Have you ever felt really stressed out? Anxious? Or even overwhelmed by life completely?

Well practicing mindfulness could help you out in a lot of ways that you can’t imagine. We do understand how difficult it could be to start implementing a process, but everyone has to start somewhere and we’re here to help!

In this blog post, we’ll reveal everything you need to know about the benefits of mindfulness, how to practice mindfulness and how to integrate it as a part of your everyday lifestyle.

Alright, so what does practicing mindfulness even mean? 

Mindfulness is the practice of purposefully focusing all of your attention on a current moment, and accepting what is happen without casting judgment. This is a fantastic place to begin if you are searching for a way to retain a positive outlook in life.

If you manage to achieve this correctly, mindfulness will allow you to eventually decrease your stress and anxiety levels, minimize the amount of time you feel overwhelmed, and learn to appreciate all the smaller moments that happen. In a world filled with bedlam, mindfulness might just be that special technique you need to learn to better deal with the ongoing insanity. 

If this has piqued your interest and you’d love to experience for yourself, then I suggest you continue reading this guide on how to become mindful throughout your daily life. 

History of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is practiced art form that has existed for thousands of years in various religious and secular tradition. From Buddhism to Hinduism, yoga, and even non-religious meditation, mindfulness has been around for eons. People have been practicing mindfulness either by themselves or as part of a larger tradition. 

As a whole, mindfulness became popularized in the East by religious and spiritual institutions. But for the West, it’s popularity can be connected to certain people and specific secular institutions. Although, even the West’s secular traditions of mindfulness has roots in Eastern religions and specific practitioners. 

The popularity of mindfulness in the United States can be attributed to Jon Kabat-Zinn. This man is known for his works at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as a professor of medicine emeritus and founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center of Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. 

Kabat-Zinn was originally introduced to mindfulness during his time as a student at MIT. During 1979, he went on to create the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and adapted the Buddhist teachings that he acquired on mindfulness to build his stress reduction and relaxation program, which has been dubbed “mindfulness-based stress reduction.”

Kabat-Zinn connects mindfulness to science more so than to Buddhism as he continues to introduce the practice into the mainstream of clinics, which has been quite successful. Thanks to his diligence of integrating it into Western science, mindfulness has become a popular activity in the United States.

Benefits of Mindfulness

• Alleviates stress - Due to the increasing amount of pressure that people face these days. thanks to the complex nature of today’s society, they are often dealing with stress. This increasing amount of stress contributes to a large assortment of other health issues. Mindfulness is capable of reducing stress by acting as a preventative measure and help people get through troublesome times.
   
• Reduces rumination and overthinking - A common symptom that comes alongside anxiety is rumination or overthinking. Once you’ve begun to worry about something, your brain will grip onto its tightly and make it difficult to let go. This will lead into a thought loop where you continuously replay each and every negative possible outcome. As you’re most likely aware, worrying about such things doesn’t prevent it from happening. 
  
  Studies have shown that people who were new to mindfulness and began to actively practice it during retreat were capable of showing fewer signs of rumination and anxiety than the control group.

• Improves memory, concentration, and performance - Trying to concentrate or paying attention to a certain task at hand is one of the most important cognitive abilities for everyone to have. Mindfulness is one of the few known methods that actually work during times your mind wanders and any negative effects that losing concentration may have on you. As a matter of fact, research on students has shown that there is a connection between mindfulness and paying attention to both in and out of classes.

• Emotional reactivity - One of the many reasons people usually take the time to learn meditation is to become less emotionally reactive. Being mindful or “zen," as most would call it, equate to tolerating what life throws at you and being non-reactive to things that fall on your lap. Mindfulness meditation has allowed study participants to distance their emotions during upsetting situations and focus more on a cognitive task when compared to the control group.

