Have a Mindful Holiday

My gift to you this year has been to focus fully on mindfulness. I hope you have found some sense of peace and that it has opened the door for you to fully embrace mindfulness and explore on your own as you’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. 

Just because it’s the end of year holiday season doesn’t mean you need to allow the holidays to take over. Don’t forget about what it is you have learned to this point. Here’s a few mindful tips if it all gets to be too much thinking and doing...

• Breathe, then breathe again
• Ground yourself in your senses
• Find peace in nature
• Fill yourself with patience as it is a foundation of mindfulness
• Consider your thoughts, feelings, and actions by asking yourself why and learning something along the way
• Find the gaps and create more space
• Less is more so keep it simple
• Self-care first, and then be and do for others with more energy
• Hum your way through the days ahead
• Focus fully on whatever you are doing
• Observe and listen to others through your new lens of mindfulness
• Do everything with love and gratitude and it will come back to you in strange and mysterious ways

Cheers to a year of mindfulness! I am so proud of you!!!

Stay safe and be well,

Michelle

Update: So far posts continue to be sent your way via email. Although, my hosting service notes this will not continue. If I decide to take time off from posting or end this blog, I will let you know in a post. If you haven’t heard from me lately, you can always check http://www.mmclark.com

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Meditation Practice 2 Unlocking Gratitude

Approaching the holidays can bring on a mixture of feelings and emotions. A great way to deal with this emotional jumble is to unlock gratitude. Let’s get you started on your way to unlocking the gratitude within.

• Find a comfortable quiet space to be. If you are sitting, rest your hands on your lap, your knees, or on your stomach if you are lying down. Tuck your chin slightly, relax your jaw, and softly close your eyes.
• Take three or more deep breaths welcoming the natural feeling of your breath as your mind slowly begins to relax.
• When you are ready, slowly inhale deeply while thinking I am grateful for, pause, and think or say the first thing that comes to mind as you slowly exhale, pause, and repeat.
• Allow your mind to spontaneously choose the word(s) each time as you exhale. You may be surprised what comes to mind. Some things may be serious, and others seemingly inconsequential or silly, but it doesn't matter. This is you on gratitude.
• Keep it going with each breath until nothing more comes to mind, for now.
• This exercise is a great way to begin and end your day. The things you are grateful for will begin to change and evolve as you unlock your mindful gratitude. You may find it awkward to begin with, but you will find the more you do it, the more comfortable you will be while doing it. The more comfortable you are, the more you will want to return to this gratitude space.
• Remember, you are just showing up. No expectations. No right or wrong way. This is your time.

Holidays or whatever days, this is the perfect time to move from our recent ah practice to unlocking and releasing gratitude. This exercise will help you recognize the good in your life. Don’t be surprised by how wonderful you feel afterwards. 

With tremendous amounts of gratitude,

Michelle

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Meditation Practice 1 Say Ah

The word meditation means different things to different people. It can be a connection to a deeper faith or realm, but that may sound just too woo-woo for you. And that right there may stop you from even trying. So, let's just keep it simple! Look at meditation as a universal form of expression, an extension of your breathing/self-care practice, and a way to relax your mind and your body. Then see where that takes you. Don’t ask any more from it other than showing up and seeing what happens. Let it evolve for you and with you.

• As with your breathing practice, find a comfortable quiet space to be. I prefer sitting on a mat or rug and crossing my legs in what's called a lotus pose when doing my meditating. It allows more freedom of movement for the expansion of my lungs, and the leg crossing provides balance and a feeling of being grounded. But this is your practice so find your happy place and begin.
• If you are sitting, rest your hands on your lap, your knees, or on your stomach if you are lying down. We will discuss hand positioning techniques in another post. Tuck your chin slightly, relax your jaw, and allow your eyelids to lightly close. Take three or more deep breaths welcoming the natural flow of your breath and allow your mind to relax. If a thought flows by, allow it to do just that, flow by and come back to your breath.
• Remember breathing practice 6 and humming? When you are ready, inhale as deep as you can. Instead of humming as you exhale, say ah out loud slowly until you no longer have air to say ah with. Breathe slowly in and repeat ah for at least 10 minutes adding more time each day if you can. I find a soft, loud ah is best rather than a harsh, forced, loud AHHHHH!
• Focus on the ah sound during your entire practice. Feel it vibrate from your breath through your entire body the longer you continue this exercise. You will find there will be no mind-wandering ways as there will be no room because you are filling the void with pure ah.
• If you are familiar with singing, what note are you ah-ing in? I’m a C and I find I generally go back to that same sound each time. Play with the sound until you hit on the right one for you as it will be effortless, and satisfying.
• Continue to do this exercise at least once per day, preferably morning and evening if you can. You will find the more you do it, the more comfortable you will be while doing it. The more comfortable you are, the more you will want to return to this space. 
• Remember, you are just showing up. No expectations. No right or wrong way.

