Wellness Calendar: Tuesday 12 August

An exercise using stillness
(1) Find a place where you can be alone for 5 minutes, away from your normal routine, and away from your phone and any other distractions.
(2) Find a comfortable position to be in, whether it be seated or lying down, eyes open or eyes closed.
(3) Let 5 minutes go past without trying to do anything. If you wish to focus on your breathing, that’s fine. You will naturally be distracted by anything and everything. This is to be expected. Just carry on being silent and still.
(4) When 5 minutes has come to an end, you can either return to your everyday life or you can make a few notes in a notebook about what it was like for you, and any observations you noticed about (i) your body (ii) your mind (iii) your emotions or (iv) any answers or solutions to problems that happened to pop up while you were silent and still.
(5) Repeat as often as you can. Try to get into a routine of finding the same time to do this over and over again.
(6) Once you get the hang of relaxing and letting thoughts and sensations pass through you, you may wish to use this skill to check in with yourself at any moment in time. Five to 10 seconds can be enough time to be still in order to detect (for example) (i) whether or not you have any tension within parts of your body (ii) your energy levels (iii) your emotional state (iv) your mental state.
(7) When it feels right to do so, increase the length of time you’re able to be still from 5, to 10, to 20, to 30 minutes – and beyond.
And relax. And reflect (if you wish).