Becoming Mindful During The COVID-19 Pandemic
Practicing mindfulness can be a way for you to overcome mental, emotional, and even physical challenges that you had to face this 2020. Here’s how.
It’s hard to think of a way to deal with all the challenges we had to face because of COVID-19. Months of anxiety over our health, work, and relationships with our loved ones has been overwhelming. And the worst part is that these challenges are far from over. We’ve been coping in various ways. We turned to devour comfort food. We turned to the thrill of online shopping.
But what if there is a way of not just coping with our anxiety but actually overcoming it? It’s called mindfulness.
Mindfulness During COVID-19
In a nutshell, mindfulness is the practice and dedication to being fully present in where we are, what we’re doing, and who we’re with. It’s about achieving a state of awareness. It’s like being inside a box and being aware of all the things inside it with you. But we don’t let ourselves be overwhelmed by the things surrounding us or the walls of the box that seem to cage us.
Mindfulness meditation can be part of our daily routine. It’s only a 10-to-15-minute exercise where we sit still, focus on your breath, and let our surroundings interact with our senses. This act can help us clear our minds, steady your heartbeats, and get us ready for our day.
Many mental health experts have recommended practicing mindfulness to keep our emotions at bay during the pandemic. They highlighted the fact that the pandemic had us worrying about our future. It caused us to be riddled with stress and anxiety. But, through mindfulness, we can encourage ourselves to be calmer when we assess our situation. This calmness will help us with our decision-making, working, and going through the daily motions in general. Here’s how we can incorporate mindfulness practices into our everyday life.
Healthy, Paced, and Steady Eating
Some might even be skeptical of mindfulness affecting our eating habits. After all, it’s such a mundane activity. But mindful eating is actually a technique that can help you control your urges and eating habits. It keeps us from binge-eating, which helps us manage our weight and health.
Mindful eating involves an array of activities, not just eating itself. It encourages us to eat slowly and avoid any distractions. With it, we’ll learn to engage our other senses, not just taste. We get to enjoy our food more by appreciating its smell, look, and texture. Mindful eating also teaches us to distinguish true hunger and cravings. And it teaches us to eat only until you’re full.
With mindful eating, we would break the habit of stress-eating, which amplified during the pandemic. Stress-eating is only a habit to help us cope. But mindful eating is a habit that helps us overcome feelings of stress for good.
Enjoying Life with our Passions
The joy of play shouldn’t be just for children. We, as adults, should also get to experience it every once in a while. Our passions should be incorporated into our everyday life, so it’s not always just about work. Keeping a mindful perspective helps us relax and enjoy the little things in life. In this way, we’re not always worrying about the effects of the pandemic.
Listening and playing music are good ways to practice mindfulness. Studies have shown that mindfulness even helps people become better musicians. This is due to the heightened senses that mindfulness develops. Mindfulness may be the thing that would push you to finally take violin lessons. In this way, you’ll learn to rest and recover through the pursuit of your passions.
Keeping Lasting Relationships
The practice of social distancing affected our relationships with our friends and families. Because of the constant threat of the coronavirus, we’re urged not to gather and spend time together. This added more stress for us because we want to be able to keep our relationships.
Mindfulness practices can help us to continue building strong relationships. It trains us to be invested and always to make more time for our loved ones. Because we’re more appreciative of the love around us, we can keep healthy relationships despite the physical distance.
2020 has been a very challenging year for all of us. We had to deal with a pandemic that caused a cascading effect on our daily lives. It affected our health, first and foremost. Now, we can’t go out on ordinary errands such as shopping for essentials without putting ourselves at great risk.
Despite these worries, we can turn to mindfulness to help ourselves overcome our stress and anxiety. It can help us go through our day-to-day lives with the new normal.