It’s your fortnightly reminder that self-care is healthcare and YOU matter!
This week our focus is on the benefits of mindfulness and how much it can support our emotional health.
Offering staff mindfulness, relaxation and stress management sessions can help teachers and other professionals to manage stress and improve their overall wellbeing.
Our human minds love backwards and forwards thinking; ruminating on the past or potentially anxious about future events but the past is gone and the future is yet to unfold so we can find power in ‘now’ – the present moment.
When we are able to be more present and ‘in the moment’ it helps us to be in our pre-frontal cortex, the rational, thinking part of the brain. We can respond to what IS rather than what IF and this can help us to manage our emotions in a realistic way rather than letting our chimp brain take over. We are all human, we all do it! However, often our reaction to events is not the event itself but our response to it.
Mindfulness is a useful tool, it’s the practice of paying attention to the present moment, without judgement. It’s a form of meditation where you can observe experiences with curiosity and acceptance, rather than trying to control or change anything.
Mindfulness can be practised in lots of different ways; you can do focused breathing exercises which can be considered a more formal type of mindfulness/meditation but you can also link it up to daily habits – mindful eating, mindful whilst brushing your teeth, mindful walking, mindful colouring, mindful observation of nature -the list is endless and as always it’s good to find the right fit for YOU!
We’ve popped a couple of our HeadStart youtube videos in for you 😊 A general info vid on mindfulness and a mindfulness grounding technique using your senses – enjoy!
Mindfulness Grounding technique – YouTube
Published: May 6