Mindfulness for Stress & Anxiety

Mindfulness can be so helpful to get off to sleep, letting go of thoughts and worries and allowing the body and mind to rest.

Sleep can only come to us when we stop struggling and trying - so why not try this practice that encourages you to just let go of whatever keeps you awake and allow sleep to come to you?

Dropping off to sleep is really about letting go and allowing it to happen...this practice is all about allowing your body to sink into the bed and let go completely, allowing natural sleep to come to you. Useful whether it's going to sleep or go back to sleep if you wake in the night.

This practice invites you to quickly find ten things you were grateful for this day, and remember them to help you appreciate your life and go to sleep peacefully. It's often the small things in life that can make it most meaningful - so go on, see if you can find ten things!

We know sleep is so important, yet often it eludes us. With this practice, you'll learn how to focus on how comfortable you are in your bed and let go of thoughts that keep you awake. Sleep tight!

A three-stage practice from Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy specially designed for difficult times, to help you ground back in the body, get in touch with yourself and not get stuck in negative or anxious thought-spirals

The breath is really our best friend in meditation - following its soothing rhythm can give our minds a calm place to rest away from whirling thoughts and endless distractions.

How about thanking our bodies for all the work they do for you each day? gratitude and appreciation are such positive emotions, they can help to neutralise stress and tension and allow the mind to rest and sleep.

A practice to help you find some peace and calm within your body

By visualising and imagining our hearts like the sun, warm and bright, we can help our hearts to become warmer and brighter and full of joy and kindness.

Mindfulness of breathing can be a big help for dropping off to sleep, by taking your attention away from worries and anxieties and resting on soothing rhythm of breathing.

The breath is our best friend in mindfulness - but it's often not easy to keep the mind there. Adding soft counting can really help to keep the mind gently focused and not straying off.

Getting to sleep is essentially about letting go of needing to do anything or think about anything....and mindfulness is all about letting go of what we don't need. Try this 30 minute sleep meditation and sweet dreams!

The heart is our emotional centre, so why not see how it feels to put a soothing hand over your heart as you practice?

In difficult times, compassion is the ultimate soothing balm - learning to hold yourself in your heart with love and be your own best friend.

A nice long 20 minute practice to help you relax and release every part of your body, and just drift off gently to sleep. Sweet dreams!

The breath is really our best friend that can help us calm the mind, let go of troubling thoughts and tune into the relaxation that happens every time we breathe out.

Here is a practice of imagining yourself radiating kindness all around you. This can really help to boost your mood, and if you look at a beacon, notice where the light is strongest. You're right - at the source, yourself!

Our breath is rocking us gently, all day and all night. With this practice, we'll be getting in touch with that soothing rhythm to help you drift off to sleep.

By deliberately breathing more deeply and slowly, we can calm our nervous systems and our minds.

Often, we hold tension in our bodies that we are not aware of, which makes our minds tense too; or it may be a result of tension in the mind. By deliberately softening the body, the mind can release it as well.

In anxious times, our feet can really be our best friends - at the far end of our bodies from our anxious minds, and always supporting us, in contact with the ground.

This practice is great for cultivating the wish for yourself to be happy - sounds obvious, but very often we are hard on ourselves and much kinder to others. By bringing that kind intention home to our own hearts, we can find peace there and learn to quiet critical voices.

There's a link between our mood or emotions and how we breathe - when we're anxious or stressed, breathing often becomes short and tight. By deliberately breathing slowly into our lower bodies, we can reduce anxiety and calm stress.

What often keeps us awake is whirling thoughts. By simply counting backwards, we can occupy the mind on something that doesn't stress us out and give it a chance to drop off to sleep instead.

By wishing for peace in our hearts, we make it more likely that we will experience that peace in our hearts and minds.

A practice to help you find calm places inside yourself, even when all around you is busy and hectic.

All of our states of mind are habits that we have either cultivated or fallen into. With meditation, we can cultivate positive states of mind. So start here with cultivating happiness and joy!

We often feel inadequate in so many ways and this feeling of inadequacy can make us feel sad and lonely. The good news is it's not true! none of us is perfect, but learning to feel that we are good enough can bring great relief and peace.

In these uncertain and even frightening times, it's so easy and understandable to get caught up in endless worrying. While of course we need to plan, spending all of our days and nights worrying just ups the anxiety levels. Thankfully, help is at hand - you can practice letting go of worry thoughts simply using the sense of the ground underneath you. Feeling the ground beneath you is always there as a gateway into the here and now and out of the imagined future. Give it a go!

