Introduction to mindfulness exercises

Editor's brief: Cycling, lifting weights, working up a sweat on the treadmill – every exercise can be a mindfulness exercise. Mindfulness exercise allows us to examine our bodies and move in a way that can help us reduce stress, release stagnant energy, and strengthen our mind-body connection. It's a great way to practice self-care with a combination of physical and mental health. Often, when we engage in mindfulness exercises to help our bodies feel better, our mood is also boosted. (5P Medical APP: A leader in the development of mindfulness science in the Chinese region.) ）

What is Mindfulness Movement?

The principles of mindfulness exercise are the same as any other mindfulness practice. Our goal is to focus our full attention on the present moment and experience the here and now. We bring awareness to our movements and focus on our breath or how our body feels when we are in motion. When our minds wander, we bring our attention back to the practice, to our breath, to our body.

Four mindfulness exercises

1. Breathing exercises are different from the breathing we observe at rest in zazen. Instead, we connect with our bodies by purposefully lengthening our breathing to calm our parasympathetic nervous system or shortening our breaths for short periods of time to rejuvenate and refocus.

2. Walking meditation can be a simple and effective way to explore mindfulness movements. The biggest difference between walking meditation and our usual walks is that when we practice meditation, our goal is not to go anywhere. Instead, we walk slowly and try to bring our full consciousness to the act of walking. It looks like focusing on our breathing, or feeling the ground beneath our feet as one step becomes the next. When our mind wanders, we bring it back to the feeling of being in the moment.

3. Stretching exercises and yoga can help us release tension, stiffness, and heavy emotions. When our bodies don't move, they don't feel good, and neither do our minds. Taking a moment to let go of the distractions of the day, away from our desk or couch, and engaging in mindfulness exercise can help us improve our energy, focus, and resilience.

4. If you want to vent your emotions, exercise is another opportunity for mindfulness. Exercise is a great way to tune our body, synchronize our breathing, and live in the moment while building strength and nourishing our muscles.

Benefits of mindfulness exercise

Mindfulness helps us nourish our bodies by stretching, strengthening, and toning, even just by paying attention and being aware of our bodily sensations. But we can also use mindfulness exercise to boost our emotional well-being.

When we move our bodies and adjust our posture to keep our bodies, we also change the activity of our autonomic nervous system, which affects our responses such as heart rate, blood pressure, and fight-or-flight responses. This means that mindfulness movement allows us to shift our emotions and emotions from the outside in.

Adjust how your body makes you more resilient

Resilience expert and author Linda Graham writes about how mind-body awareness can be a source of strength and assurance in moments of self-doubt. It can start with something as simple as our sitting or standing posture. A study in the European Journal of Social Psychology found that we tend to feel more confident when we maintain our bodies in an upright, open posture with our heads held high. This means that when we feel nervous or shy, adopting a more assertive posture can help us counteract those feelings and embody that power.

Practicing yoga can also increase self-esteem. One study found that working in an open and expansive posture increased "subjective feelings of energy, competence, and control." Doing two minutes of open yoga can have an uplifting effect on our senses. Additionally, taking time out of the day to move your body can improve your ability to focus and coordinate your goals.

How to make exercise conscious

If you want to try an alternative to seated meditation, mindfulness exercises can be a great way to change your mindfulness practice. It can also be an access point for mindfulness practice for people who don't like to sit still. You can bring mindfulness into any workout or walk, just by being with your body while moving. Leave the headphones at home and try to make you aware of what you're doing. If distracting thoughts arise, shift your focus to your breath or body. You may even find that you enjoy your workouts more when you bring mindfulness to your practice.

Mindfulness exercise meditation

Any activity can be used for mindfulness meditation, and you can find anchor points in the action that attract attention: perhaps the point where your right hand enters the water while swimming, or the contact of your feet on the pavement while running. Weightlifters may use the up and down repetitions of the barbell. Or, you can stick to one anchor that is always available: your breath. Pay attention to its speed or speed and come back to it whenever you find your mind drifting to a text message you forgot to reply to or milk you accidentally left on the countertop.

Harmonizing your mind and body is powerful. You're making great strides for your physical and mental health – both figuratively and literally. With this rewarding potential, sweaty mindfulness lessons may be easier to put on the calendar permanently.

