Joelle Jane Marshall

Article / Updated 07-07-2023

As with a lot of practices, mindfulness takes time to learn, understand, and incorporate into a daily routine. As with anything new, it will have its share of difficulties but they can all be overcome. Finding the time for formal mindfulness practice One of the most difficult things about mindfulness practice is finding the time to get into the habit of doing it. Like all daily habits, such as brushing your teeth, you will have had to learn how to get into it. Plan a time when you can reasonably fit it in to your daily schedule. Find whatever works for you. Try building it into your routine slowly and if you miss a couple of days, don’t berate yourself either. The habit will come. Finding the time for informal mindfulness practice You can bring informal mindfulness to the daily activities you were already doing. For example, you could try doing things with the opposite hand like brushing your teeth, showering, cooking and even cleaning. Make sure you give your full attention to the task at hand and remember that mindfulness is not about multitasking. Just let your mindful awareness be in the present moment. Staying awake during meditation Staying awake can also be quite a challenge when practicing mindfulness meditation. Everyone falls asleep sometimes, even Buddhist monks! Try experimenting with different times of day to practice or even try lying on the floor instead of your bed as long as you are comfortable. Avoid meditating last thing before bed as you will be more likely to fall asleep. You can also try changing your posture, for example, try the body scan meditation sitting on a chair rather than lying on a bed. Make sure you always get enough sleep and have a good sleep routine, otherwise you will always fall asleep in meditation if you are over tired. Keeping interested If you have got into a mindfulness routine and are comfortable in it, that is great! However, if the mindfulness you are doing always feels the same and continues to make you sleepy, it might be time to mix it up a bit. Try practicing with a friend, a local group, at a different time of day and try mixing up the meditation exercises you are doing. External distractions Distractions can be annoying, especially for a beginner. Try and find a quiet place to meditate if you can for at least ten minutes. If you can’t avoid the distraction, try opening up your attention toward it for a little while. Notice the volume, pitch and quality of the sounds you can hear. By opening up your attention you are no longer fighting the distraction and getting annoyed, you are allowing and accepting it, which is the essence of mindfulness. Becoming uncomfortable As you are sitting or lying still for quite long periods of time, you may start to experience discomfort. Discomfort is actually a great way to learn mindfulness, because mindfulness is about moving toward difficulties and accepting them. You may have itching, throbbing, stiffness, tension or some other sensation. Try bringing an attitude of curiosity to that sensation. What is the location, the shape and the color of it? Be as accepting and as curious as you can. Becoming bored Being bored is connected to low levels of energy and agitation with high levels of energy. Mindfulness is about a present moment awareness and therefore is about noticing both these states. Try bringing a sense of curiosity to your boredom. It is good to be aware and curious of your boredom when practicing, as otherwise it can prevent you from continuing with your meditation. Odd experiences At some point you may have an odd experience in your mindfulness experience. This could be feeling like you are floating, an odd dream-like state which one of my clients has reported feeling in the past, feeling itchy or restless and feeling very heavy. These are normal and will pass. If you can, allow the experience to unfold unless it gets too much. If it gets too much, you can stop and take a break and then go back to it. You are in control, not anyone else. If it helps, you can consider working this through with a mindfulness therapist. Difficult emotions arising Mindfulness is a powerful way of dealing with emotions. Because mindfulness shines a light and brings to the surface your present moment experience, strong emotions that you may have suppressed may become much more noticeable. If a strong, difficult emotion surfaces in your mindfulness practice such as deep sadness or severe anger, try being with the emotion instead of suppressing it. All emotions really want is to be felt. Then they will pass away just like every other experience. This may be easier said than done of course, but avoiding strong emotions just gives them power and influence over you. Difficult thoughts It is important to remember that your thoughts are not facts, they are just merely thoughts. In mindfulness people deal with thoughts using decentering techniques. This means we take a step back and see our thoughts as if we were an observer of them rather than attached to them. There are several ways of doing this like pinning your thoughts on clouds and watching them pass by, imagining you are on a train and watching the scenery out of the window and pinning your thoughts on it. Difficulties can be really disturbing when you avoid them and run away from them, but once you start to move toward them, the more they lose their hold over you.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-27-2016

Want to find out more about how to manage your anxiety with mindfulness? Look at the cheat sheet and discover the common causes of anxiety. Try a short mindfulness exercise that can help your anxiety. Explore ways of managing your anxious thoughts mindfully. Find out easy ways to be mindful each day. This cheat sheet will give you all the basics and is a fun way to get useful information fast!