We can really set the tone for the day right at the beginning, by thinking of good things we're expecting today. Even just small things - enjoy the anticipation!

Often, we fight against change and give ourselves lots of stress by doing that. Instead, I'd like to invite you to notice that change is all around you at all times and to welcome that - go with the river, rather than trying to swim against the current.

Often we hold tension in our bodies from a stressful day, and by simply noticing kindly where it is, that brings about some release. When we feel more relaxed in our bodies, sleep is easier. Sweet dreams!

We often find it easier to show love and care for others than for ourselves - but it's so important to find it for ourselves too! after all, you are the only person who's always there for yourself! this practice can transform our relationship with ourselves, from one of criticism to one of love and care.

This practice invites you to focus on yourself and direct kind intentions and wishes. We often focus on others and forget that we are equally worthy of kindness and care.

We easily focus on the difficult things in our lives and forget that there are positives too. We are hard-wired for this, but it tends to make us unhappy - so by practising appreciation and gratitude, we turn around this tendency and learn to find joy in our lives.

A practice designed to help you ground your attention in the breath, which will help you to calm yourself. We then build on that by deliberately using the out-breath to let go of tension and stress. Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich from Pexels

We can often feel overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions, and by stepping back and thinking of them as just experiences passing through, we can get some perspective on it all and feel less overwhelmed.

It's easy to think of sounds while we're meditating as a distraction, but we can easily turn that round and make them a help, in fact mindfulness of sounds is a great practice. We simply become receptive and open to sounds, letting go of labeling and thinking about them, and listen to the ongoing symphony around us.

If you find it difficult to get to sleep, try this practice of just letting your body sink into the bed, helping you to let go of any tension that may be keeping you awake.

We know sleep is so important, but it doesn't always come easily - and when we start worrying that we won't get enough, that keeps us awake! So why not try this simple practice of counting backward to distract your mind from worries, and give yourself the best chance of a restful night.

It's easy to forget, but actually the breath is keeping us alive every moment of our lives. With this practice, we remember this and notice how the breath nourishes and sustains us, which helps us to feel nourished and fulfilled.

By practicing kindness for ourselves and others, we can cultivate this beautiful emotion. In this practice we use the breath as a vehicle to carry the kindness deep within us, and to reach out to another on the outbreath.

We often aren't clear on how we actually feel, moment by moment, lost in external stimuli and stories. Here's a chance to tune in to how you really feel and be honest with yourself.

By meditating at the beginning of your day, you give yourself a chance to set yourself up in a good frame of mind for the whole day.

This compassionate body scan is to help us appreciate our bodies and show kindness when there are difficulties in any areas. Cultivating a kind attitude to ourselves is so important to help us feel at home in our bodies and treat ourselves better. You can do it, just keep practicing!

Placing a hand on your heart can be soothing and caring. Try doing that during this practice and see how you get on.

Often our minds are very scattered and we can feel 'all over the place', yet with a simple practice of mindfulness of breathing, we can learn to bring the mind home into the moment which is a more restful and calm place to be.

It's easy to get lost in a morning whirlwind - so why not take a few minutes to set your intentions for the day and decide what's most important for you? This can really help you to settle the mind and heart, ready for the day ahead.

The breath is our best friend with mindfulness practice - always there for us to anchor the mind, giving us a place to focus where we don't need to try so hard and can allow the mind to settle and be at peace.

If the body is tense, the mind will probably be tense too, and vice versa - they are so intimately connected. So my relaxing one, the other will feel better too. Try this practice of loosening and relaxing the body and mind together.

Life is difficult sometimes....and our usual response to difficulty is to brace against it and try to make it go away. The thing is, when it's our own emotions that are difficult, that just creates more tension. So if we can soften internally and allow ourselves to feel what we're feeling, we reduce that internal conflict.

The body scan is a core practice in mindfulness. In this one, I've left you lots of space for your own exploration of your experience. See how you get on with less guidance.

Research shows that there's a strong connection between our facial expression and mood - we know that the face shows our mood, but did you know that it can also influence it too? try smiling deliberately and see what happens!

We can walk mindfully too! bringing full attention to our bodies as we walk is a great way of calming the mind and learning to be present; for some people it's easier than following the breath.

With mindfulness practice, the breath really is your friend, and in this practice you'll be learning how to breathe into tension in your body, and release and relax.

