This is great. I enjoyed doing it. It helped me a lot to clear my mind and de-stress. thanks for the post! I love the exercises. But I wanted to question the suggestion that mindfulness clears the mind.

All one can do is focus the mind. Thoughts will come and go but mindfulness is turning back to the chosen focus.

Thank you, Thomson. Your email address will not be published. Notify me via e-mail if anyone answers my comment. Why Mindfulness Exercises? In this post I'm going to cover 6 exercises that take very little effort and can be done pretty much anywhere at anytime: Mindful breathing Mindful observation Mindful awareness Mindful listening Mindful immersion Mindful appreciation Let's get started… 6 Mindfulness Exercises You Can Try Today 1.

Mindful Breathing This exercise can be done standing up or sitting down, and pretty much anywhere at any time. Either way, all you have to do is be still and focus on your breath for just one minute.

Start by breathing in and out slowly. One breath cycle should last for approximately 6 seconds. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, letting your breath flow effortlessly in and out of your body. Let go of your thoughts. Let go of things you have to do later today or pending projects that need your attention.

Simply let thoughts rise and fall of their own accord and be at one with your breath. Purposefully watch your breath, focusing your sense of awareness on its pathway as it enters your body and fills you with life.

Then watch with your awareness as it works work its way up and out of your mouth and its energy dissipates into the world. If you enjoyed one minute of this mind-calming exercise, why not try two or three?

Mindful Observation This exercise is simple but incredibly powerful because it helps you notice and appreciate seemingly simple elements of your environment in a more profound way. Choose a natural object from within your immediate environment and focus on watching it for a minute or two.

This could be a flower or an insect, or even the clouds or the moon. Simply relax into watching for as long as your concentration allows. Look at this object as if you are seeing it for the first time.

Visually explore every aspect of its formation, and allow yourself to be consumed by its presence. Allow yourself to connect with its energy and its purpose within the natural world. Mindful Awareness This exercise is designed to cultivate a heightened awareness and appreciation of simple daily tasks and the results they achieve.

Mindful Listening This exercise is designed to open your ears to sound in a non-judgmental way, and indeed to train your mind to be less swayed by the influence of past experiences and preconception.

Close your eyes and put on your headphones. Try not to get drawn into judging the music by its genre, title or artist name before it has begun. Instead, ignore any labels and neutrally allow yourself to get lost in the journey of sound for the duration of the song.

Allow yourself to explore every aspect of track. Explore the song by listening to the dynamics of each instrument.

Separate each sound in your mind and analyze each one by one. Hone in on the vocals: the sound of the voice, its range and tones. If there is more than one voice, separate them out as you did in step 4. Mindful Immersion The intention of this exercise is to cultivate contentment in the moment and escape the persistent striving we find ourselves caught up in on a daily basis.

For example: if you are cleaning your house, pay attention to every detail of the activity. Rather than treat this as a regular chore, create an entirely new experience by noticing every aspect of your actions: Feel and become the motion when sweeping the floor, sense the muscles you use when scrubbing the dishes, develop a more efficient way of wiping the windows clean.

The idea is to get creative and discover new experiences within a familiar routine task. Who knows, you might even enjoy the cleaning for once!

Mindful Appreciation In this last exercise, all you have to do is notice 5 things in your day that usually go unappreciated. Have you ever properly acknowledged how these things benefit your life and the lives of others?

Have you ever thought about what life might be like without these things? Have you ever stopped to notice their finer, more intricate details?

Have you ever sat down and thought about the relationships between these things and how together they play an interconnected role in the functioning of the earth? Would you like to download these exercises in PDF format?

Get Email Updates Join 20, other mindful thinkers. Comments Enjoyed this! Hi, Reading your blog in itself is a deep mindfulness practise! Thank you.. Stillness, Azura. Thanks for sharing…. Mindfulness on every act of our life will give us more encourangement and creating new ideas.

Consise yet informative and applicable. Keep up the great work. used to think it was a load of crap but happy to try anything to release a higher consciousness.

good to remind myself that most of the time, life is only about small moments! Collectively all moments some times gives great result and great success. I like it.

Good but choice with mindfulness and thinking is always giving great result. Change in the life is always better if it is with proper planning and better thought.

You can also find the audio online from the publisher. GoZen is an educational gold mine of mindfulness resources. They offer programs, resources, printables, books, and more.

Mightier is a biofeedback video game that teaches kids to use breathing to slow their heart rate and calm down.

Kids play while wearing a heart rate monitor. When their heart rate goes up, the game gets more challenging. An on-screen character then prompts them to practice breathing to get their heart rate down.

You may think teens would be a tough nut to crack when it comes to mindfulness. Luckily, many teens have interests that can help them access mindfulness in a meaningful way. Music can be a great entry point into the world of mindfulness for teens.

Headphones work, too. They might want to save the minute guitar solo for another time. Movement is a great way for teens to get in their bodies and let loose, discharging pent-up energy and allowing for self-expression. Mindful movement involves moving the body along to music without thinking about executing dance moves or appearance.

