Maybe you’ve heard that mindfulness can change your brain for the better.
That it’ll make you more joyful, more peaceful, more present.
But you’re still putting off starting a mindfulness practice, because you’ve told yourself you don’t have time. You’ve told yourself your mind is too busy and distractable to meditate. You’ve convinced yourself it just won’t work for you.
What if I told you that all you need is a simple 3 minute practice to start to reap the benefits mindfulness has to offer.
Introducing: The 3 Minute Breathing Space.
The 3 Minute Breathing Space comes from Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, and is a practice I teach all my coaching and psychotherapy clients.
In just 3 minutes you exercise your mindfulness muscle by practicing:
Non-judgmentally observing your thoughts, sensations and emotions with curiosity
Mindfully labeling your internal experience
Creating space from your thoughts, sensations and emotions and releasing over-identification with them
Pausing and giving yourself the opportunity to respond instead of react
Mindful breathing and catching when your mind wanders and bringing it back to your breath
The ability to zoom your awareness in to your breath and back out to your environment
Shifting from being on autopilot to being able to consciously make choices, such as choosing where you place your attention, whether or not you’d like to engage with the thoughts you’re having, whether you’d like to engage in a different activity.
Accepting things as they are instead of resisting or reacting to them
Even more benefits (!!):
increase neural flexibility
create the space and opportunity for new neural pathways to form
the gift of freedom! aka the freedom of choosing how you want to respond instead of being stuck in habitual reactions
When to practice the 3 Minute Breathing Space:
Any time of the day just because you feel like it!
At the same time every day just to make sure you’re working out your mindfulness muscle.
When you notice the early warning signs of anxiety, depression, or a flare up of pain.
When you notice you’ve been living on auto pilot.
When you catch yourself rushing through life.
When you feel overwhelmed.
How to practice the 3 Minute Breathing Space:
Find somewhere to pause. Standing or sitting works fine!
Take note of the quality of the thoughts in your mind, or the thoughts that have been in your mind over the last 20 minutes or so. What kinds of thoughts are they? Self-critical? Planning? Rushed? Optimistic? Name this to yourself by saying “_____thoughts are present”, e.g. “worried thoughts are present”.
Take note of the sensations you are experiencing. You could use words such as: pressure, tingling, heat, heaviness, ease, sharp, etc… Again, use the words “____sensations are present”, e.g. “heavy sensations are present” or “sensations of heaviness are present”.
Take note of any emotions that are present. If you find it challenging to detect an emotion you might look to sensations and thoughts for clues of what you might be feeling, or you can ask yourself “if I were feeling an emotion right now what might it be?”. Again, use the words “____is present”, e.g. “sadness is present” or “the experience/emotion of sadness is present”.
Now set a timer for 1 minute and just breathe! Every time your mind wanders, gently, and non-judgmentally usher your attention back to your breath. Suggestions for keeping your attention on your breath: silently count your breath (in 1, out 1, in 2, out 2, and so on…), silently say “inhaling” as you breathe in and “exhaling” as you breathe out, just pay attention to the sensation of breathing. It’s to be expected that your mind will wander, so please don’t get discouraged! This is where you get to practice strengthening your ability to choose where you place your attention!
Now zoom your awareness out from your breath to take in awareness of your whole body. Then open your eyes and zoom your awareness out even farther to take in your environment. Now move forward with your day from this mindful perspective!
Why is this helpful for chronic pain?
Chronic pain, like any chronic condition (such as anxiety and depression), is chronic because the same neurons keep firing along the same neural pathways. In the case of pain, one of the factors increasing the likelihood that it becomes chronic is how much an individual fears the pain. The more you fear your pain the stronger the neural pathway to the pain becomes. In order to break this cycle you need to pause, observe the pain, acknowledge and label it without fear, learn to accept it and allow it to be there, and learn how to express the related emotional content. The 3 Minute Breathing Space is an opportunity to pause and create a new neural pathway, a new story, a new experience. Or as Dr. Joe Dispenza would say, it’s an opportunity to “break the habit of being yourself”.
Ready to give this practice a shot? Give it a try now!
It is known as the 5 minute mindfulness check-in here since the audio lasts 5 minutes, but when you get to know this practice and do it on your own it should only take 3 minutes!
Once you’ve listened to the meditation tell me about your experience! And as always feel free to ask me any questions!
Wishing you deeper breaths and greater joy!