Body and mind are intimately connected, so sometimes we can make ourselves feel a little better by deliberately bringing a gentle smile to our faces. Not a forced grin, just a gentle smile. Try it as you do this practice!

You don't need to have a puppy on hand for this one, it's more a question of treating your racing mind like a wayward puppy. We bring it back with a patient smile and train it to walk, to heel.

Every time we breathe out, we let go....and each out breath is a chance to let go of whatever is keeping us awake - thoughts, tightness in the body.

Often if we feel stressed, we start to go into our shells and not connect with others. How about reaching out to others, both to check in with them and to ask for support? I found when I started using an intention in this way, it showed up in my life outside of practice - it really worked!

When we feel low, or anxious, or frustrated, we also often feel very isolated and convinced that we're the only person in the world to feel like this. Yet when we think on it for a moment, how can that be true? we all feel the same things, sooner or later, and it can be encouraging to know that others feel the same way too.

Sometimes in practice it can be helpful to use metaphors like riding the breath like a wave to help us understand how to approach it. And like waves, there's always another breath for us to focus on to calm and center ourselves on.

When we smile to ourselves, it can help to improve our mood - mind and body are so linked and influence each other in both directions. Give it a go - gently smiling to yourself as you meditate.

Particularly in difficult times, are minds are taken endlessly away from what's here and now into the future - the near or far possible futures. The possibilities are endless, and we don't know how it will play out. How about coming back to what's actually happening right now, and feel the power of being simply present with your experience rather than living in an imagined future?

In these difficult, uncertain times, feeling the literal ground beneath our feet can be extremely calming and, well, grounding. It's always there as a literal and emotional source of support - why not try this practice to learn to find your ground in difficult times?

A practice from the yoga tradition, imagining golden light bathing us from the inside can give us the most delightful feeling of warmth and care - and you can do this for yourself!

One of the best ways to lift your mood is to remember good things in your life - large, small, people, events, things you've done for other people, things they've done for you. I really, really love this practice, particularly in difficult times when often all we can see is the difficulty. But that's not the whole story, it never is.

We know that there is a strong connection between our posture and how we feel, but did you know that our posture can also influence our mood? try leaning back deliberately in this practice and see what happens.

While we meditate, we can often feel that we 'can't do it' because our minds are full of thoughts. We can't make thoughts go away, but we can get some perspective on them, and that's where a metaphor like busy traffic can help.

We often aren't clear on how we actually feel, moment by moment, lost in external stimuli and stories. Here's a chance to tune in to how you really feel and be honest with yourself.

Often it feels like we just rush on from one thing to the next, and there's never a pause. But actually we can tune into micro-pauses in our breathing, which can help us feel more spacious. Give it a go with this practice!

Often by labeling our experience as it comes and goes, it can help us to get some perspective on it and not be swept away by thoughts and emotions.

Each out-breath is a release, and we can consciously harness that to help the body let go of any tension it's carrying.

A settled mind is a calm and focused mind, and it's a great place to be. Try this practice using breathing and self-suggestion to give your mind a chance to settle and relax.

Using quiet counting can be really helpful to keep the mind on the breath, and gain the calming, soothing effect of staying with the breath. Counting gives the mind a bit more to do so it makes it a bit easier - and it doesn't matter a bit if you only get to 2, just start again!

A great way to start your day! we so easily get into worrying about the day and thinking about what's going to be difficult - so why not try something completely different, and try wishing people well before you see them? see if it makes a difference both to your mood and how the conversation goes.

Cultivating kind intentions towards yourself and other people dear to you is a great way to boost mood and reduce negative feelings like fear and anger, and experiences more positive emotions like joy, love, and happiness. Like anything, it just takes practice.

The subtle rocking movement of our bodies as we breathe can be a great way of soothing ourselves and allowing sleep to creep up on us.

Whatever we feed and water in our minds, is what grows....just like a garden. So by watering the seeds of care and love, we increase our capacity to care and love, both ourselves and our loved ones.

We can use the out-breath to help us relax, and it's always there for us. Each exhales is a mini-relaxation, and we can spread that to other parts of the body to increase relaxation.

By practicing well-wishing we cultivate the habit of kindness in our hearts and minds. We all like to receive kindness, and we can learn to generate it for ourselves as well as for others. You don't need to feel any special way while doing this practice, but it will help to make kindness a habit. Well-wishing also helps dispel irritability, anger, and grumpiness.

By focusing on slowing down the breath, we can calm a racing mind and heart and soothe ourselves into a better place.

