The Nuts and Bolts of Mindfulness
The following was originally written as a printable resource from the Concept for Resilience workshop.
This resource is designed to give you an overview of Mindfulness as a practice as well as step by step instructions so that you can implement this powerful tool into your life.
Mindfulness Recap:
Mindfulness is a form of mental training that increases the power of attention - conscious purposeful focus.
It supports critical thinking, perspective, and awareness by helping us to separate us from our thoughts.
Increased awareness allows us to more readily identify what is stressful.
Mindfulness decreases arousal, thereby helping to decrease cortisol levels and supporting healthy sleep and other beneficial behaviors.
It increases the ability to keep a clear head during high-stress situations.
How to increase mindfulness in 4 easy steps:
One of the most effective ways to create new habits is to tie them to existing routines. To be more mindful, we only need to recognize what’s going on in and around us for moments at a time.
Write down three transitions in your day to which you’ll tie your mindful moments
At each of those transitions, stop to take 3 breaths and pay attention
Reflect at the end of the day on how successful you were
Boom! That’s it! There’s not really a fourth step other than increasing the number of moments in each day you stop to pay attention
10 Minute Routine
The following routine was written with the morning meeting of firefighters in mind. This 10-minute training combats two of the top three killers of firefighters - heart disease and suicide.
Start with a 2-minute meditation.
It’s best if you can at least turn the radios down, if not off, for 2 minutes.
Sit up straight in a chair with feet flat on the floor.
Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.
Feel your body in the chair and feet on the floor. Listen to your surroundings.
Set an intention for your day.
Focus on that intention until the signal at the end of 2 minutes.
End with a discussion and share your experience with your crew.
Impacts on Mental Health
Resilience is the ability to survive, adapt and grow from adversity in order to thrive. The skills of resilience revolve around clear, critical thinking, regulation of emotions and engaging with challenges to your benefit. Mindfulness improves all of these areas! In addition, practicing mindfulness with others increases connection within the group. Strong, healthy social connections are the external variable with the largest impact on increasing resilience - think how often you’ve heard someone say “I couldn’t have done it without so and so..”
Impacts on Physical Health
A regular mindfulness practice reduces levels of distress. Social connection also reduces levels of distress through hormonal moderation (lowering levels of cortisol and increasing level of serotonin and melatonin among others). Finally, hormonal dysregulation is a key pathway contributing to the mechanism contributing to coronary artery disease and cancer.
Intentional Training
Intentional training is the practice of creating a mental image of how you want to show up or how you want to behave as the best version of yourself. If your intention is to be curious, then the goal is to approach each new moment or interaction with a spirit of curiosity.
Attentional Training
Attentional training is developing control over the object of your attention, i.e. controlling what you focus on versus being distracted by your thoughts. Following the example from above, during the mindfulness exercise, focus on the concept of curiosity and return to it when other thoughts enter our mind. Continuously noticing when you are distracted then returning to your focus on your target develops your power of attention.
You can find more discussion and resources in Resilience Standard 1.0