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Although there is no known formula that can cause anxiety in adults, environment, stress, genetics, upbringing and even modern day living can affect your anxiety. You may recognise the cause of your anxiety or you may not, as sometimes it can appear for no clear reason. Here I have outlined the common causes of anxiety. Genetics: Some studies have shown that anxiety may be caused by genetics. You may have recognised anxiety in a sibling or a parent. This is difficult to research as anxiety can be caused by external factors as well, such as low income or a stressful event that has affected the whole family. A specific gene that causes anxiety has not been identified. Stress: A little bit of stress is good, it keeps you motivated and helps you plan for the future. However chronic stress is not good and can lead to anxiety. Chronic stress can be caused by work troubles, relationship troubles, financial difficulties and social expectations. Thinking: Most anxiety is generated internally by your own thinking, but this is not your fault! Negative or worrying thoughts can easily spiral into a consistent stream of unhelpful thoughts, known as rumination. Childhood: Although the specific causes of anxiety are not known, there is a link between what happens in childhood and developing anxiety as an adult. It may be because you had an anxious parent and copied their behaviour, or you may have experienced abuse, an overly critical parent, an overly protective parent or there may have been alcoholism in the family or some other trauma. Self-perception: How you see yourself, your own perception of yourself, is vitally important. Most people are unaware of the stream of negative thoughts that go through their head and the nasty self-talk they give themselves. This can happen in the case of social anxiety where you feel like someone is judging your behaviour, your clothes and your looks. This negative self-talk is not factual and can be managed with mindfulness. Negative Media: People absorb a lot of information every day without realising whether it is positive or negative. Even though thousands of good deeds happen every day, most of them go unreported, while a lot of the news that is broadcast is negative. If you watch the news consistently and read newspapers, you may feel that the world is a horrible place to live in. This can cause anxiety because you may start to fear that the events on TV could happen to you and this can cause you to worry more. Social Media: Sites like Facebook and Twitter can cause anxiety for two main reasons. One is that they can make you feel inadequate and as if you have to ‘measure up’ to what your friends are doing. For example, friends post about a new house, marriage, new baby, car, new job or a luxury holiday and you may not have any of these at the moment. The second reason is that you are not making any real social connections. If you have anxiety, it’s important for you to go out, meet friends and boost your face-to-face social connections. Mobile phones: Having your phone switched on all day, so anyone can contact you at any time, can be stressful and cause anxiety because (like the phone!) you don’t switch off. When a work email comes through, you feel compelled to answer it at any time of the day and night. Technology should help alleviate your stress, not cause further anxiety.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Mindfulness isn’t about stopping thoughts, trying to suppress them or having a clear mind. Rather it is about bringing them to the surface with awareness and curiosity so you can manage them. Once you change your attitude and perception towards your thoughts, they can lose their power over you. Here are some quick exercises to manage your thoughts mindfully. Leaves floating down a stream: Take a few mindful breaths and imagine that you are standing by a stream. When you become aware of a thought, place it on a leaf and watch it float away downstream. Bubbles: Take a few mindful breaths and visualise bubbles floating through the air. Imagine your thoughts inside those bubbles, gently floating away. Clouds in the sky: Visualise clouds in the sky, floating high above you. When you become aware of a thought, place it on a cloud and watch it float away. Label your thoughts: When an anxious thought arises, try to label it if you can. Are you worrying, judging, planning or being self-critical? Thought or fact? Notice the thought that you are having. Is it a thought or a fact? Thoughts are just thoughts and are not necessarily facts. Write it down: Write down the thoughts that you are having. Sometimes just the very act of writing something down can feel like a release. Mountain Meditation: Imagine a tall and majestic mountain, standing strong in all seasons and all weathers. Now imagine yourself as this mountain, standing strong and tall. Imagine your emotions and thoughts are like the seasons, ever-changing and never permanent. They come and go, but you remain stable, balanced and grounded. You are unaffected by your thoughts and emotions, just like the mountain is unaffected by the seasons. Your true essence is remains constant, just like the mountain.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