If you are having difficulty with this exercise or haven’t been following through with your breathing practice lately, I invite you to review breathing and mindfulness exercises for a few days then try this one again until it feels right for you.

Take care,

Michelle

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Shining the Light on Mindfulness

The more you change how you see things, the more the things you see change.

Wayne Dyer

During our year of mindfulness, we have taken on many new ideas to expand our mindfulness thinking. This year's posts show the connectedness of mindfulness to many things in our lives. As you move through your mindfulness journey you will find it all connects.

When I began digging deeper into mindfulness and focused on awareness, I found I became quieter and listened more intently. While I was listening to my thoughts, words, and coming to understand my actions in a different way, I noticed that I began observing and listening more intently to others as well. While I considered myself a good listener, this type of mindfulness focused listening was nothing short of enlightening.

I began observing those around me on a whole different level. It helped me see them in a different light. I knew when these observations began it wasn’t my place to criticize. I understood it was my place to allow acceptance without judgement. I began to learn not only about others, but about myself.

Take your calm, quiet awareness and observe. Listen to the world around you without judgement, and you will begin to shine the light on a deeper way of living in mindfulness. It’s time to take the next step on your mindfulness journey. Prepare to be enlightened.

Take care, 

Michelle

If you are having trouble with focusing, make sure you continue with your daily breathing practice. Breathing practice is key to opening doors to mindfulness. It will help still your mind so that you can properly observe and move through the doors as they open. This allows mindfulness to unfold for you. I’ve mentioned that we will begin to step into the realm of meditation. You will need your breathing practice to fully find your space in meditation.

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Breathing Practice 6 Humming

While we’ve continued with our breathing practice throughout our mindfulness instructions, we’re going to add a different experience to our breathing. This is an easy one as it takes little thought to perform.

Take a deep, slow breath in through your nose. As you exhale, lightly press your lips together and hum as you slowly exhale through your nose. That’s it!

Why humming?

We are not engaging in just another breathing exercise; we are promoting self-care therapy. Humming creates a different focus and is a way to self-soothe, and quiet the mind and body.

Is there a particular humming method to use?

I mentioned the above example to introduce a new breathing experience into your daily practice. You may want to experiment with humming a different musical note until you find one that fits the mood of the moment, but other than that let’s keep it simple.

Personally, I love humming and use it beyond my breathing practice. I hum to calm my breathing pattern, heart rate, thoughts, and emotions. And sometimes I find myself humming while doing other things. When this happens, I know I’m bringing a sense of peace to the moment whatever it is.

Here are some examples of how I tap into humming:

• Instead of driving like a maniac to an appointment when I’m running late for one reason or another, I hum and calm myself the entire drive. It guides me to back off the accelerator and accept what is.
• I hum when driving in traffic or bad weather as it relaxes me and again helps me accept what is.
• I tune into peaceful humming to self soothe if I find myself anxious, tense, upset, angry, frightened...
• I hum a tune here and there and sometimes hum no tune at all just non-sensical sounds that seem to delight me.
• And I find myself humming without realizing I’m doing it when I’m focused on something I enjoy like cooking or gardening, and even while doing things I don’t particularly care to do like house cleaning.
• Humming has helped me focus during devastating times of my life.
• A hum here and a hum there has guided me to understanding my feelings and helped me find answers in the space between the notes.

What I’ve come to understand about humming is that it is a powerful tool in my mindfulness practice. You should know that you don’t have to be able to carry a tune to experience the wonders of humming. And you can hum in your head anytime and anyplace without making a sound. Just begin with your daily breathing practice and before you know it, you’ll find a hum here and a hum there when you least expect it. Shall we give it a go?  Hummmmmmmm

Take care,

Michelle

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