So the times are uncertain...finding your seat, your place where you can be stable and steady, can be so calming and grounding, and we can find that in meditation practice.

We often focus on the challenges and difficulties in life and forget and overlook what's good and positive in our lives. This practice helps you to remember what's good in your life.

Compassion is the balm that helps us to heal. You can cultivate it for yourself with practices like these from Mindful Self Compassion

We can spend a lot of time thinking there's something wrong with who we are and how we feel. How would it be to stop that internal war, and allow yourself to be just as you are, however that is?

This practice brings together the anchoring effect of following the breathing with the beautiful practice of wishing well for yourself and another.

The breath is our best friend in mindfulness practice, giving our minds a place to rest and settle where no effort is required. For many people, breath practice offers a place of respite and peace from the daily whirlwind, and a longer practice gives more time for the mind to rest.

Remembering what's good and beautiful in your world and your life is such a heart-warming and joyful practice. It can be so easy to just notice difficulties - and that's rarely the whole story - there's usually something good to appreciate! And that can give us strength to deal with difficulties.

Sometimes just reassuring ourselves that we're OK can help us untangle ourselves from a knot of thoughts and worries. Simply saying to ourselves 'it's OK, I'm OK' can have a very calming, soothing effect.

The breath really is our best friend with mindfulness, always there to find with our attention. Its natural rhythm can soothe us gently and calm a troubled mind.

It can be really difficult to focus on the meditation object, with the mind full of thoughts. By imagining them as leaves floating away downstream, it can make it a little easier to let the swirling thoughts go and improve focus and clarity.

These are difficult times, for everyone. But not everything is bad and we so easily lose sight of that. This practice will help you to reconnect with the good things in your life, maybe things you totally take for granted, and appreciate them. A practice like this can really shift your perspective from 'everything's bad' to 'some things are very difficult right now but there are good things too'. Why not give it a go?

Why not have a go at a longer practice with a focus on awareness of what's here? this is how we can come to know and understand our inner landscape and heart, which is essential to find peace in ourselves.

With breathing, there is really nothing you need to do - it happens all by itself. You can practice letting go of control and 'fix-it' mind so you can use it when you need it, and not have it running when you don't.

The practice of gratitude and appreciation for the good things in our lives can be a great way to boost mood and help us not get sucked into negative thinking. I love to practice with everyday things that I take for granted, and find the more I appreciate my life, the happier I am.

In these uncertain times, we easily get fixated on worrying and forget to be grateful for the good things in our lives. Yet gratitude practice is a great way of boosting your mood and feeling better, leaving us better resourced to deal with problems. Give it a go today - there's always something you can be grateful for..

We can cultivate an attitude of kindness towards ourselves with a practice of affectionate breathing, enjoying the soft feeling of the air entering and leaving the body.

Times are uncertain at the moment....but if we can find an anchor, a place to rest from the storm, it can be immensely restorative and calming for us.

The practice of gratitude and thanksgiving can have a profound effect on our mood; in this practice you will be remembering good times with others and mentally thanking them.

If we feel stressed or anxious, we carry tension in the body and this can build up as we add layers of bracing around it. By deliberately softening these layers of resistance and tension, we can help the body feel more comfortable and release mental tension too.

Our minds are often full of thoughts, and we wish they'd be clearer...we can't make thoughts just go away, but by imagining our mind like the sky, with thoughts like clouds drifting through, we can feel more spacious and calm.

A 10-minute practice to ground and center you in the moment. Very helpful for when the mind feels hectic and scattered or emotions feel overwhelming; also helpful if you feel fine and want to stay that way!

We can help ourselves to stay steady and strong by bringing to mind a mountain, and then imagining ourselves as that mountain - stable and unchanging with all the swirl of events around us.

The breath is our best friend in meditation, an always-available place to rest the attention and allow the mind to settle. We can't force the mind to be calm, but we can allow the awareness to settle on breathing and let the thoughts drift away.

A hug can be so comforting. Sometimes there isn't anyone there to give you one, so why not give it to yourself?

The simple practice of grounding yourself - feeling the contact with the earth below - can really help when you're feeling anxious or stressed, or your mind is racing a million miles an hour.

I like to work with an intention at the beginning and end of a practice, and when I started doing this, I found that my intention showed up in my life - it works! So why not try this practice starting with an intention to be present, not just in the practice, but throughout your day as best you can?

Meditation can help you get to sleep, by letting go of thoughts and focusing on feeling warm and cozy instead.