It is likely that you are interested in mindfulness because you have heard that it can help manage your anxiety. As well as managing anxiety, mindfulness also has a range of other great benefits that you can enjoy, such as better relationships, greater emotional awareness, stress reduction, better overall wellbeing and feeling calmer and more peaceful generally. It will be helpful if you think about what you want to get out of mindfulness and how you are going to practise it. Intentions work hand in hand with mindful attitudes to help you if you encounter difficulties or struggle with certain aspects of the practise. For example, if you set an intention that you would like to have greater emotional awareness and less anxiety and you are willing to practice every day for at least ten minutes, you will have more chance of sticking to it because you have set an intention. If you are unsure of what you fully want to gain from practising mindfulness, you may find it difficult to get into the routine and the habit of engaging with the mindfulness exercises totally. It’s similar to starting a new exercise programme with a fitness coach or instructor. The instructor makes a plan for you and you follow it, knowing what you have to do each time and knowing what you want to gain from it whether it is losing weight or improving fitness or something else. If you randomly turn up at the gym with no clear intention of what you need to do or what you want to achieve, you are unlikely to stick at it for very long. Paradoxically, the actual practice of mindfulness itself is not about achieving anything. There are no real goals in mindfulness, only what is apparent in your present moment experience. However, you can still set an intention for the benefits you would like. It is important to note that setting an intention to rid your brain of all anxious thoughts for the rest of your life is going to be impossible and is not how mindfulness works. Mindfulness works by accepting, allowing and letting go. These anxious thoughts and feelings may still arise from time to time, but by practising mindfulness you will have a better understanding of how they work so you can manage them better in the future and their control over you will diminish.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

This mindfulness exercise is called STOP, which stands for Stop, Take a breath, Observe and Proceed. You can use it when you feel your anxiety start to arise. As it’s only a short meditation, it can be used anywhere; you don’t need to set aside 30 minutes of your time to sit still or lie down. Stop. If you are in the middle of something take some time to stop if you can. If you’re feeling anxiety but think you are too busy to stop, that’s when you really do need to stop and take a break. Take some mindful breaths next. If it helps, place a hand on your stomach and feel how it goes up and down as you breathe in and out. What you are doing now is focusing your attention on the breath and away from any emotions, thoughts and bodily sensations. Observe. When you are ready and you have focused your attention on your breath, start to become aware of all your bodily sensations. Concentrate particularly on any physical discomfort that you are having as a result of your anxiety. Bring a sense of acceptance to these sensations and see if you can allow them to be just as they are. Feel them the same time as your breath and try to bring kindness and warmth to them instead of judging them if you can. If you get lost, go back to the breath and use it as a support to help focus on these sensations. After you have observed your body for a while, move on to your emotions and your thoughts. Try to watch the thoughts as an observer and allow them to pass in their own time without forcing them. Proceed. Gently bring your attention back to whatever you were doing. As you bring your attention back into your physical world, try to focus on what you were doing with mindful attention if you can. For example, if you are sitting at a desk typing, engage with the sensations of feeling your fingers on the keyboard and the weight of your body on your chair. Just bring as much of a sense of acceptance and acknowledgment towards your feelings as you can, knowing that your feelings are temporary and will eventually go.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

