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Restarting daily mindfulness practice (crazypeople.online)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/mentalhealth@lemmy.world
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Hello! I'm a resident in counseling who's been lurking around on Lemmy for a while and I want to use this lovely community to both uplift myself and others. I had a period of time in graduate school where I was able to maintain daily meditation sessions, but with the stress of entering the workforce a lot of my good habits fell by the wayside.

It's time to fix that.

For my first exercise today I spent some time this afternoon in my yard listening to birdsong - I could hear 5 different birds, even though I'm not sure what species they were other than whippoorwills and cardinals! I love feeling like these cute little guys are my neighbors, maybe I should put out some seed for them.

How do you use mindfulness in your own life? Would this community be interested in daily mindfulness check-ins? How else can we uphold each other as a community?

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[–] 5 points 21 hours ago (1 child)

Technically yeah i practice mindfulness meditation, though not in standard way.

Mostly to help with my alexithymia(emotional blindness), learning to notice bodily sensations more can be helpful in figuring out what emotion i might be experiencing.

I've tried the typical of sitting still type of meditation, but it never really worked ADHD and such.
Then i started resistance training and over time i noticed that while I'm lifting. I have to focus on my body, i have to focus on breathing, i have to focus on keeping my attention on the weight and my body to make sure that the weight moves correctly and with control, that my form stays somewhat correct, that I'm using right muscles.
All of that works kinda like mindfulness meditation and has been helpful in teaching me to notice my bodily signal and how my mind works and eventually even slightly controlling or directing it to avoid negative spiraling.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 child)

    I love seeing examples of embodied cognition thesis out in the wild! I always try to encourage people to view the activities that help them be present as it's own form of mindfulness or meditation. Many terms for it - 'flow state' is also common.

    I alos have ADHD and struggled with sitting still at the beginning, but I've learned that my mind is like an untrained puppy and it will go wherever it wants. Mindfulness is acknowledging the puppy and then guiding attention back to the present through our senses (for you, touch). Like putting a leash on my brain when it gets too distracted lmao

    I haven't had many people with alexithymia, have you found this to be the most helpful way to deal with it?

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  • [–] 2 points 13 hours ago*

    Sry that came out kinda long.

    Honestly that's a good point, mind can be trained. I should try it again now that I've had some more practice with it.

    It's one of the most recommended and accessible methods to deal with it. Mindfulness meditation or just taking time, sitting down and focusing on the bodily sensations is one one of the most recommended method to deal with alexithymia as over time it teaches the person to become more aware of their body and teaches to associate different bodily sensations with corresponding emotions. Other is some form of journaling as writing down different sensations and what was going on at that time can indicate what emotions i might have been experiencing at that time.

    Of course it would be slightly more effective with a therapist, but as it is a years or more long process. The price of that can stack up rather high.

    Personally I've been trying to use "Animi" app, which is specifically created for people with alexithymia. It combines both approachs with regular logging of different body signals and sitting down, focusing and taking time to reflect back. It does use a different approach than other emotional tracking apps as it already takes inro account that the user doesn't know what emotion they might be experiencing by starting to guess based on whatever sensations i might be having.

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