• Promotes cognitive flexibility - Studies have suggested that not only will mindfulness help someone become less reactive, it may also give them more cognitive flexibility. Individuals who practice mindfulness appear to be capable of also practicing self-observation, which automatically disengages the pathways created in the brain from prior learning, and allows information that is happening in current time to be understood from a different angle. 

  Meditation also causes this part of the brain to become activated due to its association with adaptive responses to stress, which corresponds to a quicker recovery to a baseline train of thought after being negatively impacted. 

• Establishes happier relationships - Researchers are still conducting studies on this part, mainly due to uncertainty, but emerging brain studies have revealed that people who engage in mindfulness on regular bases have shown both structural and functional changes in the brain regions that are connected to enhance empathy, compassion, and kindness. 

  Other benefits of mindfulness include its effects on the amygdala, which is the brain’s emotional processing center. Mindfulness has shown to reduce in both the volume of the amygdala and its link to the prefrontal cortex. This suggests that mindfulness may support emotion regulation and decrease reactivity, which are two very important skills for creating and maintaining a proper relationship.

• Reduces anxiety - Studies have discovered that mindfulness can be really helpful for reducing anxiety. Practicing mindfulness regularly helps rewire the brain so you can refocus your attention. Rather than allow a negative thought to consume you or worrying about all sorts of terrible outcomes, you can learn to recognize your thoughts for what they truly are and just let them go. 

• Improves sleep - The relaxation response that your body undergoes due to mindfulness meditation is quite the opposite of the stress response. This relaxation response works a great amount of stress-related health issues, such as pain, depression and high blood pressure. Sleep disorders are often connected to these ailments. 
  
  Research has shown of older adults confirming that mindfulness meditation has aided them in getting a better night's rest. Furthermore, mindfulness meditation can increase the relaxation response through its function of increasing attentional factors that impart control over the autonomic nervous system.

• Reduces feelings of loneliness - Being alone is much more than simply living in a silent house or apartment and having a lack of companionship. Over time, loneliness can take a huge toll on a person's psyche and have a serious impact on one’s physical health as well. Feelings of loneliness have been connected to an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, Anxiety, cardiovascular disease, depression, and even a shortened lifespan. Meaning that it's very important to develop effective treatments for those who are living on their own. One researcher observed 40 adults and discovered that meditating for half an hour each day for eight weeks reduced their feelings of loneliness.

Practicing Mindfulness

There are all sorts of ways you can be more mindful through the day, but for this particular section, we’ll go over a simple step-by-step process for practicing mindfulness.

1. Dedicate a time and space for practice
   You want to find a quiet, calm, and soothing place to practice mindfulness. Make sure you also fit this practice into your daily schedule, usually during times where you’ll unlikely to be interrupted. Clear an area in your house that is peaceful and allow yourself to become relaxed while practicing mindfulness. Do not use this area for anything but meditating. This way, once you sat down, your body will automatically know that it's time to settle down and practice mindfulness.
    
2. Make a conscious effort to focus on the present time
   If you pause for a moment and take the time to think about it, the only moment in which you are really alive is during the present time. Don’t dwell on the future or post, and fully embrace yourself in the current moment. Focus on your breathing and listen to the sounds surrounding you.
    
3. Do nothing, simply rest
   It’s not necessary for you to constantly run around in order to accomplish your objectives. At times, your body and mind will need to recharge so you can be productive when you have to buckle down and finish work. Allow yourself some resting period, and think of its as a necessary part of living your everyday life.
    

If you are new to the world of mindfulness, then start off by simply doing five minutes a day until you begin to get the hang of it. 

This will eventually lead to an improvement in your life by reducing stress and negative thoughts, increasing energy and awareness and teaching you how to let go of any drifting negative thoughts. Keep in mind that this practice has been around for thousands of years, and mindfulness has been helpful for tons of people trying to further improve their lifestyle. 

All it takes is for you to make a commitment to pick up the exercise mentioned in this guide, read over and follow the simple steps for practicing mindfulness and then take some time to schedule it into your daily routine.