Conscious Living - Part 3. Mindfulness and Self Care
I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but in the last few years, ‘mindfulness’ has grown from a relatively unknown practice with Buddhist origins, to become a familiar part of our everyday lives. The word may have become a part of our everyday - but do we know what it really means?
It’s actually relatively simple: to live our lives more consciously, i.e. to be more mindful, requires us to be fully present in each moment and to become more aware of ourselves and what our minds and bodies need. ‘Conscious living’ and ‘mindfulness’ are intrinsically linked: mindfulness is a state we achieve by living our lives more consciously.
Living more mindfully naturally leads to a greater awareness of ourselves, our emotions and our needs. When we begin to pay more attention to our surroundings, and our behaviour in those surroundings, we gradually start to give more attention to our physical and emotional states and with time, begin to feel more fulfilled and happier in our day to day lives. It’s a bit like an endless loop - the more mindful you become, the more you are in touch with your needs, the more you learn to focus on and care for yourself, and the more mindfully you therefore live your life.
As we make time for mindfulness in our daily lives, we begin to take more care of ourselves and our surroundings, and to live more gently. A simple way to start your mindfulness journey is to look at your life and consider any habits that don’t serve you well and could be damaging. For example, overeating, under-exercising, binge-watching Netflix or staying in bed too late in the mornings. These habits may not seem too bad in the moment, but take a deeper look at yourself to see how they affect your general well-being in your daily life. Consider how your behaviours and habits not only affect you but also the people around you, your surroundings and the planet as a whole.
For me personally, this awareness led to a desire to treat myself and my body better, to stop rushing and to start caring. There’s a fine line between laziness and slowness, for example. Rather than lounging around in bed in the mornings, waiting until the last possible minute to get up, I have gradually started to wake and rise earlier, allowing myself plenty of time to focus on my morning rituals. I enjoy a healthy breakfast, take an early morning wander with my dog, and come home to a long hot shower. These simple practices act like a form of meditation, giving me the time to fully connect with the day ahead, allowing my mind to settle and focus, and to start the day from a good place.
When Alex was launching elliot. organics, she considered the mindfulness she practices in her daily life and took it one step further.
“We think about what we put into our bodies, it was a natural next step for us to think about what we put next to our skin.”
Why would you nourish and care for your mind and body with what you eat, how you act and the ways you interact with others, but not consider what you wear? By choosing organic cottons that are ethically produced, softer and allow our skin to breathe, we transform the simple act of getting dressed in the morning into an act of self care, setting ourselves up for the day ahead with kindness and consideration.
This is an extension of the yogic value ‘ahimsa’ which roughly translates as ‘non-harming’. Ahimsa is one of the five yamas, which are the ethical, moral and societal guidelines that yogis live by. ‘Non-harming’ or ‘non-violence’ doesn’t necessarily (or only) refer to physical violence - it also includes negative emotions such as resentment, guilt and shame, as well as actions that incite harmful behaviours or create a negative atmosphere. Violence can manifest itself in words, actions and thoughts, as well as in broader philosophies and ideologies. To bring this back to the clothes that we wear, you cannot live without harming, if you’re wearing garments that are created through slave labour or contain fibres that harm the environment.
As we begin to live with greater awareness, it becomes impossible to live as we used to: careless of ourselves and the planet. Once we begin to live more mindfully, we naturally start to seek out ways to live with less impact on the world and on the people around us, and we start to focus on our own needs.
We stop rushing through life, always looking to meet the next deadline or to achieve the next goal, and instead learn to slow down and appreciate each individual moment. We begin to rest in motion and learn to value where we are and how we are, right here and now.
FURTHER READING
Learn more about what mindfulness is and how to sit for a traditional meditation practice.
Discover a simple five-minute breathing meditation to help to reduce stress and anxiety.
Learn more about Ahimsa and how to practice it in your everyday life.
Discover six simple steps to conscious living that you can work your way through.
This article was written in partnership with Emma Lavelle. You can read more of her work here.