mindfulness

How Walking Can Help Manage Our Stress Levels

We welcome back Rebecca Brown, a translator and avid traveller, a book worm and horror flick enthusiast. Her job has given her the amazing opportunity to travel to dozens of countries around the world, and then write about them on Rough Draft. This time around, Rebecca covers how walking can help us to manage our stress levels.

The physical effects of walking are well known to us all – it increases our cardiorespiratory fitness, bone and muscle strength, as well as endurance. At the same time, walking contributes to fat reduction and better weight management, thus reducing the risk of many chronic diseases.

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Can Mindfulness Keep Us Safe From COVID-19?

Huge thanks to our resident guest author, Tim. In this piece, he opens up for discussion and consideration the hot topic of COVID-19 and the impact on our wellbeing the global shutdown can create.

If you’re hoping for a universal aspirin then it’s a pretty daft question, really, because it can and it can’t. It can’t stop you from becoming infected with COVID-19, nor can it mitigate the infection should we be unlucky enough to contract it. But we can look at the things we can do mindfully to make our lives easier.

By staying mindful we can keep ourselves level headed and calm. [Read more…]

Make 2019 the year you stop waiting for it to be okay!

As another year ends, we can be grateful.

Some, however, will not be feeling a desire to express gratitude as 2018 was yet another year of psychological pain and turbulence. They wonder if these symptoms will ever leave – and peace and non-suffering will ever come to them.

We know there will always be suffering but to what extent, is in our own hands. The world may often be chaotic, but we can remain separate from that chaos if we elect to skilfully and mindfully observe more, and judge less.

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5 Benefits of Listening to Music During Meditation

We are continuing with the theme of music and adding a little mindfulness meditation with our guest, Marquis, highlighting the benefits of combining music with meditation.

Meditation is a way of expression that increasingly finds its place in scientific research. The practice has numerous benefits and one of these benefits is to release the mind and body from negative emotions. It can help us to be more resilient when it comes to depression or anxiety, it can help slow down the ageing process and contribute to our overall happiness. Similarly, music is something that can bring a reassuring and relaxing feeling as when we listen to music we begin to feel pleasant changes in our body! [Read more…]

What to do if your brain is wired for negative thinking?

When I think of the changes I’ve gone through since childhood, it really does show how malleable the mind is to patterns of ways of thinking, behaviours and being. I think we can connect neural pathways to create more or less positive/negative thinking and bias. Kristin Savage covers this topical subject and provides some excellent tips on how we can deal with negative thinking. She has had a most colourful career in writing for Pick Writers as she majored in Germanic Languages, speaks German and Dutch fluently and is now studying Spanish and planning to obtain her PhD in Applied Linguistics since she is interested in how to use language processes in everyday life.

Do you frequently catch yourself thinking negative thoughts? Do you tend to see everything in the worst possible light? Do you beat yourself up over your mistakes? No one can think positively all the time, but to lead a more contented life, it’s important for us to break any negative thinking patterns we may have. [Read more…]

How Meditation Makes Senior Living Easier

As I grow older, I’m much more aware of the importance of keeping a healthy and active mind. Over the last few years, in a professional capacity, I also see the concerns of my clients as they are much more aware also. It seems we all want to know how we can reduce our chances of contracting dementia and keeping active mentally, not just physically. So, this overview from our guest Holly, of how meditation can help us, is thought provoking not only for seniors but also for those of us approaching our senior years to appreciate how living mindfully and meditating can help us build a foundation now.

Transitioning from working full time to retirement, and living in a senior home, comes with a lot of challenges, and many seniors find it very overwhelming and stressful. However, meditation is a wonderful tool that can be used to reduce some of this stress and make life easier and more comfortable. I’m going to touch on how meditating for a few minutes each day is often enough to help keep us centred and how it can help us approach our day with more focus and confidence. [Read more…]

About those sticks and stones…

Another wonderful piece from our resident guest writer, Tim, sharing some family history and touching on how being mindful has played a part when encountering and revisiting events. Sit back, read and enjoy.

The names, you know, they can hurt me, hurt you. And that hurt is harder to heal than a broken bone.

At work yesterday I had to listen to a man who declared himself to be 70 years old. He was opining that the UK needed to leave the EU because, in his words, “It is full of East Germans and Jews!”. Because my work is 100% customer service, I chose to listen to his bigotry rather than challenge him on it. In my own time I can challenge folk, but in the firm’s time I work to uphold their interests. [Read more…]

Ways to Improve Non-Verbal Communication

As you know by now, body language and communication is a topic that I find intriguing. It’s an area that I am much aware of especially when working with my clients. So, this infographic illustrating non-verbal communication and how we can improve it, is of great interest to me.

One of the last ones on the list, Be Mindful of Your Face, is of particular interest as it says a 2012 study found that one of the first things that people notice are facial expressions. This is also an area that can affect our tendency to automatically judge one another. However… [Read more…]

14 Ways to Benefit from ‘Alone Time’

There are so many negative connotations when we hear the word ‘alone’. However, ‘being alone’ or ‘alone time’ can provide great benefits and contributes to our emotional wellbeing. For some time I have been a great advocate of ‘mindful walking‘ as a way to engage in some physical exercise and make space so we can reflect (maybe even allow for some problem-solving), feel the ground beneath our feet, smell the air and listen to the sounds around us – in effect ‘see’ or become aware of what is around us. It’s this awareness that leads us to give attention to ‘the present moment’ and ‘being mindful’. [Read more…]

The Year-end Post from Counsellor Bob Brotchie

It’s probably fair to say 2017 was another turbulent year for humanity! Driven by their own sense of inadequacy, copycat terror was once again evident as individuals and groups tried to force those of democracy and of opposing views to cow down to the radical and extreme (non) faiths and ‘beliefs.

Where there is disaster, look for the helpers. Click To Tweet [Read more…]