What is mindfulness? While many people use it as a way to focus the mind on certain things, and as an exercise to lessen stress (and these are important benefits), it can also be used for much more. It’s more than a tool to focus attention and reduce stress, as helpful as those outcomes are.

Mindfulness is being present in the here and now. Being engaged and open to our life events and accepting the role of our thoughts and compassionate to ourselves and others. This can have the effect of re-wiring our thoughts patterns and ultimately our reactions, in that we learn to respond with more flexibility and in a healthy way. It can help us see things more clearly, and give us a space to actually CHOOSE our response, rather than just reacting.

When we realise our usual habits of response are actually harmful or unhelpful, such as road rage or losing our temper with inanimate objects (for example!), being mindful can help us interrupt those habits that our nervous system usually re-enacts, instead letting us pause and de-escalate.

When we are present and mindful, and we are faced with difficult circumstances with deep traumatic potential, being aware of how we feel and want to react is a very grounding experience. Rather than being caught up in traumatic response, we can acknowledge how we feel, name it, and express our emotions with the knowledge that we are affected, but not destroyed.