Ecstatic Dance offers a safe space for people of all ages, including families, kids, and teens, to mindfully move together. They have events that take place all over the world as well as online. This is also known as a tension and trauma releasing exercise, or TRE.

Find full benefits and instructions here and a step-by-step video here. They require focus, attention to detail, and presence of mind while also being fun and rewarding. To encourage reflection, they can ask:. If stereotypes are to be believed, teens and apps go hand in hand.

Luckily, there are a number of apps geared toward teens that teach mindfulness and meditation in a relatable way. Aura is an app geared toward teens that sends 3-minute meditation reminders each day.

It also includes a nature sounds meditation timer, gratitude journal, goals list, and an intelligent meditation personalization — all with Google calendar integration. Stop, Breathe, and Think allows teens to chart their physical, mental, and emotional health while suggesting appropriate meditations.

The app was designed with the idea that teens have a hard time transitioning straight from activities to meditation. The intermediate step of a check-in helps them recalibrate and settle into a more mindful state. BetterSleep is a great choice for teens who love music. It allows users to mix their own sounds to use for mindfulness.

The app also gives users the option to add meditations targeted for better sleep, more focus, or decreased anxiety.

Simple Habit offers meditations curated for specific situations, like getting ready for a test, commuting, taking a bath, and even soothing premenstrual syndrome. Tracks are 5 minutes long, making the practices easy to incorporate daily. According to a study , mindfulness meditation may help reduce markers of stress in people with generalized anxiety disorder.

Try the practices below to calm and ground. Body scan meditation is a simple, relaxing way to calm the mind and body. It involves using awareness to mindfully scan your body for sensations, like pain or tension. For full instructions, benefits, and tips, check out this article.

This is done by looking around the room and observing objects with mindfulness. You can find full instructions here.

Box breathing is a technique that involves taking full, deep breaths to calm the nervous system. Find full benefits and instructions here. Anxiety can often involve resistance and fear toward the anxiety itself.

One way to relax the hold anxiety has on you is to accept it. This can involve a simple reframing of anxiety as a strength rather than a shortcoming. When you do so, you may also find that you can more easily let go of self-blame or shame around having anxiety in the first place.

In fact, practicing mindfulness with others can be a powerful reflection tool. For the latter, participants move at a very slow pace. When they start to sense another person nearby, or accidentally graze a shoulder or elbow, they can mindfully move in the other direction.

Eye gazing with a partner is a powerful way to connect and see what comes up when you engage in this intimate practice.

Partner breathing is similar to eye gazing, except that you sit back to back with your spines lined up. As you do so, begin to focus on expanding the breath into your belly and back. Laughter yoga is a group practice that focuses on joy, playfulness, and fun.

For a full list of benefits and how to do it, read on here. If you feel drawn to music as a healing tool, you might benefit from sound healing. It can come in many shapes and sizes, from music therapy to gong baths.

The Zentangle Method is a popular option. Crafting can get you out of your head and into your body. It also offers the opportunity to work with your hands, tune in to your inner child, and engage with different shapes, colors, and textures.

When it comes to healing, art therapy may have a lot to offer. Once you have noticed the texture, the weight, the color, etc.

Finally, move on to eating, but do so slowly and with concentrated attention. Notice the taste and its texture against your tongue. This exercise may help you discover new experiences with familiar foods. Download the exercise here as a PDF.

Download 3 Free Mindfulness Exercises PDF These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients enjoy the benefits of mindfulness and create positive shifts in their mental, physical, and emotional health. This exercise is a staple of mindfulness, designed to simply enhance your awareness of your own thoughts.

To begin, sit or lie down in a comfortable position and try to let all tension in your body dissipate. Focus on your breathing first, then move your awareness to what it feels like to be in your body, and finally move on to your thoughts. Be aware of what comes into your head, but resist the urge to label or judge these thoughts.

Think of them as a passing cloud in the sky of your mind. If your mind wanders to chase a thought, acknowledge whatever it was that took your attention and gently guide your attention back to your thoughts. In this exercise, you begin by closing your eyes and listening for the cue.

When you hear it, your aim is to focus your attention on the sound and continue your concentration until it fades completely. This exercise helps you to keep yourself firmly grounded in the present.

You can use the audio below:. The goal is simple: to focus your attention on the center of the shifting pattern of color. You can let your mind wander freely, noticing whatever thoughts come into your head but staying in the present.

This experience is similar to the well-known phenomenon of the quiet fixation that results from staring at a candle flame or a campfire. The same focus and deep thought can be brought on by this exercise, but be careful not to lose yourself in thought, and instead stay present with the moment and let your thoughts pass by.

Mindfulness has been a crux of therapy for patients with borderline personality disorder, and it also has applications for people without a diagnosis of mental illness. People anywhere on the mental health spectrum can benefit from mindfulness techniques. Mindfulness is used in the treatment of depression to reduce symptoms and lowers the risk of debilitating relapse.

