated or unfocused. We will feel more joyful, more positive, more exuberant, more energetic, and more productive.

We have better focus: Allowing ourselves to switch our brains off for a bit and let them “reboot” really helps us in improving our focus and concentration levels because we actively give our minds, even our bodies a break. They can pause and relax, then come back in better form than before. Regular mindfulness practices are great for resetting our systems and allowing everything to rejuvenate and come back stronger and more productive. Improves communication and connectedness: The more we begin to enter awareness, the better we are able to perceive how communication works best. This can include communication amongst people, between two people, between a person and their pet, but it also extends its inclusion to communication towards ourself: how we talk about ourselves, how we express self-worth and so on. What’s more, is that it goes deep down into the communication our mind, body and soul have with each other: there is a whole network (like a neural network but beyond) where everything is in talks with everything else. Our vessels are incredible, they are totally capable of transmitting and comprehending information no matter how it is portrayed, therefore it is when we commune with the utmost clarity that we truly know how to properly interact, we are a true community then. From the inside out, we become more conscious of how we communicate, and thus, we communicate with more clarity. Increases creativity: Many mindful practices work heavily with our creative essences, our imagination. Creativity exists in everything, so we work with it all the time, regardless of how conscious we are of it or not. Mindfulness helps us become more conscious of our creative powers. It helps us use these creative powers by helping us envision, helping us work out plans, helping us manifest, helping us heal, helping us grow. It helps us ground our dreams, our desires into reality. If you think you are not a creative being, stop thinking, start feeling. Your heart will show you that you are. Anything you have ever imagined or created is creativity, even if it means following a recipe word-for-word to make a meal, you still created it did you not? Your very hands and brain put everything together and made it into something. So, yeah, you’re creative. And we can cultivate creativity through mindful practice. Boosts our compassion: Connecting back to the first point, by alleviating pressures, we can function from a more reasonable perspective, and therefore, we are able to operate from the high vibration of love, than the low vibration of fear. It places us in a much more compassionate realm, one where we can be less harsh on ourselves, even others; we can approach situations with kindness and empathy. This leads us to creating stronger connections amongst our very own selves as well as among others. We come into alignment of Self.

It is an act of self-care: Mindfulness teaches us how to love ourselves. It does so by gently showing us our light (what works for us) and our shadows (what does not work for us), it even helps us determine how to heal from our shadows and how to strengthen our light. What’s more is that we can use such things as mindful moments to give ourselves some much needed respite from the goings-on of daily life. It gives us the opportunity of reprieve, a rest, a pause, some time just for us to do as we please. It shows us we are worthy of love and that our first, strongest, most important relationship is that which we have with ourself. You cannot pour from an empty cup now can you?

Improves our ability to think openly: Through mindfulness, we are strongly encouraged to explore things we never would have thought to try before. It helps us open up, not just to others but also to our own self. By practicing mindfulness, we give ourselves the opportunity to really dig deep and discover who we truly are underneath the facades we present externally. Through this, we learn how to widen our perceptions of ourselves, of others and of any situations presented to us throughout life. Employing different practices and tools helps our brains and bodies to adapt to new situations much more easily: we make ourselves more adaptable, more flexible, more understanding. We can acknowledge that another viewpoint may not be how we choose to perceive it but that it does not always mean it is wrong, nor is the person holding that viewpoint. The key word here is ‘choose’, we understand the concept of choice much better and it grants us the ability to allow alternative choices to present themselves and make their case, so to speak. By thinking more critically, more openly, we help expand our compassion and our empathy. Provides us with a better understanding of boundaries and how to set them: This is key. Many of us struggle with boundaries; be it setting them, enforcing them or even just knowing what they are, many of us get lost in the murky waters of boundaries. It doesn’t have to be so scary or confusing. It comes down to making sure we know what we find acceptable and what we don’t. Engaging in mindfulness helps us determine what we like and what we don’t. It also gives us the confidence to stand up and set those boundaries, and even enforce them when needed. Even simply knowing what practices work for us and which ones don’t help us determine where we can draw lines. With mindfulness improving our awareness, we become more perceptive of where we want to draw our “lines in the sand”.

The benefits of mindfulness run deep and yet, for many they do not take a long time to surface. Personally, one of the best benefits of mindfulness is that most of the benefits can be achieved fairly quickly, especially once a good mindfulness routine is established. Another great benefit of mindfulness is that most practices will not break the bank, even if you did buy tools to further facilitate your practice, many of them can be done for free or for a fairly low cost without having to compromise on quality.

If you have any questions or just want to comment your thoughts, please do so below! I look forward to hearing from you. Furthermore, please follow us on our Instagram (@myeirenehub) and Pinterest (MyEirene App) pages

Until next time, Jamila A.