What exactly is mindfulness and why is it so important for inner healing? Mindfulness is a mental state of peace and clarity achieved by focusing on your mind on the present moment, your environment, and physical and emotional sensations. So whatever you are doing- walking, eating, working, bathing, being in nature, spending time with a friend or loved one- you are fully present. Let's use eating for an example. If you are eating with mindfulness, you are savoring your food, tasting each bite and chewing it completely, appreciating the flavors and textures and how it is nourishing your body. This not only makes the experience of eating more enjoyable, it also benefits your health by allowing yourself to sense when you are satiated and lowering your stress levels. By contrast, someone who is scarfing down their food while multi tasking or driving, or to numb their feelings, will likely over consume and raise their stress levels.
Mindfulness matters because it allows us to appreciate every moment for its own uniqueness and beauty. It retrains our brains and nervous system to slow down and respond rather than react. It gives us back the power of choice and self-control. So by practicing mindfulness, it gets easier for us to tap into these reserves of calm steady energy during more challenging times. Like any muscle we strengthen with use, the more we practice exercising mindfulness throughout our daily activities and experiences, the more able we are to coordinate our mind to serve us purposefully. We will be less likely to spiral into negativity or anxiety. We can pause and give carefully considered responses to people and situations. Mindfulness assures us that while we cannot control things around us, we still have the ability to control how we respond and how we choose to feel.
It also helps us to heal from within by soothing our state of being. It frees us from the grip of fight-or-flight syndrome, rushing around in a panic to keep up with life's demands. It invites us to feel everything as a calm observer, without judgement or self-loathing. This reclaims the energy that was lost on anxiety and anger, and redirects it to healing the nervous system. In essence it makes anything we are doing more meditative. We don't have to be sitting somewhere alone and quiet aspiring to be a monk or guru. Mindfulness can benefit all of us throughout our daily routines in both big and little ways.
Mindfulness is a wonderful practice that involves meditation, introspection, breathwork, and mindset. Applied as Mindful Stress Management it is the master key to unlocking your cage of chronic unwellness. Without mindfulness all of the nutrition, supplements, exercise etc. will have only limited benefits to your healing journey. These all play a role in the process, but recalibrating and healing the nervous system is the most potent piece of the puzzle.
Donna Casey helps women break free from the cage of chronic unwellness by focusing on inner healing.
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