Touch can be so healing and soothing, so why not experiment with what you can do for yourself with a gentle touch?

Gratitude is a wonderful practice to help us counter our negativity bias - the tendency we all have to focus on the difficult. But that's not the whole story! try this 30 minute structured gratitude practice and see how you feel afterward.

Life swirls around us, bringing all kinds of surprises and changes. How would it be to stand firm and stable like a mountain through all of it? Try this practice to bring yourself a sense of groundedness. This practice starts with settling the attention on breathing before moving to picturing yourself standing firm like a mountain

In this practice, the invitation is to reflect on what words you would love to hear, and then whisper them to yourself. I suggest making it something quite general, like 'It's OK' or 'I'm here for you', but choosing what you need to hear and seeing what happens when say it to yourself. Remember to use a gentle tone of voice.

When we're not feeling good, a common response is to beat ourselves up for not feeling good....and then we feel worse! Why not try being kind and compassionate with yourself with this short self-compassion break instead?

The breath is such a great place to rest the attention, and we can think of it as an anchor, keeping our attention stable in the moment no matter what waves and turbulence is happening in the mind. This takes a bit of practice but it's well worth it - why not start now?

Very often, our tension and stress comes from not feeling supported. People may support us and they may not - but feeling the support of the ground beneath us can help calm and soothe the mind and reduce unnecessary worrying.

Our awareness can be like the sun, shining on everything without discrimination.

Why not give yourself a nice long practice of appreciating your body and all the amazing things it does, and sending a bit of love and sympathy for any bits that are struggling at the moment?

A longer sitting practice to calm the mind with the breath, tune into the body, practice mindfulness of sounds and learning to not be dragged around by thoughts but staying present in the moment.

Following the breath is so helpful to calm and focus the mind - but it isn't always easy to do; the mind gets endlessly distracted. That's where saying to yourself 'breathing in, breathing out' can really help - try it and see!

It's easy to forget the simple joy in wishing another person well, and hoping for the same for ourselves - we get lost in stories of how it could be better, or we could be better, and forget the simple joy available to us in spreading well-wishing around us.

When we meditate, our minds are generally full of thoughts. Here we're learning to let them go, gently, rather than have them running the show.

What we practice, grows in us - so why not try this practice of saying silently to another, 'I care about you' to help that caring heart grow stronger?

The breath is our best friend in meditation, always there as a place to anchor the mind and allow thoughts, whether mundane or troubling, to not take center stage all the time, so a sense of peace can arise.

Practicing generosity, giving gifts to others and seeing their happiness can be a great way to boost your mood - even if you're just imagining it!

When we're stressed, the breath tends to be tight and in the upper body. By directing the breath as low as possible, we can reduce the anxiety and help our bodies get as much oxygen as possible.

In these uncertain and even frightening times, it's so easy and understandable to get caught up in endless worrying. While of course we need to plan, spending all of our days and nights worrying just ups the anxiety levels. Thankfully, help is at hand - you can practice letting go of worry thoughts simply using the outbreath to help you. Breath is always there as our gateway into the here and now and out of the imagined future. Give it a go!

In difficult times, our minds are whirling with what might happen, and that can ramp up anxiety. Feeling the ground under us, supporting us, can give us a wonderful refuge for our minds in turbulent times.

We often get lost in thinking and forget to tune into our bodies. It's important to listen to the signals our body is giving us, all the time, and it's often also calming to let go of thoughts and live in the moment using the body as the vehicle to do just that.

Generally, our thoughts run the show and we think that they're who we are. But what if we bring awareness to them and see that they're just mental events, coming and going, and that they don't have to run the show at all?

Our breathing goes on day after day, keeping us alive, and is always there for us as an anchor for our attention. How about a little affection for your breathing, and by extension, for yourself?

Kindness is something we can never have too much of in our lives. And like any quality of mind, it can be cultivated. Don't worry if you don't feel anything - you're sowing and cultivating seeds whether you feel anything or not.

This body scan is a great chance to get in touch with what your body is telling you, and move your attention away from the endless thinking. If you haven't tried a half-hour practice before, why not give this a go?

It's so easy to remember the difficult things that happen at the end of the day, but that gives a distorted view and makes us feel negative. It's really helpful to remember the good things that happened too, and appreciate and cultivate gratitude in your life.

A 3-minute practice to ground and center you in the moment. Very helpful for when the mind feels hectic and scattered or emotions feel overwhelming.

