Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by concentrating on the present moment while calmly accepting the feelings and thoughts that come to you. It is a technique to help you relax and increase awareness of the present.
Mindfulness-based practice may help improve anxiety, stress, depression, and fatigue in children with a serious illness or chronic disease. Because the brain is still developing during childhood and adolescence, introducing mindfulness techniques at a young age could have lasting benefits.
Mindfulness has shown promise in these areas:
Types of mindful skills include sitting meditation, visualizations, and mantras.
The purpose of body scan mindfulness exercise is simply to notice your body. It is not necessarily about relaxing your body, however this may occur as a kind of side effect. It is simply about being aware of your body, in the present moment.
Sitting meditation is a mindful attention on breaths or rising and falling of abdomen with nonjudgmental awareness of thoughts and distractions flow through the mind.
Visualization helps keep your focus and can help the mind from wandering. It can help keep your mind engaged in your goal of slowing your thoughts when clearing your mind feels like too daunting a task.
Mantra is a sound vibration through which we mindfully focus our thoughts, our feelings, and our highest intention. Mantras are deigned to bring you into a state of deeper presence and awareness and can be used during meditation. Mantras can be repetitions of words, phrases or sounds.
"I find it useful to be mindful when I work with kids as a staff chaplain. Mindfulness means being fully in the present moment without making judgments. A big part of mindfulness is not judging how you feel. You can have emotions and be aware of them, but they don't have to control you."
It can be beneficial to make mindfulness part of your daily life. Here are some ways to use mindfulness:
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The Together by St. Jude™ online resource does not endorse any branded product or organization mentioned in this article.
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Submitted: November 2021
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