As we approach the new year, we will be starting a ‘Mindful Monday’ activity to help increase our awareness of feelings and emotions, how these impact us, and build up our self care resources.

Everyone is welcome to join in- whether this is your first time practising mindfulness, something you practise regularly, or something you have tried in past that you might be interested to do again. We heard from many  discussions on the forums that mindfulness has been an important part of many people's recovery- we hope to build on this with this regular activity! 

You can also choose your level of participation- do what feels right for you! 

Below is some more information to help you get a sense of what this weekly activity is all about, and how it will work on the forums 🙂 

How will this work? 

Each Monday a SANE Staff member, Community Guide, or member of the Forums Community will set a mindfulness activity for those who wish to participate. Check back in throughout the week to let us all know how it went, and how it felt for you. 

What is mindfulness?  

Mindfulness is the quality of being present in the moment and fully engaged with whatever it is we are doing. I really love the picture below, because it helps visually show what a mindful moment looks like: 

You can read more about Mindfulness here via headspace: https://www.headspace.com/mindfulness/mindfulness-101 

What's the benefits for mental health and wellbeing?

Mindfulness has been shown to:

• Decrease stress and anxiety
• Decrease feelings such as sadness and anger
• Increase focus
• Reduce pain
• Improve sleep
• And so many more! 

What will the Mindful Monday activity look like?

Mindfulness, like a muscle, takes time for us to exercise and build. What we will be doing is providing some small and easy-to-engage-with activities that can help you build mindfulness into your wellbeing activities. 

You can also modify the activities to suit you!

You might like to try the mindful attention awareness scale (MAAS) to gauge where you sit in terms of mindfulness and how you could potentially get more out of these activities! 
https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/mindfulnessscale.pdf 

How is this different to meditation?  

Meditation is mindful but it's broader and takes us beyond our minds. Mindfulness is a form of meditation, but it doesn't have to be meditative, meaning you can incorporate it more easily into any aspect of your everyday life. The important aspect of mindfulness is being in the moment.  

Acknowledging the experiences that can make mindfulness harder for us to engage with:

We would like to acknowledge that mindfulness is not for everyone and can feel distressing for people living with a history of trauma. We invite you to participate in this if you feel comfortable to, and take from it what you like. You know you and what works for you best

Some helpful things to remember when practicing mindfulness is to exercise your right to choose and only do what feels right for you, take breaks, and make an external anchor point, such as a sound instead of the internal world, if that is too overwhelming for you. Sometimes opening your eyes and focusing on an external object can be helpful. You can find more information about this here https://davidtreleaven.com/  

Want to be tagged in the Mindful Moments activities as they are posted?

Mindful Monday will start on January 10th 2022. If you would like to get involved and want to be tagged in new Mindful Monday activities, click the "support" button below. 

So many of our community members already have amazing mindfulness activity ideas, and we invite you to lead an activity! Let us know at team@saneforums.org or tag us in this thread to let us know if you would like to lead a mindfulness activity- we will make a roster so that everyone can have a turn sharing their favourite mindfulness practices 🙂 

I look forward to sharing, learning and practising mindfulness together as a community 🙂

Edit; Here is a list of the previous Mindful Monday activities (click the link to jump to the activity):

1. Nature or found object mandala

2. Mindfulness Jar

3. Puzzles

4. Origami

5. A focus on breath

6. Mindfulness of the senses

7. Noticing the body

8. Music

9. 'Sit Spot' in Nature

10. Stone Stacking