This practice invites you to take a mindful walk....around your own space! Generally we have seen our own space so many times that we stop seeing it....how about looking with fresh eyes, remembering all the stories attached to your possessions and what you like about them? Particularly good for if you can't go out for whatever reason but don't fancy sitting still to meditate.

Walking meditation can be a great way of grounding and centring your attention, and in this practice you add kind words with every step. Particularly useful if you feel agitated and sitting down to meditate just seems to hard.

One way of working with thoughts is to think of them like traffic moving past us - we don't have to direct the traffic, we can just watch it - and it's the same with our thoughts. We don't have to let them bother us, we can just watch them pass.

This practice brings together two types of practice - setting a heartfelt intention, and mindful listening. I find when I practice intention setting at the beginning of practice, it starts manifesting in my life. And mindful listening is a great way to focus, particularly if your mind feels scattered and the breath is not easy to anchor on.

We know that the world is changing all the time, and we're changing too....but somehow we also are surprised when it happens! with this practice of deliberately noticing change in our experience, we can become accustomed to this reality and learn to flow with changing conditions. Works for me!

In difficult times, we really need to find a safe place to rest our attention. Luckily the breath is always there for us and for many, can be a wonderful refuge from whirling thoughts.

In these difficult times, it's easy to spiral into worry and forget what matters most - our guiding star of intention. What is your best intention for the day? you don't need to remember it all the time, no-one does, but by breathing it into your body it can make it easier to access. We feel more fulfilled when we act on our deepest intentions, rather than blindly reacting again and again.

The breath is a great refuge from worry and uncertainty - it's going on all the time and we don't need to do anything with it, but we can rest our attention there as a refuge from worry, anxiety and planning for the future. A real resting place, available at any time.

In this practice we balance well wishing for ourselves with well wishing for others. We all need care and love!

Image breathing in compassion for myself and out for you, or any other person or people. It can feel like a nice balance caring for yourself and looking after others as well.

Why not try this practice of imagining yourself in a safe, beautiful place with someone who really cares about you and understands you fully? then realising that they've been a part of you all along!

This is a lovely practice of spreading the love, some for you and some for another person you care about or who needs some special love right now.

You can really improve your mood by wishing well to everyone. It may mean you're nicer with them too!

This practice is for tuning in and listening to your own wisdom about what you need to do now. Often our subconscious really knows what's best for us, it's just a question of learning to listen to it.

Getting in touch with our bodies is so important for mindfulness - knowing how we're really feeling, and learning to ground the attention here rather than living in scattered thoughts. A longer practice like this one gives you more time to focus and settle, and cultivate the habit of moment-by-moment awareness. Worth the time!

So easy to shovel food in, not really tasting it or enjoying it. So why not try eating mindfully? to do this, get a small piece of something tasty, ideally something that won't melt on your fingers!

It's been a tough year, 2020, for most of us. However I'm sure there were some points of light as well - there always are, even small ones. Remembering and reflecting on these can make it all seem more bearable. Not to say there aren't difficulties....but they're not the whole story.

With this practice we're adding some affection and kindness to our breathing in and out, warming up our attention with words of kindness.

Kindness makes the world go round, in this practice we start off wishing well to someone we care about, moving on to wishing well for both of you, then just yourself. Particularly good if you find it hard to wish well to yourself - you warm up on someone else. We are all deserving of kindness.

We can practice mindfulness in any posture, including standing. You can do this either as a special practice, or by learning to 'turn on' mindfulness in your daily life, any time you're standing, maybe waiting in line, can become a meditation - far better than getting impatient and annoyed!

Often our minds feel cluttered with thoughts and emotions; with practices like this one we can learn to cultivate a wider awareness that holds all the thoughts, and find the peace of a spacious mind.

By bringing our attention to our feet as we walk, we can literally ground our attention, which is a great way to stop 'living in our heads' and reduce anxiety and feel our simple connection with the earth below our feet.

The body is a great place to rest our attention, a respite and rest from the endless whirling thoughts. It's also really important to tune in and know what's happening in our emotional world, so we can be kind to ourselves if there's difficulty there or appreciate it when there's joy there! With this practice, we are getting in touch with the sensations in the body - not the thoughts, just the feelings.

By practising kindness or well-wishing in meditation, we cultivate these qualities in our hearts and minds. Like gardening, it doesn't come immediately but it's well worth the wait. Well wishing or kindness practices also help to calm us down, particularly if we're feeling grumpy and annoyed with other people.

A three-stage practice from Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy to help you tune into yourself, ground yourself, and be ready to face the world again!