Wellness Wednesdays - I am here now

Welcome to Wednesday’s Wellness Clinic. I can promise you I am not a doctor, a psychotherapist or a preacher, just someone with a lot going on inside her head looking for a way to calm the storm and impart that wisdom to you. Most of this mental balm will be influenced by a combination of my personal preferences, recent experiences, and a book which, until a few months ago, was gathering dust on a shelf. A book which forms the overarching ideology I am trying to live by: that ‘I am here now’.

This book (available here) was written by Alexandra Frey and Autumn Totten, founders of The Mindfulness Project, and provides fun, easy-to-follow activities to help you focus on and exist more fully in the ‘now’. By incorporating one or more of these exercises into my week, I hope to be able to keep past regrets and future worries from gnawing my brain to Swiss cheese (an image my trypophobic mind does not appreciate).

I will spend more time delving into the specifics of certain practices when they arise each week, but for the purposes of today, as an introduction of sorts, I will briefly answer you this: what sort of things can stop you from being present?

Everyday life is a barrage of sensations, experiences and responsibilities which all make demands on our attention, pulling us into the past, pushing us into the future, and ultimately stopping us enjoying what is right in front of us. You may be thinking about a stupid text you sent after you stayed up until 2am, you may be worrying you will be late for work or panicking over looming deadlines, so much so that you fail to enjoy the taste of breakfast or the warmth of the sunshine. Even in the present moment, we sometimes need an escape route to keep ourselves sane. While the exercises I am going to try won’t cure anxieties such as these, they should help to turn down their volume and tune you into a more receptive mindset – at least, that is what I’m hoping for!

Over the course of 2021, I am going to see what really makes me tick, try to make time stand still for a little while, and maybe, if you can keep up, you’ll find there’s a similar timepiece ticking away in your head too.