Mindfulness for Beginners

Thanks to Conscious Design on Unsplash for the beautiful image. Meditation using a singing bowl and incense.

So, where do we begin? How do we actually practice mindfulness and start to find that sense of calm and clarity for ourselves?

There are countless mindfulness exercises, but they can generally be grouped into three main categories:

• Calming the Mind

• Focusing the Attention (e.g., on specific internal or external sensations)

• Dealing with Negative Thoughts and Feelings

And it really all starts with Calming the Mind. If we’re feeling anxious, angry, or scattered, it’s hard to focus on anything, let alone deal with troublesome emotions—they’ll just keep swirling around!

On walking into my ridiculously untidy bedroom as a kid, my old dad would often say, "A tidy room reflects a tidy mind!"  Though my younger self wasn’t having any of it, Dad wasn’t wrong. My mind was a jumble of thoughts constantly competing for attention:

"What’s for tea?" … "I’m going to play with the rabbits!" … "Will I get into the netball team?" … and the ever-present "Spelling tests are soooo boring." If only I’d known a thing or two about calming my mind back then, maybe my bedroom wouldn’t have been such a disaster zone!

For many of us, life feels too hectic to take even five minutes for ourselves. But here’s the thing: giving yourself just a five-minute pause to stop and focus inward can have a surprisingly big impact on how you feel. And when you feel better, everything else—your day, your decisions, even your relationships—tends to flow more smoothly.

Mindfulness isn’t about entering some deep, mystical meditative state. It’s simply about being here, fully present in the moment, just as it is and just as you are—without striving to be somewhere else or someone else. It’s about learning to feel at home with yourself. And let’s be honest, that’s easier said than done!

Thank you to Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash for this lovely image. The lotus is a symbol of the potential for enlightenment that lies within each of us - the beautiful lotus flower grows in muddy waters, and shows us that we, too, can achieve pure wisdom, despite our imperfections. Indeed, it is the muddy waters that provide the rich nutrients that the lotus needs in order to flower.