Mindfulness: What Is It & How Is It Practiced?
Often, daily occupations and the accelerated pace of life prevent us from living fully in the present, which is why one is looking for a new lifestyle that allows one to experience emotional and mental well-being. One of the best-known practices to consciously pay attention to the present is mindfulness.
Practicing mindfulness helps you live in the here and now, without worrying about the past or the future.
Mindfulness is considered a philosophy of life because it is a transformation of habits and actions from the inside out, i. e., from the mind to what we manage to execute. With this type of practice and type of meditation, stability and well-being are achieved, since everyday life often submerges us in stress.
But what is mindfulness about? How can we practice it? Is it related to meditation? I share concepts, information, techniques, and recommendations on the Buddhist practice of mindfulness.
Mindfulness What Is It? What Is It About?
Mindfulness is a practice that seeks to manage emotions and transform thoughts. In this way, if something hurts you, you can change it to regain mental and emotional well-being.
   Mindfulness allows us to recognize what is happening in the present, consciously accepting the flow of experience
The word mindfulness means full attention or full awareness, so its practice is nothing more than paying attention and concentrating on the present moment. Although it is not necessary to meditate to practice mindfulness, its principles allow us to develop meditative skills to achieve a state of full attention to the world around us.
Through breathing and mindfulness, we can achieve a state of deep awareness, in which we gain peace of mind to think without making judgments about our actions, feelings, or thoughts. With this, we learn to handle each situation with the seriousness that we go through and thus have a positive attitude towards life.

Main Goals Of Mindfulness
With mindfulness, we manage to separate ourselves from our thoughts in order to analyze and recognize them. Thus understanding the importance of the here and now, total attention is a moment to the present.
Mindfulness is a very useful practice to treat psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, and stress
With this practice originating in the East, it is sought that people learn to live unconcerned about the future and detached from the negative things of the past. This includes resentment, sadness, bitterness, feelings that we keep for various reasons throughout life.
How is Mindfulness Practiced?
To practice mindfulness, you do not need a specific schedule or move somewhere. As it is a relaxation practice, just spending about 30 minutes in your home, it must be an intimate, quiet moment, where you are concentrated and without interruptions.
- Do shorter sessions and dynamic guided meditation exercises so that, over time, the mind adapts to the new mental states.
- Practice it in a comfortable and quiet space, during free time, without ties.
- Put aside mobile devices that can interrupt or interfere with mindfulness meditation.
This technique, mindfulness, help us combat stress and deal with pain, sadness, and negative thoughts. To practice mindfulness, just follow these steps:

1. Find a comfortable and quiet place
It is important that there are no distracting objects or noise in this place. A space with vegetation and nature is valid, such as the garden, you can also look for a quiet corner of your house, as long as it is a space without interruptions.
2. Correct position
Mindfulness is practiced sitting or lying down and, although it can be on a sofa or in bed, it is better on the floor, so you get used to taking a correct meditation position.
If you are starting to meditate it will be a bit difficult to get used to the straight position. To make you feel more comfortable you can sit on a small cushion or a mattress.
3. Control your breathing
To start this practice, it is important that you do breathing exercises so that you can adapt more easily to deep breathing.
Inhale and exhale deeply several times, for about 10 minutes. Deep breathing allows you to focus your attention on something specific, avoiding the thoughts that usually interrupt our intimate connection. It also helps to oxygenate the body and, in this way, immerse yourself in a state of relaxation that will fill you with benefits on an emotional, mental and physical level.
4. Analyze your body
Thus, the attention is directed to simple stimuli and not to the thoughts that generate stress, restlessness, or anxiety. If you want you can add massages in certain parts of the body, feet, arms, neck.
5. Broaden the focus
To do this, you must direct your focus of attention to the experiences you have lived, think of each of them as if they were not yours. Analyze them so that you can accept them and learn to act before each one of them.
Dedicate considerable time to each experience according to its importance, little by little, you will learn to accept it and face it. If you need to forgive, overcome and improve some aspect of your life, you can do it with practice, this is essential in mindfulness.
Once you do this little exercise and analysis, go back to deep breathing for another 10 minutes and close the session.

Mindfulness Techniques To Start
So that you practice, I share these mindfulness techniques. Pay attention!
A minute of mindfulness
The ideal is to do a short meditation, one minute, every day and add one minute to the session each day. That is, the first day one minute, the second day two minutes, and so on until you reach about 30 minutes a day, which is indicated for full sessions.
The good thing about this technique is that you can practice it, at first, anywhere, and at any time, while you adapt to the 30 minutes a day that should be part of your habits.
Body scanner
It is a mindfulness technique that teaches us to accept ourselves with virtues and defects, as it is the only way to heal our mind and spirit.
To perform this exercise you must:
- Sit in a comfortable position, with your back straight, or lie down to adopt the lying position.
- Then, close your eyes, take a deep breath and focus your attention on your breath.
- Take a mental tour of your entire body, from head to toe, paying close attention to each sensation.
Landing here and now
This exercise is only achieved by focusing attention on the breath, with deep inhalations and exhalations. It is likely that you get distracted by some image that came to your mind, in that case, let it flow and then return your attention to the breath.

Benefits Of Practicing Mindfulness
- Control stress and anxiety: All relaxation and deep breathing activities serve to control stress and anxiety, either in specific situations or as a problem of everyday life. Mindfulness lowers cortisol levels, a hormone that is released in response to stress. In addition, with this type of meditation, you achieve a state of calm and serenity, which favors physical and emotional health.
- Combat insomnia: Thanks to the state of relaxation and tranquility that is achieved with mindfulness, it is possible to combat insomnia and recover the quality of sleep. That is why it is recommended to meditate before sleeping.
- Protects the brain: Experts say that meditation and mindfulness can modify the neural structure of the brain. It is possible that the size of telomeres increases, structures located at the ends of chromosomes that are directly related to aging.
- Train the mind: Mindfulness is a practice that trains attention, concentration, creativity, and memory. With it, it is possible to keep the mind in good working order.
- Develops emotional intelligence: With the help of mindfulness we learn to show ourselves as we are, this improves self-awareness and allows us to transform ourselves, love ourselves and have compassion for ourselves to decide what affects us and what does not.
- Improves the relationship with others: The mindfulness philosophy is based on compassion, love, and acceptance with ourselves, because only by putting these values ​​into practice do we find peace of mind and we can better relate to the environment and those around us.
Mindfulness is, without a doubt, a practice of help and transformation that leads us to emotional, mental, and physical well-being. If you are a person with stress or anxiety, including some meditation exercises can be very helpful.
Health and peace in our mind are as important as that of the body, so it deserves the same attention and care.
Dare to get started in mindfulness and live the present moment!