Welcome to my first blog! The theme of this blog will be about generally improving wellbeing. I hope to inspire people to take better care of themselves in the hectic stressful world we live in. I am a busy mum of 2 girls, a wife to a very full on Personal Trainer and work 45 hours a week running my own company as well as supporting FitAgain. Oh and I am also pretty obsessed about running, swimming and cycling as well! These different domains of my life along with all the other things going on constantly clash and this creates tension and stress for everybody. I am sure all of you have similar conflicts going on in your life. I hope we can support each other in getting through daily struggles and come out stronger. My friend recently said: “There is no coping, just varying degrees of surviving”. If my blog can in anyway help us in surviving I am happy with that!
Is Mindfulness for me?
I am a mental health nurse and a general nurse so through this blog I also hope to bring in evidence based advice rather than just fads of the moment. I feel the best place to start is a short mindfulness practice. Most of us have heard or read about mindfulness by now, but how many of us actually practice mindfulness? I feel mindfulness (as well as exercise) is a good way of surviving modern living and gives us a chance of coming out on the other side. Mindfulness is a way of being in the present moment without thinking about the past or practicing for the future, in other words coming out of automatic pilot. The only way to bring mindfulness into the present moment is by doing mindfulness practice. Same with most things in life, the more we practice the better we get.
Let’s Practice some Mindfulness!
The practice I would like to introduce you to is the 3-step breathing space (3SBS). This practice only needs 2-3 minutes of your time. Perfect for fitting in before you do your daily fitness or FitAgain bootcamp class.
Stage 1 of the practice is to acknowledge what is going on in the present moment by asking:
What are my thoughts right now?
How do I feel right now?
Which body sensations do I have right now?
Stage 2 of this practice is to gather the attention to the breathing and pay attention to where you feel your breathing most vividly such as the chest, tummy or nostrils.
Stage 3 is to expand the focus of attention to the body as a whole and have a sense of yourself sitting or standing her in this present moment.
This practice is otherwise known as pocket mindfulness originally by Mark Williams which is an ideal short practice which can easily fit into a busy life. I don’t expect you to remember all the instructions above so I have made an audio track of a 3SBS for you to download to your devices and here is the link.
FitAgain are passionate about improving physical health as well as mental health so please keep an eye on www.fitagain.co.uk for our well being events.
Hope you enjoyed my first attempt at a blog!
