The Superpower of Mindfulness

In this week’s article we are going to look at the superpower of mindfulness in 5 easy to digest points. If you’re a fan of the site you know we run a mindfulness game. In this game we have a third party facilitator who guides a two hours session encouraging our clients to not only learn, but feel, the benefits of mindfulness.

Running mindfulness sessions as a part of our experiences, we’ve learnt a thing or two.

The 5 Reasons

1. Mindfulness reminds us to slow down. In a world that’s constantly speeding up, expanding, and moving forward it can be easy to forget to slow down. Getting caught up in social media, problems, the news, and existential threats can make us feel like we need to be doing more, and in less time. Mindfulness puts us back into a (s)lower state of consciousness where we are open to feel relaxed. Good Therapy has a wonderful article on it here.
2. Reconnect with your inner child. A simple daily mindfulness practise can reconnect us with our internal self. In a hustling and bustling world we can sometimes “forget ourselves“. We get so caught up in external threats that our inner voice goes unheard. By simply being present with our own minds we are able to reopen those channels of communication with our inner voice and hear what it has to say.
3. Mindfulness shows us that calm is only one thought away. Mindfulness practise (even only 1 minute per day) can put us right on the path to a calm thought. We can forget that calmness is not an unattainable phenomenon but simply a matter of awareness. Focusing on breathing in, and then out can guide us right onto the path of calm with very little resistance.
4. Mindfulness resets our thought patterns. Our brains can easily get caught in vicious thought spirals that can last minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or even years. By removing our focus from a dangerous thought pattern that only causes stress we can reset our habitual behaviours.
5. Mindfulness puts us back in touch with what’s real. As the old saying goes, “do not confuse the finger pointing at the moon, for the moon itself.” Our bodies can have difficulty sensing the different between a perceived threat, and an actual one. So stress levels (cortisol in the blood), remain heightened whether we are imagining the worst or really experiencing it. Mindfulness’ greatest super power is to remind us what’s real: the present. All that is happening right now is reality, everything else is just a thought. The thought about the difficult conversation, the money you don’t have, the vacation you want, these are all just thoughts and they stand in the way of calm, centred being.

In Conclusion

So right now I want you to close your eyes and take 4 deep breaths. That’s all. If you’ve done that then you’ve mastered the practise. Do it one minute every day for thirty days. If you don’t see any difference then stop, but if you start to experience some of the above superpowers, then you may just be on the way to becoming your own hero.