Managing Burn out with Mindfulness

If you're feeling burned out or overwhelmed - you may have been told to try mediating.

And mediating is truly amazing and will do so many good things for you. But if you are feeling resistant to the idea or like you can’t sit still with yourself, it may not be the best choice for healing.

It can be very difficult to just sit still and mediate when your nervous system is already in overload. It may just aggravate us more and be the opposite of the remedy we need.

Why torture yourself or create more suffering when there’s so many other ways to heal.

When this happens we  can be really unfair to ourselves and see meditating as hard or something that we are not doing right. This is the opposite effect we are wanting from this practice! Instead try to meet yourself half way with a mindful activity.

For many yogi and buhudist practices one aspect of mediating is mindfulness. Some bhudists create beautiful sand mandalas only to blow them away once finished their hours long process. It sounds devastating but this activity is a reminder that the journey is more powerful than the destination or finished product.

Mindfulness is a moment where the thinking mind can turn off and you can focus on noticing what is going on in your body, in your mind, and in your surroundings. Its becoming the ultimate observer, or I like to think of it as finding "the main character" energy for your life.

Many Mindfulness practices involve focusing on the senses, hearing, touching, smelling and seeing. To begin to really find these moments of presence , I invite you to begin by finding small mindful activities before trying to do this sitting still with an aggravated nervous system .

My favourite and easiest way is to take a walk, rain or shine and focus on all the senses - sometimes one at a time sometimes all at once and begin to take note of your inner state of being.

Many people have activities that calm and centre them based on this practice of mindfulness and may not even know it! Many people are bakers and enjoy the passive actions of following a recipe. Some people enjoy gardening or driving or even sipping a coffee / tea.

There may not be one specific activity or time that you return to so it may be wise to practice the beginners mindset of being able to try something new or something that just sounds a bit fun!

When you are doing these activities I invite you to try to tune more into this mindfulness zone and focus on your feeling sensations and noticing what your breath is doing. The breathe is the gateway into the heart chakra. Living a heart based life sounds pretty great so why not tap into that. Noticing your feeling sensations is an easy way to re tune to the body and get out of the thinking, doing, planning mind. Our body really has so much more wisdom than modern society gives it credit for. And if there is one thing that I can constantly learning and finding, is the power of feeling an being centred in your body.

One of my favourite ways is mediative painting- it can be trickier as sometimes our thinking mind has its own plan for how the painting or picture will come out. Try to let your body do the work and let yourself fall into the observer mindset of allowing anything to come what may.

During any activity to remain present in the moment instead of focusing too far ahead on what the outcome will be. Just like the Mandalas story.

Let me know how your going to incorporate mindfulness into your life and what activities your pursuing! I would love to hear

• Keely