Speaker 1: So what I'm going to be talking about is so simple that every single person watching this video can start a daily mindfulness practice starting from today.

Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Toshada. I'm from Mumbai, India. My favorite self-care activity is calligraphy. Welcome to Psych Diaries.

Speaker 1: Hi, welcome. Nice to meet you. My name is Ro. I'm a psychologist from Sydney, Australia. And today we're going to talk all things mindfulness. Before we get started, I am mindful of the fact that I'm sweating. So be right back. So this video is going to be a complete beginner's course, we're going to strip away all the fancy bits of mindfulness. And it's going to be for people maybe who have never had a mindfulness practice or people who find themselves getting into it and then continuously falling off the bandwagon because it feels too overwhelming. There's too much involved and you have that feeling of like, oh, I just can't be bothered. So my goal is that every single person watching this video can have a daily mindfulness practice because I am going to keep it so simple. Mindfulness was originally started in the Eastern philosophies, Buddhism, and it was brought to the West by people who started to practice it. And then now mindfulness is completely secular, which means that we've taken the religious parts out of it. So there's thousands and thousands of studies on the effects of mindfulness and how it can benefit us. Just to name a few, there's, you know, reduction in stress, improvements in working memory, reduction in worry and rumination. I think people who practice mindfulness generally describe the sense of feeling a little bit more free and light and not as easily dragged away by their emotions. For most of my clients, I will have at least one session where I talk about starting some sort of regular mindfulness practice. So in its simplest, simplest form, mindfulness is just bringing our awareness to the present. That might be connecting with our senses, your sense of touch, taste, sound. It could be connecting to your breath, which is often what we recommend starting with because we're always breathing. And I think one good way of demonstrating it is just to draw a diagram of what this kind of looks like and what our brain does. So essentially, we have the now, the future and the past. And what usually happens is we have a bit of this pattern where we're concentrating on the present and then we kind of go to the future. You know, I wonder what I'm having for lunch. Oh, my gosh, did I actually pack that in my bag? And then we kind of come back to the present. So that might look a little bit like that. And then we have moments where we kind of go, oh, my gosh, I see Olivia over there. Oh, what did I say to her last week again? Oh, my gosh, that was so embarrassing. I can't believe I did that. I really hope I don't do that again. Come back to the present and then we might drift to the future again. What is going to happen during that test next week? Am I going to do OK? What happens if I fail it? Oh, my goodness. Am I going to have to tell my parents about that? And then our brain does something a little bit like this. So it goes between the past and it goes into the future as well. We could say that if we spend all of our time thinking about the future, all the things that could go wrong, catastrophizing, we might say that's worry and anxiety. And if we spend all of our time in the past thinking about all of our past failures and things that we screwed up, we might actually characterize that as like depression or depressive thinking. And the idea is that we don't want to spend too much time in the past or the future. We want to spend most of our awareness in the present moment, the here and now. Mindfulness is about reconnecting to the present moment, bringing our awareness back in, because it's the only time that we can enact change. And if we really want to live life and be present and enjoy life like we have to be here, we have to be aware of it. I think all of us have had experiences of being undermindful and sometimes they're helpful. You know, for a long car ride, maybe you were thinking about what you're going to make for dinner, riding on the bus to school and you're thinking about, you know, the party that you had last weekend, reflecting on how fun it was. There are times when being not so mindful is fine. But if we spend too much of our time being dragged into the future, dragged into the past, then we're not really living our life, are we? I think with technology and social media, it makes it really easy to not be mindful because there's no need to actually just sit there and look around and be mindful of our thoughts. I'm going to give you three very, very simple practices to increase your ability to bring your awareness back. So mindfulness is not about clearing your mind of thoughts or like forgetting everything and having a blank slate. Mindfulness is just the practice of noticing when our mind is drifted and to gently, non-judgmentally bring it back in. So it is not a failure if you notice that your mind is drifted. That's what minds do. Just notice, oh, we've drifted and just gently bring your awareness back to the present moment. And the act of mindfulness is not how long we can stay in the present moment. Successful mindfulness is just being able to notice and bring back, notice and bring back. It's like going to the gym. Over time, you start to build those mindfulness muscles and you get better at noticing when your mind is drifted and you get better at being able to detach and come back to the present moment. We are always going to have thoughts. We are always going to have emotions. That's just, that's human. And so if you were like, oh, I haven't thought about anything in the last half an hour, I would be rather concerned. The idea is not that we just don't have thoughts. We are aware of the thoughts. We know the thoughts are passing by, but we're just better able to detach from them. And there are several metaphors that people use, such as you're standing on the train station. Thoughts are like trains. Instead of hopping on every train and like going down that pathway, you just kind of notice that the trains are passing by. So I have three techniques I want to teach you that are simple and anyone