Pink Sky at Night...

This morning I woke up still feeling worried about my day at work yesterday. However with all the mindfulness I am doing and learning about I tried to remind myself of a few things and thought it would be helpful to share with you.  

There are three areas of mindfulness that are recognised and when cultivated increase our sense of well-being, connection to others and emotional balance.  The first is focused awareness, the second is open awareness and the third is kind intention.

You may know a little about mindfulness or very little, but what I have learned is that focused attention is used to bring our awareness to something to hone our ability to focus. By practicing we learn to be aware of when thoughts feelings or other distractions arise and being able to guide our aware back to what we intend to focus on.  Focusing on breath is a common practice to do this. 

Open awareness is being open to what comes to us, without intentional focus and be accepting of what comes and to learn to recognise that our thoughts, feelings and even memories are just that.  They are like passing clouds in the sky, or to use another metaphor a train passing through a station.  We can choose to jump on the ride and run with it or we can accept the thoughts and let them go.  Be aware they are not real or necessarily true and we can let them go without become embroiled in the emotions and other associations that can build up. 

I thought this aspect of mindfulness was particularly important for me to remember today. When I was on my journey to work and my thoughts would keep drifting back to the "what will I do if this happens?" and "maybe I should have responded differently yesterday" and "maybe I am rubbish at my job" kind of thoughts. I tried to be mindful of this and let the thoughts go and bring my attention back to what I was doing at the given moment.  

I also learned yesterday why deep breathing is helpful to us when we become anxious for example. I think I like to have scientific explanations for ideas and concepts to fully buy into them. Deep breathing stimulates the Vegus Nerve, which runs from our brains through our respiratory systems, cardiac and digestive systems, and when the nerve is stimulated by deep breathing it lowers stress responses associated with our fight or flight mechanisms and therefore reduces our stress, anxiety, anger and inflammation.  With this in mind, when the odd comment was thrown my way at work I took a series of deep breaths and I felt measurably better.  

Anyway... thats the science bit done for today!!!

Making use of every minute of my day I decided to run home from work today! On my 9-5 days it can take me nearly 50 minutes to get home because of rush hour traffic, so I ran home and got back at 6pm - about the same time as last Tuesday,  So, effective use of time, felt great at the end of a working day, better for the environment and better placed to face the evening! AND I got to see this wonderful colourful sky on my route home.  It really was spectacular and I had added an extra of a particularly atmospheric cloud I liked!!! 

Swimming for my son, home, snack and now blipping.... I will be flat out tonight (after some meditation).

I am very grateful for all your kind words on my blip yesterday. They were very helpful and I had a better day today at work, I just hope it continues!!

"The mind is the king of the senses, but the breath is the king of the mind." - Hatha Yoga Pradipika