Keep calm and meditate

Not everyone has the luxury of spending the festive season with family and friends, celebrating a year filled with achievements or without any personal stress.

For those who have no family and lots of problems, this time of the year is extremely stressful, which is why there has never been a better time to try to reduce personal stress, so that you can approach 2017 refreshed and ready to face its challenges.

“Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an adaptation of the Buddhist practice of mindful meditation for modern health-care that has been linked to reductions in anxiety, depression, stress, irritability and exhaustion, and improvements in general mood, concentration, focus, emotional stability and sleeping patterns,” said Dr Colinda Linde, a clinical psychologist at the Akeso Clinic.

This treatment involves deliberately paying attention to what one is experiencing at any given time, and at the same time attempting to remain aware and focused on that experience, both physically and emotionally, without passing judgement on the experience. The emphasis is on remaining in the present, wherever that happens to be and whatever you may be experiencing.

There are many forms of meditation and different forms will work for different people. It is good to try various mediation and mindfulness practices to help you find the method that best works for you.

As a starting point, here are five tips to begin mindfulness meditation:

• Sit down: Wherever you are sitting, simply become aware of the feeling of yourself on the seat, what parts of your body are touching the seat and how it feels to do nothing differently or feel you should alter your position. Do this for two minutes – simply being aware without judging.

• Breathing: You are breathing all the time, so this can be done anytime and anywhere. Breathing naturally through your nose, simply focus your attention on the feeling of the air coming in and going out of your nostrils. Observe what it feels like, take note of whether the air being breathed in is a little cooler than the breath going out, and consider which part of your nostrils the air flows in and out of. You can also mentally follow the breath down as far as possible.

• Eating mindfully: use your senses to observe the shape, colour, and texture of a piece of food. Then smell it, touch and handle it, and bring it to your mouth. Nibble a little of the food, noticing the way it feels when you take the bite. Move it around your mouth, savouring all the flavours, then notice the urge to swallow and follow the food down.

• Mindfulness with an object: Pick up an object in your surroundings and look at it and handle it as if you were two-year-old who had never seen it before. Really allow your mind to absorb itself in exploring the object, without judgement or expectations.

• Actively listen: When you are talking with someone, really listen to what they are saying, listen to each word and each nuance. So often we tune out, waiting for them to be quiet so we can speak, or thinking how what they are saying is relevant to us, while not being really interested in how it is meaningful for them.

• Last but not least: When starting to learn meditation, remember that the mind is like a puppy – it wanders and tends to be undisciplined until it has been trained. Training your mind is not unlike training a puppy – be consistent, be gentle. Judgmental screaming only scares puppies and it will never encourage the mind to learn a new skill either.

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