Are you practising mindfulness as part of your daily routine yet?
Combining this technique with Tasmania’s wild natural environment can bring extra benefits. Practising mindfulness outside can have positive impacts on your health in specific ways that seated meditation may not. In fact, daily practice may improve everything from job performance to relationships and sleep quality.
In this article, Trevor Scott will be discussing how practicing mindfulness in Tasmania’s stunning North East region can benefit both your body and mind. So if you’re ready to connect with nature, here are six ways in which you will benefit from practising mindfulness outside.
#1 Engage Your Senses Consciously
When you make the effort to stop and bring to your senses conscious awareness, you will deepen your connection with your surroundings. You will be drawn into the present moment. Your mind will start to settle and your body will begin to relax.
Most of the time your thoughts take up almost all your attention (~90%). That only leaves around 10% of your attention to focus on your body. Hold your awareness consciously in your body without trying to force anything. Then your body will start to relax and soften.
#2 Strengthening Body Awareness
Being outdoors in nature instills in you a great feeling of mindful awareness. Furthermore, your mind-body connection is strengthened by active movement.
Body awareness is more than the physical, explains masseuse Nola Welling.
your senses are enhanced when you are out in nature, and the sounds of leaves being crunched under your feet or the feeling of your breath entering and leaving your lungs turns into a sharper, and more clear experience. The same way that your muscles need constant movement, so does your mind.
Urban environments are full of stimuli that demand your attention. This takes away your focus from your physical presence. Your mind and body are able to relax within a natural setting. So you become increasingly aware of your own balance, gait, posture, and presence.
#3 Mindfulness Frees you from Judgement
A key characteristic of mindfulness is non-judgemental awareness of anything that presents itself to your senses. When we become impartial and friendly observers, we are freed from the heavy burden that judging places on us.
The team at Wellbeing Health Retreats explain that mindfulness, in this way, is a doorway into calmness. The essence of calmness is being fine with your experience no matter whether it is unpleasant or pleasant at the moment. They also add:
that doesn’t mean you would not take action in order to prevent damage or harm to either ourselves or others. But you are more accepting of what occurs rather than reactive.
It is important to undertake mindfulness with a very caring attitude. You instinctively know when your impartial observation needs to be abandoned. For example: to grab a child before they run out into traffic.
#4 Give Your Immune System a Boost
An effective remedy to help stave off a cold can be as simple as enjoying time outside on the weekend. This is because the positive effects on your immune system last throughout your upcoming work week.
A research team from the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo demonstrated that that women and men who spent six hours in nature over two days saw an increase in cancer and virus-fighting white blood cells. Furthermore they found the boost in the immune system lasted for a period of seven days after being outdoors.
#5 Mindfulness Allows You to Make Smart Decisions
When your mind gets lost in stressful kinds of thought patterns, it can be difficult to see clearly through this mental clutter.
This results in confusion, explains brain fog expert Janine Brundle, and becoming reactive instead of reflective. She goes on to say;
that makes it a lot more likely that you will respond to other people in an unskilled way, and maybe say something you end up regretting later on. This can result in behaviour completely unlike what you typically display.
By contrast, if you learn how to practice mindfulness when you are in both unpleasant and pleasant experiences, you are a lot more likely to catch yourself before you act or speak unskillfully. You can take the opportunity to stop, take a few deep breaths, and then choose a healthy and skillful way to respond to the situation or person.
#6 Savour Silence
After enjoying all or some of the mindfulness exercises above, walking in silence is an excellent way to enjoy the end of your walk. It is completely up to you how long you want to walk in silence. Most of us only have limited opportunities to truly enjoy the silence while in the company of other people. At first, it might feel a bit uncomfortable, but shared silence can truly be wonderful.
While you are walking in silence, it is impossible to keep your thoughts completely at bay, so don’t even try. Even having intermittent moments of focus offers great power and calm to both your body and mind.
A time of silent walking provides you with the chance to engage consciously with your senses in many ways, relaxing both your body and mind as you do so.
You may spend the time of silent walking holding awareness consciously in your body. Or you might focus on the smells, sounds, and sights around you. It’s up to you!
Unplug from Life at Tin Dragon Cottages
If you wish to learn more about our tourist accommodation in North East Tasmania, please explore our Tin Dragon Cottages web site. We look forward to hosting your next stay in Tasmania! We can introduce you to nature and the silence of a dark star-studded night sky.
Written by: Trevor Scott
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