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Make 5 Minutes for Mindfulness

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mindfulness-meditation

Try this today
  • Find a comfortable upright seated position on a chair or on the floor. Sit in a position that will be comfortable for three to five minutes. 
  • Close your eyes or lower your eyelids and let your gaze fall to the floor about a foot in front of you.
  • Notice how your body feels. Feel your weight on the seat or the floor. 
  • Take a few long, slow, deep breaths. On your next deep breath, imagine that the oxygen you bring in is giving life to your body. As you exhale, feel the sensation that you are becoming more relaxed.
  • Next, feel those sensations throughout your body: Your bottom pressing into the seat, your back against the chair, your hands resting on your thighs, your hair touching the back of your neck. 
  • Move your attention to your shoulders. Are they tense or tight? Let them soften and relax. 
  • Shift your focus to your arms. Move from your biceps to your forearms, from your wrists to your hands, then your fingers — releasing the tension as you go. 
  • Move your focus to your stomach. Is it tense or tight? Let it soften and relax. 
  • Continue your mental body scan through your legs, feet and toes. Keep breathing deeply, slowly and steadily as you go. 
  • Once you’ve covered the entire length of your body, slowly open your eyes.
Why
  • Be present. Concentrate on the present moment, from your breathing to your body.
  • Take deep breaths. As you exhale, you may feel yourself becoming more relaxed.
  • Stay loose. Scan your muscles and work on releasing any tension.

 

Stress can be … stressful. It can keep you from storing a new memory and from retrieving one that’s already there. The reason? Our bodies release specific hormones that give us the wherewithal to manage stressful moments. That’s good, for example, if you’re crash-landing an airplane, but if you’re always feeling stressed, those chemicals can interfere with the creation of new memories.

 

One way to reduce stress is a meditation practice called mindfulness-based stress reduction. With mindfulness meditation, you focus completely on the present moment — your breathing, the sensations you feel in your body — and stop focusing on the things that make you stressed. Eight weeks of mindfulness meditation can help brain function, connectivity and stress management. To start, try it for just five minutes. You’ll do a classic beginner’s mindfulness exercise called a “body scan.” This version is adapted from UCLA’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Center.

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