Just as the aim of mindfulness isn’t to relax the body, though this sometimes happens, so the aim of mindfulness isn’t to calm the mind, though this sometimes happens too.Your mind is like the ocean – occasionally wild, and at other times calm. Sometimes your mind goes from thought to thought without stopping to rest.

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.

Distractions – whether internal or external – are a part of mindfulness meditation. They go hand in hand. If you find yourself frustrated, criticizing the distraction and getting annoyed, feel it, let it be part of the mindfulness practice, and gently guide your attention back to the breathing or the focus of your meditation.

The digital age has brought huge benefits: from saving lives in emergencies, to sharing information with the world, the advantages are countless. But without mindfulness, living in the digital age can drive you crazy! If you don’t turn your phone or computer off from time to time, your attention can be completely hijacked by websites, incoming messages, social media, games and more.

Mindfulness is simple in essence — it’s about cultivating present-moment awareness more than anything else — but the difficulty is in practicing mindfulness consistently. This article gives you a series of short, easy ways of integrating the principles of mindfulness into your everyday life. ©Shutterstock/Patrick FotoDon’t underestimate their value – they may take relatively little time and seem overly simplistic, but many of these tips have been proven to be effective.

Flow is an essential element of mindfulness. Have you ever noticed that when you’re eating your favorite food, you forget all your worries and problems? The experience is so lovely that the sense of who you are, what you do, where you come from, and whatever the plan is for tomorrow all vanish for a moment. In fact, most pleasures that you engage in result in you letting go.

Whether you’re suffering from stress, fatigue, or illness or simply want to regain some balance in your life, mindfulness can help. These bite-sized chunks of hands-on advice will help increase your understanding of mindfulness, outline some short meditations, and provide enough information to enable you to inject mindfulness into your life.

Acceptance turns out to be one of the most helpful attitudes to bring to mindfulness. Acceptance means perceiving your experience and simply acknowledging it rather than judging it as good or bad. For some people, the word "acceptance" is off-putting — replace it with the word acknowledgement, if you prefer. For example, when you feel pain, whether it’s physical, such as a painful shoulder, or mental, such as depression or anxiety, the natural reaction is to try to avoid feeling the pain.

Anger can be healthy if the emotion is controlled and used sparingly. Mindfulness can help cool the unwanted, unhealthy anger. When is anger helpful? Healthy anger is good if you’re being treated unfairly, and need to become angry to ensure you’re treated justly and with respect. However, being out of control when you’re angry can cause tremendous harm both to yourself and to your relationships with others.