8 ways to bring mindfulness into your exercise routine

1. Stop and think about your purpose. Remember why you want to meditate. Is it to train your mind to concentrate and stay focused? to learn to manage your emotions? Also consider your intention to exercise. Is it to live longer or to have more energy? This dual motivation can help you pick yourself up and keep you going.

2. Unplug. To meditate during exercise, don't listen to your favorite playlists, make phone calls, read magazines, or watch TV. Present exactly where you are: in the woods, on the sidewalk, or on the treadmill.

3. Take advantage of bodily sensations. Focus your attention on your physical experience. Is any part of your body working harder, and does your body feel different today than it did yesterday?

4. Use your breath as a cue to challenge yourself more, or relax when necessary. Your inhale or exhale can be an anchor point for attention while exercising. If your mind wanders, noticing a new "For Sale" sign nearby while you're running, or recalling an email you forgot to return, just pay attention to the thought and reconnect your breath. As you work harder and calm down, observe the rhythm of your breathing.

5. Play with different attention anchors. Try to focus attention beyond breathing: every rotation of the bicycle pedals, up and down the lunge. You can switch anchors as you change your exercises, but focus on the rhythm of the anchor and come back to it when your mind wanders.

6. Be aware of your surroundings. There are two aspects of channeling attention – concentration and open-mindedness – and you can practice both at the same time while exercising. To understand the latter, look at what's going on around you. What is the air like? Temperature? What do you hear?

7. Make up your mind again. One of the attitudes of mindfulness is acceptance – not wanting the present moment to be different from the present. Exercising is an excellent time to practice this. Have you noticed any resistance to the workout experience – perhaps wishing you were almost done or that your quadriceps muscles would stop shaking? Invest your workout time, remember why you were there, and try to stay present from start to finish.

8. Exercise kindness. Pay attention to the quality of your thinking during your workout: Can you appreciate your current abilities, speed, and endurance as you do now?If you exercise in a face-to-face or virtual group, can you let go of the "comparative" and instead thank yourself for participating in this healthy activity?

Mindfulness walking meditation

Walking meditation can be a formal practice, just like observing the breath. Or it can be informal, bringing awareness to this daily activity whenever you need to travel from point A to point B. Whether moving between the floors of a building, on a city street, or through the woods, this is an opportunity to guide yourself away from the distractions we have most of the day on autopilot.

Distance: How far should I go?

It's best to minimize the chances of self-distraction. The route you choose to take doesn't have to be long. You can even walk on one lane: ten steps in one direction and ten steps in the other. In any case, this is not a sightseeing tour of your environment. You keep your eyes soft and gaze in front of you.

Speed: How fast should I go?

Walking meditation can be practiced at any number of different speeds, which makes it have many applications in everyday life. The fact that we can easily go from mindfulness walking to mindfulness running is a wonderful exercise in itself. There, of course, we gave up the lanes, because we could of course do long distances and faster formal walks.

How to start a mindfulness walk

1. Basic Walking Meditation

The basic walking meditation is very simple. All you need to do is pay attention to yourself as you walk and let your body feel like an anchor point for meditation. To break the autopilot we are often in, you might ask yourself, "How do I know I'm walking?" and then check your senses.

It may also help raise awareness about certain aspects of walking. For example, when you notice the sensation of your feet on the ground or the movement of your muscles, you can bring mindfulness to your body, especially when you encounter different surfaces beneath you. When walking, pay attention not only to what your legs are doing, but also your arms, torso, spine, and head. You may be able to detect subtle changes in your pulse, body temperature or breathing rate before, during, and after you start exercising. You can also focus on the gentle rocking motion where the center of gravity shifts.

Sometimes in seated exercises, we anchor our breath and focus on the point between inhalation and exhalation, where there is a moment of stillness. Similarly, in the walking exercise, we can notice that the right step becomes the left step and the left step becomes the rest point of the right step.

2. Add a word or phrase

An easy way to focus is to bring words or phrases into your steps. First, you can count rhythmically as you take your steps. Whenever your mind wanders and you can't count, just notice where your mind wanders and then return the count to one again. The key is to do it without judging yourself and your wandering mind.

