Tag Archives: mindful habit

The Mindfulness Stress Relief Master Class is now LIVE!

CLICK LINK for your Master Class ⬇

https://www.udemy.com/course/the-mindfulness-stress-relief-master-class/?referralCode=1FA203E550AC769AC33A

What is Stress?

Stress is your body’s way of responding to any demand or threat. When you sense danger—whether it’s real or imagined—the body’s defences kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the “fight-or-flight” reaction or the “stress response.”

I know it doesn’t feel like it, but the stress response is the body’s way of protecting you. When working correctly, it helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. 

In addition, Stress gives you extra strength to defend yourself in emergencies. Healthy Stress can save your life, for example, urging you to slam on the brakes to avoid a car accident.

Recognizing Stress

We de-frag our computers because they get clogged up with too much information so they will perform efficiently. The same happens to our minds, and we get clogged up also. You are all over the place. When we struggle to make sense of a difficult situation, it doesn’t leave much headspace to deal with everything else that needs our attention. The Stress of a shock makes us illogical and emotional. 

When you are stressed, You might feel as if your brain has turned to mush, or you have ‘brain fog ‘. Life may feel unreal, as if you are disconnected and floating slightly outside of your body, watching yourself continue doing things. It’s a horrible feeling. 

You could suffer a bit of a temporary personality change due to severe Stress. For example, you might want to be alone and hide out at home if you are usually social. Or if you often take time out by yourself, you might find yourself going out every night, drinking when you usually don’t. Usually financially savvy, you may do unusual things like compulsive shopping.

When Stress merges into burnt-out, life seems pointless. 

When something happens that leaves you deeply upset, and life can temporarily lose its meaning. You can have negative thoughts like, ‘Why keep trying when everything is just going to go wrong?” You need to be aware of this effect as you can easily slip into depression. You may relate to some or all these symptoms -or none. In whichever way it affects you, severe Stress causes suffering.

Thank you for visiting me here; I hope this post was helpful. If it was then please like, subscribe, or leave a comment with any questions you may have!

 If you feel you would like further support, please contact me. Details of How to get in touch with me are found in my home page’s top menu.

Virtual hugs, I look forward to your visit to my next blog post!

Paula Rose Parish

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How I use Colouring for the healing of worries, loss, and past hurts.

In my past posts, I have outlined many aspects of holistic living, and one of them is mindfulness. Our minds are influential indeed, that will lead to our success or failure; so I feel, its important to become more familiar with the concept of mindfulness. In this post I want to share with you how I use colouring to help me through the overwhelm that each day can bring. This is not the whole story but a snippet from my new book about Holistic Living which features mindfulness. I am in process of writing it and will published and made available  to you later in the year – so keep a look out for that!

At first glance, mindfulness can look like just another hobby that people have caught on, much like meditation, yoga, or pottery. However, I have found that is not the case. When I initially came into holistic living, I promised myself that I would practice it daily. In my next post, I share with you how to make mindfulness a well-habit, but for now, in this post, I want to chat about How I use Colouring for healing of worries, loss, and past hurts. However, This is a short post and not the whole story but a snippet from my new book about Holistic Living that I am writing and will be published and available to you later in the year. 

As time goes by, I am learning to develop the mindful habit of Colouring and incorporate this mindfulness practice into my life. My friends and family thought I had discovered a new hobby to pass the time. However, I didn’t really know how to answer them and then, after a lot of research and reflection, I now know how to explain it, and it goes something like this …….. Mindfulness is not a hobby but something far more meaningful – It is a daily practice and a way of life.

 Having said that, hobbies do, however, come into play here. Although mindfulness is not a hobby in itself, hobbies can develop mindfulness in your life.

Mindfulness is the practice of observing yourself, others, and the environment without judgment. Mindfulness teaches us how to value our time by turning any moment into a present moment. The result of mindfulness practice is thinking objectively while being totally focused and present in the current moment. Your mind becomes relaxed and yet very aware. Your thoughts are focused and become more precise. Your body is relaxed as it receives calmness, peace and bliss state from your mind. 

Colouring for Healing 

There is a saying that depression is about the past and anxiety is about the future. If you ruminate about the past, constantly re-living hurts and regrets, you will become depressed and stressed! If your mind constantly goes to the land of “what if? or If only!” churning the things that could go wrong around in your head and probably will go wrong, you will become anxious, and sadness can overtake you. However, If you can stay in the moment, neither drifting to the past nor skipping to the future, I find that this moment, this second, minute or hour is tolerable and perhaps even enjoyable.

If you just stop for a moment and ponder, How am I feeling at this exact moment?  Is this exact moment stressful? Could I tolerate this moment another second? If The answer is NO, then the practice of mindfulness will help you. 

Now, if it were possible to think about this moment and only this moment, with no whirling thoughts of the past, no fears for the future, wouldn’t that be a relief? Of course it would, and that’s where the practice of Colouring for mindfulness comes into its own.

Get Lost

Colouring helps us to to get lost in time as we focus on the minute details of attending to our Colouring. There’s no time to dwell on the past or worry about the future. All you have to think about is this exact moment. You are choosing your colours and deciding where to place apply them. When you are in the mindful state- or bliss state, your try not to venture beyond the guidelines of the drawing to keep things neat and beautiful. As you colour, you see before your eyes something the wonder and beauty of what you are creating, and in anticipation, the finished result joyfully awaits you.