One study with 11 individuals suffering from depression concluded that there are three keys for making mindfulness effective in the treatment of depression Nauman, June :. If you are interested in learning more about mindfulness techniques for treating depression, you can look into Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.

Alternatively, watch this inspiring TEDtalk by Zindel Segal who explains the mindful approach needed to not only address depression but also manage recovery and reduce the risk of relapse.

By continuing to think through your feelings during meditation, you can stop and redirect your attention back to awareness of sensations in your body.

Segal offers many other tips on bringing awareness to our physical experience. At one point, Segal asks the audience to think about their feet, and later, to experience the sensation of their feet. The difference is profound and offers a gateway to accessible mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness techniques can also discharge acute or chronic anger.

As one of our strongest emotions, anger can be hard to view objectively and defuse. Mindfulness helps create space between stimulus and an immediate, impulsive response. This exercise can be repeated as many times as necessary.

It is recommended to work your way up from milder experiences of anger to the most intense and memorable episodes. Practicing this technique can help you to defuse chronic anger in a rather counterintuitive manner: by accepting and mindfully feeling your anger, you can take control of the experience and compassionately address it.

For other resources and techniques on dealing with anger through mindfulness, you can try our Leaves on a Stream MP3. Alternatively, you can follow this 20 minutes guided anger management mindfulness meditation:.

Mindfulness techniques can also aid an undiagnosed individual who suffers from occasional or not-so-occasional anxiety. A meta-analysis in advocated for the effectiveness of mindfulness exercises on anxiety and depression.

To begin applying mindfulness to your anxiety, or that of your clients, Mindful. org has provided a short description of 10 attitudes that will help build the foundation for successfully addressing anxiety:. Take note of how you feel.

Afterward, reflect on your experience and describe it, with a special focus on your feelings during the process. For a rather more simple method of applying mindfulness to anxiety, you can try this quick exercise:. By recognizing these thoughts for what they are, you may come to realize that they are not true, and consequently be able to let them go Hofmann, If you are interested in trying other mindfulness exercises to address anxiety, you can check out our extensive range of mindfulness articles.

For more information on anxiety, and how to approach dealing with it through mindfulness, you can also listen to Dr. Kim Taylor Show. She clarifies the signs and symptoms of anxiety and offers techniques to treat and manage anxiety.

Addiction is a serious issue that should be addressed by a mental health professional or an institution that has proven effective in treating addiction. However, there are some mindfulness techniques you can use to supplement addiction management.

The practice of mindfulness increases the number and strength of connections in the brain, allowing us to become more aware of our body and more effective at regulating our emotions. One mindfulness technique is specifically crafted for those suffering from cravings.

There is a theory that people develop cravings through incentive sensitization, a process that occurs in four steps:. Following this theory, it is not the fault of the individual that they experience cravings. They are not punished with cravings for being weak, or lazy, or unwilling to stop.

Cravings are like intruders on the mind, uninvited guests that try to influence behavior. Thus, those struggling with addiction can use mindfulness to pause, identify the cravings and label them as intruders, and thereby give themselves permission to ignore them.

For more information and a guided meditation on dealing with addiction cravings you can watch this short video by Jessica Graham:. If you are looking for more comprehensive information on the neurological origins of our addictive behaviors and how we can challenge addiction at the level of the brain, you can watch this fascinating talk by Dr.

Judson Brewer:. I hope that I provided you with enough techniques, exercises, and activities to bring you and your clients the benefits of mindfulness. Mindfulness can be useful to a variety of populations. It is a relatively easy practice with significant results on the brain that can enhance the quality of life, self-confidence, and peace of mind of those using it.

Over time, the exercises help increase the awareness of our bodies, our thoughts, and our selves. Feel free to share your experiences with mindfulness in the comments below, as well as any techniques or exercises that you use to cultivate mindfulness in your life.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. About the author Courtney Ackerman , MA, is a graduate of the positive organizational psychology and evaluation program at Claremont Graduate University. She is a researcher and evaluator of mental health programs for the State of California and her professional interests include survey research, wellbeing in the workplace, and compassion.

How useful was this article to you? Not useful at all Very useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Submit Share this article:. I listened to your meditation audio and did enjoy, thank you, i feel more relaxed now.

well done! Lots of great ideas of meditation techniques and so much different ways of thinking and working on these techniques. Very great tactics to follow thank you so very much. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

In our relentless quest for productivity and success, we often fall prey to the misconception that rest is a reward for hard work. But what [ How can we develop our ability to remain composed and centered when faced [ Home Blog Store Team About CCE Reviews Contact Login.

Ackerman, MA. Scientifically reviewed by Jo Nash, Ph. This Article Contains: 4 Mindfulness Activities for Groups and Group Therapy 5 Fun Mindfulness Interventions, Techniques, and Worksheets for Adults Introducing Dialectical Behavioral Therapy DBT 5 Simple Mindfulness Exercises from Dialectical Behavioural Therapy Mindfulness Techniques for Depression, Anger, Addiction, and Anxiety A Take-Home Message References.

Peace mindfulness exercise. Download PDF.