A Mindful Start to the New Year
At times, everything can feel overwhelming. If you ever feel like you struggle to feel present in the moment or if you feel like you are constantly just rushing to be somewhere or do something, practicing mindfulness for even a few minutes can help to bring you back to awareness of the present. Beyond helping to manage stress, research suggests that mindfulness can even help reduce levels of anxiety and depression, alleviate pain, can aid in lessening symptoms of addiction, and can even be helpful in improving quality of life for individuals with cancer, hypertension, and other chronic illnesses. But what exactly is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a way of becoming aware of the sensations and feelings you are having in the moment without attempting to change or place judgment on those thoughts through meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, and other methods. Mindfulness can be structured, or it can be more go-with-the-flow; it adapts to you.
If trying to figure out how to be mindful seems daunting or you aren’t sure what kind of mindfulness would work for you, you could also speak with a therapist who is trained in mindfulness, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). They are both similar to one another, with the key difference between the two being that MBCT was originally developed to focus on recognizing negative thoughts and learning how to respond to those thoughts, while MBSR looks more broadly at recurrent, unhelpful responses to difficulty and difficult situations, and seeks to allow individuals to see those experiences in a less judgemental light.
There are also some recorded, guided mindfulness activities online, if that feels like a more approachable way to practice mindfulness. The first link in the ‘resources’ section below leads to a few that the Yale School of Medicine has put online that are MBSR-focused. If you are interested in MBCT, the University of Michigan has posted some recordings online that can be found in the second link in the ‘resources’ section below. At your disposal are also apps, videos, books, and websites all devoted to mindfulness and helping individuals learn how to practice mindfulness.
Since 2024 has just begun, this is the perfect time to start adopting mindfulness into your everyday life! Practicing mindfulness could be the first step on a happier and healthier new year, and with so many resources at your fingertips, it doesn’t have to be difficult, either. You could even start tonight, right before bed; studies suggest that it could lead to an easier time falling asleep and a more restful night of sleep. Talk about starting the year off on the right side of the bed!
Ayanna Schubert
Birch Psychology
Resources
https://medicine.yale.edu/stresscenter/reduction/mbsr/
https://mari.umich.edu/psych-clinic/mbct-audio
https://www.apa.org/topics/mindfulness/meditation