can do. First one is called the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And this is a really good, it takes like 30 seconds to a minute. It connects you with your five senses and it's a really good reset. If you just want something quick, you've noticed that your mind's drifting, it's kind of difficult to touch. You just want to kind of ground yourself in your body again. The idea is that we look around whatever space that we're in and we pick five things that we can see. I see this leaf, a lamp, water bottle, tissues, and carpet. I think that's five. And then four things that you can touch. And I don't need you to like reach out and touch things. I just want you to be aware and start tuning into your body and the sensations that you can feel. So for instance, I can feel my foot digging into my sock and it's causing a bit of pain. I can feel the pressure of me sitting on this cushion. I can feel my hair resting against my shoulders. And I can feel my nose tickling. Then three things that you can hear. I can hear my clock ticking, the kind of gentle pattering of rain. Oh, and I can hear like a very, very distant voice out in the corridor. Two things that you can smell. I'm a little congested. I'm a little congested. I can smell like cotton, like clothes, I guess. And I can kind of smell, it smells a bit like rain. And finally, one thing that you can taste. I don't really know how to describe the taste of saliva, but saliva. And what I love about the 5-4-3-2-1 is it's simple, everyone can do it, you can do it anywhere, anytime, it's quick. And also it's pretty impossible to do it while concentrating on some other thought. Like I physically can't do the 5-4-3-2-1 and tune into what I'm feeling and hearing if my thoughts are drifting. So that's number one. Second thing is informal or casual mindfulness. And this is the idea that I tell to pretty much every client if they come in with reservations about mindfulness, or they say, I've tried it before, it doesn't work for me, I hate it. It's literally just being mindful of your life. You don't need to set aside any extra time, you don't need to have a space or any tools for it. You literally just bring your awareness back to things where you normally wouldn't. So for instance, if you are drinking a morning cup of coffee, and that's usually when you start scrolling on Instagram, I'd like you to put your phone down and just notice how the cup feels in your hands, notice is it warm, is it cold, notice the taste of whatever you're drinking, notice the sensation of it in your mouth, as you swallow, if you feel it, notice the smells, notice is it thick, is it liquidy, notice what you're seeing, and you can do that in a minute. When you first start doing it, it's really weird, it's really surreal. You start noticing houses and shops, the streets that you've walked by for years and never noticed, and it's a really trippy experience. Just once a day, take one or two minutes to just tune in and be mindful of your daily activities. And the third one, this is for those who want a little bit more of a challenge, if the first two you've got under wraps and you kind of want to progress to the next level, it's mindfulness of breath. And before everyone kind of freaks out, it's not sitting here and doing any long type of meditative practice. What often happens is people start wanting to control the breath, and so you hear guided meditations going breathe in and then relax and breathe out, but everyone has different lung capacities and we breathe at different rates and it doesn't really make sense to have to follow a particular pattern all the time. Sometimes it's helpful, but we're not going to talk about that type. Today, I want to just talk about literally just bringing your awareness to your breath. So don't try and control it, just notice it. You might notice that you're actually going like this. And that's okay. We're just noticing, non-judgmental. We don't need to change our breath. What often happens though is when we bring our awareness to our breath, the more time we spend being aware of it, it actually just naturally starts to slow down, smooth out and feel easier and easier. But how this is different to typical meditative practices is I don't need you to do anything with it. I don't need you to slow it down. I don't need you to breathe in through your stomach and breathe out through your nose. Just do whatever you were doing every second of the day because we're always breathing. Just keep breathing and just bring your awareness to your breathing. Go, am I breathing fast right now? Am I breathing slow? Does it feel deep? Does it feel shallow? I just want you to notice details and that's a really, really good starting point to just come back to the breath before you launch into like a serious meditative practice or do longer meditations. Like I said, I want to keep it super simple. Comment down below how it goes if you're interested in trying any of these or if you tried them and let me know how it goes. And as always, like this video if you got something out of it and subscribe to join me for more psychology videos. I have been kind of on and off the meditation train for years. And actually, I did like a 100-day mindfulness or meditation challenge last year and I was very public about it. It's on all my social media if you dig back. And I think after like around day 30, I had a breakup and then I used that as an excuse to just completely ditch the whole thing. But I didn't forget about mindfulness in an informal way. And so actually, probably starting this year, I've done daily mindfulness because even when I can't do a sit-down meditation, I will do my two minutes of concentrating on toothbrushing or one minute of walking down the street observing the bushes and the trees. Every single person can do mindfulness and I really encourage you just to give it a try, just to treat it like an experiment. And after you kind of get used to those really informal, casual ways of doing mindfulness, there's a whole range of guided practices, of longer-form mindfulness meditation practices. There's apps, there's books, there's so many resources out there. I hope I kept that quick and simple. Editing row, get on it. And thanks for watching. I'll see you guys next time. Bye. Mindfulness for Beginners www.mindfulnessforbeginners.com