It may also be helpful to have something to say along with the action. For example, you can say thank you and send gratitude or sympathy to your feet and body as you move – a practice in Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff's mindfulness self-compassion program. Alternatively, you can repeat the reminder phrase to yourself quietly or internally.

You might enjoy repeating the following phrases suggested by mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh at each step:

I'm here, I'm home, here, in the moment.

Or these phrases, to every footstep that says:

There is nowhere to go. There is nothing to do. No one can be.

Try any or all of these on your next walk, or come up with your own phrases that resonate with you the next time you're out.

3. Sensory walking

This adaptation to walking meditation is simple and only requires a real alignment of our five senses as we move through the space. When we enter the present moment with our senses, we can truly enjoy the precious moments that we have to be outdoors and on the move, and everything that surrounds us. Our senses keep us grounded in the present moment, while our thoughts drift to the past or future.

First, keep your eyes still while walking and watch as the view changes as shapes and objects move in and out of sight.

Next, focus only on the soles of your feet, noticing the different sensations there as the surface changes.

Then, focus on the sound. Those sounds of your own footsteps, and the ever-changing sounds of the world around you as you move.

Finally, focus on the smells and tastes in the air and how they change depending on your location.

4. Body Awareness Walking

When you walk, you can try to focus your consciousness on various parts of your body, just like a body scan in motion.

When you walk, first put your awareness on your feet and focus on the soles of your feet.

After about 20 steps, or a block or 5 minutes, shift your consciousness to your ankles and calves.

After you've been there for a few minutes, just focus on the bend of your knees.

Then focus your attention on the sensations and movements of your hips.

After a while, focus your attention on your hips and shift your awareness to your hands and arms, falling naturally or swinging to your sides.

You may then turn to awareness of the sensations in your torso, including the heart and lungs in your body, and perhaps see if they have changed.

After focusing on the torso for a few moments, shift your attention to the neck and shoulders.

Finally, pay attention to your head moving with each footstep and a slight up-and-down movement.

Continue to scan your body as you walk, noticing how sensations change as you walk.

5. Appreciative walking

Drawing attention to the beauty of our surroundings is another way to be consciously aware of walking and to truly shift our perception of the world from "negativity" or inherent pessimism to positivity and beauty. Various experiments have found that when we walk, focusing on the beauty around us tends to have a lasting effect on our mood long after we rest, similar to how other gratitude and appreciation practices work.

This study was inspired by another walking exercise: when we walk, simply notice the beauty of the world around us. It could be a tree that is beginning to bloom, a particularly beautiful axis of light, a house or a car that is painted in your favorite color. While on your walk, pay attention to one positive thing on a regular basis – something beautiful, something funny, maybe even an act of kindness – along the way. Write them down in your journal, share them with your family when you return, or share them with others online.

If you follow the same route every day, you can also choose to focus on the changes you encounter. Pay attention to each day, as the seasons gradually change, so do the sights, sensations, and even smells and sounds. What new things do you discover every day while walking, and how about different times of the day or weekends compared to weekdays?

6. Observational walking

You can also bring your own walking emotional experience into consciousness. Pay attention to your emotional reactions to everything (and everyone) around you, especially when people and things are close to your personal space. This can bring a little sense of self when you pass someone else, or a slight pleasure when you step into the sun, and then a slight fear when a hill approaches.

The reverse way to explore our emotions is to notice how our emotions affect how we walk and see, and vice versa. How does your emotional state change your movements, what you see, or how you react, depending on whether you are happy or sad, calm or anxious, depressed or relaxed?

You can even do this on purpose: shift gears and try to walk as if you were scared or anxious. Then walk as if overwhelmed by shame, or as if you are distracted. After that, try to walk confidently and return to your own rhythm and gait if you can still find one. Reflect on all of this and notice where your normal walking pace will take you on the spectrum of emotions and emotions.

You may notice that the way you walk affects how you perceive your surroundings. For example, when you walk with sadness, you may see less because your eyes are downcast. Or maybe you've noticed that you actually feel more confident when you walk confidently, which you might do if you knew Amy Cuddy's research and the science of "power poses."

(5P Medical APP: A leader in the development of mindfulness science in the Chinese region.) ）