Mindfulness for busy professionals

Ashleigh Halpin – a HR and Mindfulness consultant who recently hosted a session for Lawscot Wellbeing during Mental Health Awareness Week – offers some further insight into mindfulness and how it can help with stress.

I love teaching busy professionals about mindfulness, as I’m also a busy professional and I practice and teach mindfulness in a way that’s easy to slot into our lives.  I recognise we don't all have 40 minutes a day to sit in a Buddha-like position to meditate, and the good news is we don’t need to do this to be mindful.

I got the opportunity to meet some of you in May at our mindfulness session during Mental Health Awareness Week.  If you attended, I hope you got some valuable take-aways from it, and if you didn’t attend, I know there will be a recording released soon.

There are two approaches to mindfulness, formal and informal practices.  The formal practice of mindfulness is mediation, which can take as little as three minutes a day using the three-step breathing space (which will be available in the recording of our recent session for you to watch back and use as many times as you like).

We also have the informal practice of mindfulness, and this can be done in so many ways.  I thought today I would share some informal mindfulness tips with you:

1. Mindful walking – this can be done by simply going out on your lunch break and taking in your surrounding using your five senses.  You can connect to the present moment by using your five senses and connecting to your feet in the motion of lifting, shifting and placing as you walk one foot in front of the other, paying particular attention to the art of walking.
   
   
2. Mindful movement – this can be done in any form of exercise. Mindful yoga may seem like the obvious one, but you can also be mindful while swimming, running and cycling.   Mindfulness simply means being connected to the present moment, and you can be mindful by connecting to the movement of exercise in the present.  In the past I have found swimming quite boring, but since using mindfulness I love swimming.  I would love for you to try it and let me know how you get on!
   
   
3. Mindful colouring – I know this may seem a bit simple and child-like but this is also a concept of mindfulness. It's about becoming more aware of our child-like behaviours, fun and playful behaviours, in the present. It’s about creating a place where we can relax and bring out the fun side of us, and even just for five minutes not have to worry about the daily stresses of our lives! I love nothing more than sitting down with my children and colouring in with them. So if you have children or not, have a go at mindful colouring!

If you would like to learn more about mindfulness and get some structured meditation in to your life, check out my eight week self-teach online course.

Stay mindful.

Ashleigh