Why You Need to Start Practicing Mindfulness Today

You may have noticed people are talking about mindfulness more and more. We know there are a lot of wellness trends out there, but we promise, this is one activity that has the power to change your life. Yes, your life!

The concept is simple: Pay close attention to your thoughts and feelings without judging, labeling or dividing them as right or wrong. Being mindful allows you to increase your ability to be fully engaged in the now while being non-reactive or overwhelmed by the information present. As simple as the premise may seem, plenty of us struggle with being that in tune with ourselves.

So often we mindlessly do things, especially when we’re in a hurry. Mindfulness means taking the time to discover more about your unique thought process, understanding when and how you make the choices that create your life.  Mindfulness helps the mind to become focused, clear, and ultimately full with the good things you desire more of in your life. 

If you’re still not convinced about incorporating mindfulness into your daily life, these six benefits should definitely sway you.

Mindfulness can…

• Increase your immunity and reduce stress.
• Changes your brain! It actually increases the gray matter in the brain. Gray matter is responsible for sensory perception, memory, emotions, speech, decision-making, and self-control.
• Improve your relationships by allowing you to become more present with loved ones by giving and receiving from a full heart.
• Lets you act from a place of compassion and altruism. You are more likely to respond and help someone in need, because mindfulness increases activity in the neural pathways that respond to someone else’s suffering.
  
• Help people cope with and overcome depression and post-traumatic stress disorder by helping to process trauma and alleviate suffering.
• Help you lose weight by becoming more aware of habitual patterns around eating. By using your senses to expand into the present moment, you can reduce overeating and binge eating.

As a holistic health coach I help people who suffer from feeling out of control with emotional eating. I find the most successful and effective technique is to couple mindfulness and nutrition. I worked with a client who struggled miserably from uncontrollable cravings. As a cab driver he relied on extreme carb and sugar snacking to get him through shifts. After using mindful eating to form new patterns he beamed, “I am finally able to make new choices about what I eat and choose healthy alternatives for the things I love to eat!”

This is the kind of confidence that increases when you begin to adopt a new mindful relationship with habits that once took over your life. Mindfulness allows you to develop enough awareness to trust yourself and your choices when the going gets rough.  The great thing about mindfulness is it doesn’t require any special talent – it’s a skill that all of us can learn and practice daily to make our lives healthier and happier!