{"id":39401,"date":"2017-06-16T12:29:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T16:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/?p=39401"},"modified":"2017-06-16T12:29:51","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T16:29:51","slug":"mindfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/mindfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.\u201d \u2013 Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

For me, yesterday was just one of \u201cthose days\u201d. You know that type of day \u2014 when you\u2019re all in your head, you\u2019re just a tangled knot of anxiety, and it feels like nothing is going your way. It\u2019s the type of day wherein you feel like maybe Zeus has gotten his toga in a twist and is taking it out on you personally.<\/h4>\n

Realizing that I really wasn\u2019t managing to get anything productive done, I decided to take a moment and step away from the ever-growing mountain of things I needed to do. I made a cup of tea, cooked myself a nice meal, and took some time to just relax.<\/h4>\n

Normally, when I cook, I put on some TV show to look at while I\u2019m in the kitchen; but yesterday I decided to instead try out something I read about \u2018mindfulness\u2019. I\u2019d been hearing a lot about mindfulness, and during my psychiatry rotation, I learnt about it being a useful way to deal with stress.<\/h4>\n

Mindfulness is simply a Western adaptation of the ancient Eastern practice of \u201cstilling the mind\u201d, which is the goal of meditation. It\u2019s the psychological process of bringing one\u2019s attention to the internal experiences occurring in the present moment.<\/h4>\n

So I decided to give it a go.<\/h4>\n

As I was cooking, different thoughts started popping into my head \u2014 most of them trivial and more than a little ridiculous. But then the more serious ones started to bubble to the surface; thoughts like, \u201cDid I fail my last exam?\u201d And instead of doing the usual of just stuffing the thought into a drawer in the back of my brain, I decided to deal with it head-on. I needed to acknowledge the thought and how it made me feel.<\/h4>\n

Of course the thought of failing an exam made me extremely anxious. But would I be able to fix anything about that test now? No. All I could do is wait for results to come out. I needed to change my perspective \u2014 instead of looking at that test with regret and guilt, I needed to look at it as a lesson for things I could do differently moving forward. By acknowledging that, I was able to feel less anxious.<\/h4>\n

And, for the rest of the afternoon, I just tried to be in the moment. Instead of being all caught up and swept away in my thoughts, I acknowledged thoughts and worries as they cropped up, dealt with them as best I could, and moved on. I finished cooking and enjoyed my meal. I lingered over my cup of tea, and really just tried to appreciate the little things.<\/h4>\n

When it was time for me to get back to work, my head was clearer and I got much more done that I thought I would. I would say that the mindfulness experiment was a success. I also figured out why the Japanese have such an elaborate \u201ctea ceremony\u201d and why Hindu Pujas can be so relaxing.<\/h4>\n

I think everyone experiences anxiety at some point. And many of us tend to get into our heads about it and, as the old folks would say, just \u201cgotay\u201d the problem \u2014 make it revolve in a never-ending series of circles. It\u2019s important to take a step back, examine our thoughts, and try to notice when our thoughts are derailing us. By acknowledging and being more self-aware about our anxieties, we can start to deal with that anxiety in a productive way, before it spirals out of control.<\/h4>\n

So maybe you should give mindfulness a try; you might find it helpful!<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.\u201d \u2013 Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times For me, yesterday was just one of \u201cthose days\u201d. You know that type of day \u2014 when you\u2019re all in your head, you\u2019re just a tangled knot of anxiety, and it feels like nothing is going your way. It\u2019s the type of day wherein…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39402,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39401\/revisions\/39402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}