Inner Space

mindfulness

Heavy Workload? How To Rest In A Busy Day?

A heavy workload and numerous deadlines would easily be one of the most stressful things about work. We live in an environment that demands quite a bit out of us and our ability. If you enjoy working to your fullest and find meaning in the work you do, then things are working out well for you. However, if you feel like work is hitting you even before you know it, and are caught up and pressurized, be assured, there are many others in the same boat! Well, sometimes, you cannot directly change the fact that you have a whole lot to do. However, you can, with gentle effort, try and make this just a little easier on yourself. We put up a post earlier that described 3 guidelines that would help you plan and anticipate your day better, to deal with a heavy workload.

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How to manage food cravings

Coping With A Craving For Food Through Mindfulness

The New Year has begun! Every new year brings along with it the vibe of a fresh start and of new beginnings. Perhaps, that’s how the whole idea of new year ‘resolutions’ came in. The philosophy behind resolutions seems to be to infuse us with freshness and zeal , to make one change that will see us being happier and healthier in the next year. Some of you may have made your resolutions and are probably trying to keep up with them. Many of us, throughout the year, attempt to form new habits or to break old ones. Both forming and breaking habits involve a whole lot of psychological connotations. For now, let’s pick one habit that many of us share a love-hate relationship with – a food habit. Just about any food habit. Be it a tendency to reach for the chocolate bars as soon as you reach home or munching on fries and wafers for hours together. The importance of eating healthy and caring about food habits stares us in the face everyday, through newspapers, the internet and somewhere, even through our own bodies. What does it take to break an unhealthy food habit? To deal with a craving for food? ‘Self-control’ is what intuitively comes to mind.

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5 minutes of silent meditaiton with the lamp

THE DIWALI LAMP… 5 MINUTES OF SILENT MEDITATION WITH IT

Diwali is here-a time of the year for festivity and rejoicing and I love all of that. The sweets, the gifts, the general feeling of gaiety and energy in the air-its invigorating.

There is another image, a slightly different one that also stays with me which I want to share with you. It is the image of the lamps burning away into the night, much after all the noise and the gaiety subsides.

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workload

2 WAYS OF HANDLING A HEAVY WORKLOAD: WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Dread getting up in the morning to go to work? Is it the heavy workload that repels you? Many of you probably think of deadlines and workload when you think of work. It’s true that today, work pressures have mounted tremendously. You may have a lot to pack into each day. Though dealing with pressured deadlines and a heavy workload is stressful because it demands a lot out of you, there is little option you are left with. Maybe you cannot change the fact that you have a lot to do at work, today and on most days. Yes, this is tiring and demanding. However, is there something you can do to make this situation just a little easier on yourself? Even if it means worrying just a little lesser about how you will manage or being a little clearer about how much you can do? Often these little efforts help in cutting out from the stress and lending you some more energy to cope with the day.

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Dealing with emotions and feelings mindfully

HOW TO BE MINDFUL?: EXERCISE 7 – DEALING WITH EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS

Okay! So here we come to the end of the Mental Health Week with our last post, and all along we have made it a week of mindfulness for you and for us.

As promised in the last post, we are taking you into somewhat deeper levels of mindfulness since the last two days. In today’s post we will work on mindfulness with emotions and feelings. As in the last six days, we will do a small exercise to help you observe your emotions, mindfully. But before the exercise a little bit more on observing emotions:

How can emotions and feelings be observed?

You know when you are happy, sad, angry, disappointed and so on… Well how do you know? Maybe you will quickly answer “I just know”! But this is mindfulness week remember? We do everything with a pause…so I Invite you to try to not answer immediately! Take a moment and think on how you know what you feel. Think before you go on reading…

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how to be mindful without labelling

HOW TO BE MINDFUL?: EXERCISE 6 – LOOKING WITHOUT LABELING

We have already discussed in our first post for the mental health week, the exercise of creating present moment awareness through looking, through isolating one sense at a time and focusing on it in order to be mindful, or in the present.

Most of you who have been following the posts this week we are sure are already into the mindfulness groove. Hence for the last two posts for the week, we take you a little deeper into the mindfulness experience. Before I introduce you to today’s exercise, just a little background..

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mindful muscle relaxation

HOW TO BE MINDFUL: EXERCISE 5 – MUSCLE RELAXATION

Back with the mindfulness exercise of the day – muscle relaxation. We usually associate mindfulness with relaxation. The idea of serenely experiencing the present, just as it is, without judging or evaluating the moment is soothing and relaxing.

Today, we will take this understanding forward and explain a relaxation technique which is about mindfully watching your body and relaxing it. We’ll call it, Mindful Muscle Relaxation. When most of us say relaxation, we mean relaxation of the mind. Even so, mental relaxation and bodily relaxation are not mutually exclusive. But more on that in a couple of days. For now, in this technique we will exclusively focus on relaxing the body, mindfully. Often our muscles have tensed up even without our knowledge. Pain in the head, back, shoulders is becoming increasingly common. This tension is the body’s way of coping with the continuous onslaught of stress. The body seems to prep up to deal with stress but rarely gets a moment of deliberate intentional letting go. Here is where mindful muscle relaxation can greatly help.

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mindfulness with children

HOW TO BE MINDFUL: EXERCISE 4 – MINDFULNESS WITH CHILDREN

You’ve been reading exercises on mindfulness since 3 days now. Hope you’ve tried some of the tips and techniques we suggested. If you have, you have surely felt some sense of peace while trying what we suggested. Today’s tip is based on mindfulness with children. Can children be trained to be mindful? Would they understand the concept and put it to practice? Yes, they can. If we introduce the concept of mindfulness to children in their way, using elements of their world, they will pick it up, gradually. In fact you’d be surprised to know how mindful children can be!!

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mindful eating

HOW TO BE MINDFUL: EXERCISE 3 – MINDFUL EATING

Mindful eating is a mindfulness exercise that sounds too simple to be true. Just think about it, “How can eating be mindful? And how can mindful eating help me in any way?” Let’s try to figure out ways in which food can be helpful in being more than just nutritious.

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This is an exercise of simple breathing meditation

HOW TO BE MINDFUL : EXERCISE 2 – BREATHING MEDITATION

Hi! Time for the next mindfulness technique – breathing meditation, or breath meditation.

This is an exercise that perhaps most of you may be familiar with. Typically it is called meditation through awareness of the breath. It’s the initial and simplest form of meditation.

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The Art of Listening