The stressed girl's guide to mindfulness

I am generally aware of what the concept of mindfulness is and I will be the first to stand up and say that it makes sense. I can see how it can help de-stress and relax you among numerous other benefits yet I can't say that I've ever actually practised it. I know I'm stressed most of the time and I seem to accumulate reasons to be stressed on a daily basis so I am always rushing and worrying about time, money, my life, my weight, my diet. You name it, I have probably dedicated some time to getting stressed about it. There is little to no mindfulness in my life at present, I practically inhale my food, I don't give myself the space to sit and think because if I'm sitting I'm usually switching off using tv or a book to block out the many things that keep up late worrying.

The beauty of meditation now is that it doesn't have to be done in a dark room chanting 'om' for an hour even though I think that's probably a pretty close approximation to how my father does it. Not that I've ever caught him in the act. It would probably feel stranger than the time I walked in on my parents doing yoga together in the living room. It was just all a bit odd. Anyway now you can meditate while you walk, drive, run or just sit quietly. I however have great difficulty in quieting my mind for any period of time. I do find running can be calming but the trouble is I hate running with a fierce passion so I tend to avoid it as much as I can. While walking I either get lost in a daydream and totally forget what I'm supposed to be doing or it's like I'm endlessly making a to do list in my head and as for driving, well I do try to drive with the radio off so I have more space for thinking but sometimes I find I forget where I am when I do that. This morning on the drive to Clonmel I was thinking about something I could bake if I only bought some coconut sugar and I got an awful fright when the car in front of me slowed down dramatically to turn left and I wasn't exactly prepared.

For those reasons and more, I have generally been a bit dismissive of the whole meditation practice. Sure why don't I stay stressed, it's not like it's doing me any harm unless you count interrupted sleep, bad eating habits, increased cortisol levels (which helps keep fat on my tummy) and generally feeling like a bit of a basket case. It seems though lately that everyone wants me to meditate, I am not going to go so far as to say it's a conspiracy but it's starting to feel that way. Both of my parents have separately said it to me on several different occasions but more so lately and then today I was in my local health food store seeking the advice of the new herbalist working there about candida and anything that might help just balance me out and mid conversation he asks me if I'm particularly stressed and I mutter something about maybe a little bit. Apparently he could tell looking at my eyes because my iris's were completely blown. Damn eyes, I guess they really are the window to the soul.
Anyway he was recommending an app called headspace which I'm sure I've had before but never really used (which tends to make it less effective or so I'm lead to believe) and I'm thinking maybe I should look into this before customers in work start approaching me and urging me to meditate.

I'm going to start with baby steps in the right direction because anyone who knows me will know that I'm great for getting all gung ho about a particular idea and  I will give it my all for about a week and then abandon it because it was too time consuming, I wasn't making progress or it was just too damn hard. So I will download that app and maybe borrow my dad's copy of the little book of mindfulness and hopefully once my stress is down a manageable level, I can start getting the rest of my life sorted.

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