Tag: mindfulness
-
How to maintain your mental health progress while being around family during the holidays
1st and foremost, not every family is horrible. Not everyone experiences trauma around their family of origin. However, there are a lot of folks that spend years working on cultivating a healthy sense of self which sometimes feels diminished around family. These feelings can be heightened around the holidays for a variety of reasons. Many…
-
An exposed attempt at Eat Pray Love
I recently chatted with an expat living abroad. She was writing an article sharing her mental health challenges, her attempt to recover and find some peace. Her solution was to jet off to Italy, eat gelato and pizza, and let her depression and anxiety sail away into the Mediterranean sea. A scene we have all…
-
Hustle vs align and how to stop and smell the roses
I was at a summer picnic a few years ago where we all were trying to make our way to the beach. Between house #1 and the beach included a few pit stops. We ventured to house #2 and I noticed that one of our friends had yet to leave #1. I stuck my head…
-
Find yourself some mindful embodied awareness
Does your couch have one cushion that is more comfy than one of the others? Despite it being the same as all the other cushions? Just me? This morning I was drinking my coffee on the comfy couch cushion and I noticed an ache in my back. It’s Friday, the end of a long week,…
-
Back on the mat
After a bit of a hiatus, I finally found myself back at yoga class. Besides reading, this has been one of my longest standing forms of self-care and my favorite mindful meditative activity. As a kid, I would watch my mom effortlessly flow through poses on her yoga mat in the living room. There was…
-
Finding peace in paradox
Do you ever feel confused about feeling more than one emotion at once? Should I be feeling happy and sad at the same time? Am I normal?! What I’m not talking about: paradox intervention in the therapy room. Sometimes a client will say they’re having a hard time brushing their teeth so the therapist will…
-
Mindfulness: a primer
Mindfulness has turned into a household word, and is one of those things that you can’t really define until you’re experiencing it. For the sake of learning, let’s describe it. Mindfulness has been defined in many different ways. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, defines mindfulness as “awareness, cultivated by paying attention in…