Five Steps To Start Practicing Mindfulness

To begin practicing mindfulness, you need to learn some basic ideas. Don’t worry though, they are not complex at all. The key to starting this technique is found in the words of Amit Ray, “If you want to master the anxiety of life, live for the moment, live in breath after breath.”

Mindfulness involves meditation and self-observation, but it also requires that we put our five senses into practice in our daily lives. These ideas may seem a bit abstract, but they are not.

To start practicing mindfulness, one needs to understand certain main ideas

José María Doria has written books such as Las 40 puertas , and in his texts he explains the basics for starting to practice mindfulness. By reading the words of this author, we discover that self-observation requires full presence. You must therefore train yourself to live only in the present and not in the future. It is therefore important to throw away prejudices and focus on the here and now.

What mindfulness focuses on is the spread and abstraction of the mind. If we spend hours thinking about what will happen tomorrow, we will have lost everything that happens in the present, and when the morning arrives, we will waste that time wondering what will happen the next morning. And thus we lose ourselves in a great endless circle, and life flows away like drops of water between our fingers.

According to mindfulness, happiness is not found in the future but “here and now”. Therefore, this should be valued above all else, right now the moment you read these words. You need to be aware of this.

Mindfulness requires meditation and focus

It is important to remember that meditation is a necessary technique for practicing mindfulness. It is necessary to be aware and present, to be able to observe everything that happens, without intervening and only exercising one’s own consciousness.

When we have been able to observe ourselves and meditate, we must think about daily life. In other words, we must try to avoid those non-connected occasions where we behave as if we were robots. Doria herself explains that even peeling an onion requires one’s full attention and concentration.

If you think you can stop behaving like a robot sometimes, then you already have the first cornerstone to start practicing mindfulness. So what do we do then? There are 5 basic steps that you need to follow. We will explain them to you below:

Stop and observe

In the first step, you should stop and observe yourself. In other words, stop for a while, be aware of what is happening in your body and what is going through your mind. Focus on the tasks you performed and the feelings you get. In this way you will come out of the unconscious and you will let your mind relax.

Take a step back

Another way to observe is to take a step back. In this case, we must try to see ourselves as we observed our own lives. Take a step out of your mind and look at it from the outside to become more aware of how you are. Do not stay too long in this “observer mode”, but it is good for you to know how to quickly get in and out of this mode. In some situations, it can enrich the perspective on which you approach different situations and problems.

Return to the present

Doria’s third tip for starting to practice mindfulness requires a periodic return to consciousness. He suggests that we set an alarm several times a day to remind ourselves of the importance of stopping, breathing consciously, and then returning to what we did.

Breathe

Here, Doria points out the need to perform a special activity daily, which consists of taking 40 breaths in a completely conscious way. Count each breath as you exhale, and do not vary the rhythm, which helps the mind to remove tensions and negative thoughts and anxieties that you have had to go through during the day.

Accept your new thoughts and feelings

When you are aware of yourself, emotions and thoughts will enter your mind constantly, and if you do not handle them well, many will try to distance you from this state of well-being. Whether they are good or bad, you should welcome them and listen to them. According to Doria, it’s good to be grateful for everything that comes your way.

Does mindfulness seem interesting to you? These five steps will be essential for you to learn how to observe yourself, meditate and manage your daily life. The benefits of this technique will be clear when you practice each of them.