Mental Health Matters: Mentally preparing for 2024 (Part III)

WE have reached the halfway mark of the six-week Mindfulness Programme, and for me, the pieces to the puzzle are yet to gather. The concept of mindfulness is becoming clear with every new practice and meditation. 

Last week, we integrated mindfulness into the body – this was demonstrated in the body scan and three-breath step meditation. 

We move now to the third week where we practised mindful movement. The session started with body exercises that demonstrated the awareness triangle which helps us understand the difference between the doing mode and the being mode.  

Also read: Mental Health Matters: Mentally preparing for 2024

The awareness triangle consists of sensations, emotions and thoughts. This helps to separate and distinguish what is being felt in the body from what is being thought in the mind, and it separates and distinguishes thoughts from emotions. 

We further learned the difference between the doing mode and the being mode. In the doing mode, we find ourselves in auto-pilot. This results in us missing so much in our lives because we are busy analysing, planning and complaining.

In our being mode, we are calm and intentional about the things we choose to do – we are conscious and present which, in turn, gives us access to our intuition. 

Further along in the session, we practised a mindful movement meditation for eight minutes. Similar to the body scan meditation, this helps in connecting with your body and befriending your body. We started the meditation by focusing on breathing and acknowledging the rise and fall of the chest as we breathed in and out. During the eight-minute meditation, we focused on our breathing while raising awareness of various parts of the body. 

Also read: Mental Health Matters: Mentally Preparing for 2024 (Part II)

For our home practice, we were required to approach mindless activities but this time focusing on something that requires the integration of our mind our body, like driving. This was easier for me as I had been applying this through driving in the previous weeks. 

At this point of the programme, I was slowly understanding the concept of mindfulness as I integrated it into my daily activities and experiences. I was also getting used to not feeling bad but grateful when I caught my thoughts running during meditation. I am grateful because noticing them means I am aware of my thoughts, and it also brings into perspective the wholesomeness of our reality as humans. 

We move to the fourth session where we learn about the attitude of mindfulness.

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