When you have anxiety, you can use mindfulness to seek relief. It may seem that you have too much energy rather than too little and it may feel like your brain is in overdrive. This is because of the amount of adrenaline your body is releasing. However, anxiety causes low energy as well and this is because you use up all of your energy with anxiety and your body becomes more tired, much faster. If you want a great mental energy boost, try being mindful throughout the day. Remember that mindfulness is present moment awareness and when you think about the present moment, you are not wasting energy worrying about the future or dwelling on the past. In doing this, you are giving your brain a break from over-thinking. Your brain uses more energy than any other organ in your body, about twenty per cent of all the body’s energy combined. When you focus on the present moment, you are less likely to get caught up in the cycle of anxious or stressful thoughts, therefore giving one of the most vital organs in your body a well-deserved break. It may also be useful to monitor what happens with your energy levels throughout the day and identify activities that drain or boost your energy. For example, watching TV excessively may be a drain for you and taking the dog for walk may be a boost. Once you have identified mood boosters and mood drainers, you can start to take steps to incorporate more of the mood boosters into your routine and get rid of some of the mood drainers. Try also to manage your negative thinking. If you believe every negative thought and emotion that you have about yourself, you are likely to feel a lack of energy very quickly. Work on seeing your thoughts as just thoughts and remember that they are not necessarily true. Whenever you become aware of a negative thought, just take a step back and gently refocus on whatever you were doing with mindful attention. As stress usually goes hand in hand with anxiety and is also a big drain on your energy, make sure you also adopt formal mindfulness meditations such as the body scan meditation. This will reduce your stress levels and allow you to have more general energy throughout the day. All mindfulness meditations are helpful with boosting energy because they can help reduce anxious and worrying thoughts, help you accept the experience that you are having rather than engage in the fight or flight mode and, as a helpful side effect, ease muscular tension.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

As well as doing long formal mindful meditations, such as the body scan and the sitting meditation, there are informal meditations that you can easily fit into your routine on a daily basis. Incorporate these with everyday activities that you already do. Brushing your teeth: This can be done in a mindful way. Feel the sensations of the brush on your teeth, smell the smell of the toothpaste and use your opposite hand to feel all the sensations in your arm and hand as you brush. Showering: Feel the temperature of the water on your skin, the sensation of the texture of the sponge or shower gel on your skin, smell the shower gel, listen to the sound of the water. Cleaning: Feel the sensations in your body as you vacuum or scrub, listen to the sounds of the vacuum on the carpet or the sponge on a surface. Feel all the different textures of the different surfaces you come into contact with. Smell all the different smells, if they are not too unpleasant! Mindful Listening: Engage with the sounds you can hear. Notice if your mind puts a label on them. Be aware of the pitch, the volume and the quality of each sound. Listen to the silence between and underneath all sounds. Let sounds come to you without reaching for them. Mindful Swimming or Exercising: Before you do any exercise such as swimming or anything else, take a few mindful breaths. Engage with all the sensations in your body as you do the activity. Connect with the experience of the exercise. If your mind wanders off, gently bring it back to whatever exercise you are doing with full attention. Mindful Cooking: Begin with a few mindful breaths. If your mind wanders, bring it back to the breath. Feel the texture of all the food you are cooking if you can. Listen to the sounds of chopping, slicing, cracking eggs or whatever you may be doing. Smell all the different aromas that are coming from the food. Feel all the sensations in your body as you continue to cook. Make sure the TV is switched off and you have full attention on the meal you are preparing. If your mind wanders off, then gently guide it back to what you were doing. Mindfully being in nature: Spend time in nature. Enjoying the beauty of nature can take you off automatic pilot and into the present moment. Engage with the nature around you, breathe in the fresh air and look at the scenery or the animals. The more present you are, the less time you will have for anxious and unhelpful thoughts. If you live in a busy city and nature is hard to find, consider keeping an allotment, a pet or even just a plant that you can focus on and nurture. Mindful eating: Take a few mindful breaths. If you can, pick up the food that you are going to consume. Study the surface area of the food. Feel the texture of the food and the weight of it in your hand. Bring the food towards your lips. At what point can you feel yourself start to salivate? Place the food in your mouth feeling the weight of it on your tongue. Move it around your mouth with your tongue. Then bite into it, engaging with all sensations as the flavour is released and you start to chew. Continue eating your food in a mindful way. Drinking tea mindfully: Ideally do this with decaffeinated or herbal tea. Place your tea bag in your cup and add hot water. Watch the rising steam and notice any smells. Feel the warmth of your cup as you pick it up. Engage with all the sensations including taste as you drink your tea. If your mind wanders off, gently bring it back.