You might have noticed that many varieties of adult colouring books have made their way onto the market. These colouring books aim to look for mental stimulation, meditation, and mindfulness. My favourite types are the ones with intricate, pretty patterns, as I find they help me be the most mindful. I eventually laminate them and make a divider for my planner. I have also have made planner covers from my colouring projects. One day I will have a go at turning my colour creations into a picture that I can frame, and I may do this soon. Your creations do not have to sit inside the colouring book, gathering dust. They can be used for you to admire and others to appreciate for years to come. They may also give you a sense of calmness as you look at them because it reminds you of the calmness and joy of creating it. I have found that the very act of Creating brings healing to my mind. The fact that I have to keep refocusing my mind and changing colours makes it easier to keep my mind on the present moment and deter it from veering off elsewhere.

If Colouring seems like something you want to try, set aside time to sit down in a quiet place and do some colouring. Just commit to 10 mins at first, then increase it in each session. Soon you will find the time goes far too quickly, and you want to stay on the page. It really does bring the mind into full engagement with the activity. Because your mind becomes calm and relaxed, your body will also be, allowing you to unwind and de-stress.

To help get your started with Colouring for the healing of worries, loss, and past hurts. I am offering a FREE Book Mark for you to colour. Send me your email and I will send you Your Book Mark on PDF.

When your receive my email, simply Down load the PDF file then Just copy and paste and print our onto card. If you print it on regular paper when you have finished your colouring laminate it so its strong for use.

Thank you for visiting me here, I hope this post was helpful. Did you enjoy it? Then please like, subscribe or  leave a comment with any questions you may have! If feel you would like further support, please contact me.

Details of How to get in touch with me is found in the

top menu on my home page.

CLICK https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvdQ4NPTNfXSnwd3pimPh0g

 HEAD OVER TO YOU TUBE AND CATCH UP WITH MY VIDEOS and I will see you in my next blog post!

Paula Rose Parish

How mindfulness Empowers You to accept lifestyle changes – 3 simple ways to self soothe.

How are you feeling about making plans as the COVID restrictions ease? For me, I’ve got excited about catching up in real life with the people who I love. Trying to maintain relationships online just isn’t the same and sometimes can be detrimental. But once I began to book a few things into my diary, I started to feel a cloud of depression creeping in on me. My mind whirled- now I have to make yet another lifestyle change. Now I have to learn anew how to manage a new lifestyle with actual physical people in it, not just faces on a screen or a disembodied voice on the telephone. Like me, you might be meeting these challenges with a looming overwhelming feeling , and no one would blame you, especially for us who live alone and have been living a shut-in lifestyle for over the past year. It took months for me to adapt to my new ‘shut in’ lifestyle. Contemplating months of aloneness and possible loneliness shook me to the core. I fought back with tears, anger then eventually docile acceptance. If you are interested in reading about my experience of how the practice of mindfulness empowers You to accept lifestyle changes – Keep Reading!

I finally adapted very well to my new lifestyle and found various ways to keep myself productively busy and happy. However, now the prospect of getting back to ‘normal’ causes butterflies in my stomach and overwhelms my happiness. I am nervous about facing yet another lifestyle change!

In this post, I want to share how I use mindfulness to help me through the overwhelm that a lifestyle change can bring. I share with you how I use colouring to help me through the overwhelm that each day can bring. This is not the whole story but a snippet from my new book about Holistic Living which features mindfulness. I am in process of writing it and will published and made available  to you later in the year – so keep a look out for that!

·       Self-soothing mindfully 

Lifestyle changes can cause a backlog of overwhelming tasks to face. We feel overwhelmed one, day carry it over to the next and then carry that over to the next day or week. Before long, we have a backlog and run into all kinds of complications. We aren’t robots; we need time and space to wind down; we need to be soothed regularly. Living alone has advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that I have no one to soothe me after a horrible day so I can relax. I have no one to soothe my brow, massage my shoulders or feet. There is no voice of comfort or encouragement to help me through a difficult situation. With living alone, we must learn how to do all of the above ourselves. Here are a few ways that I have found to soothe myself.

Face massager: I have a small handheld face massager that I run all over my face. It soothes a headache in my temples and feels amazing comforting as I slowly run it over my face. It has the added benefit of strengthening facial muscles and decreasing fine lines.

Hot wheat bag: I have Reynard’s disease and feel the cold bitterly. I put a wheat bag in the microwave for 3mins. When I am tired and strung out, I simply put my warm wheat bag on my shoulders, feet or hands- anywhere I need it to soothe my weariness away. 

Cool gel bag: you may be someone who prefers the ‘cool’ approach rather than warm If this is the case, a cold gel bag is a tool for you to soothe your weariness away. 

I do many other things to self soothe, which I will share with you in another post.

·       Mediation- a mindful practice

Mediation works wonders during a lifestyle change! With change comes challenges that threaten to overwhelm us. Just taking 10 mins alone in meditation gives you a breather and can help you refocus on what is ahead of you. Mediation can help you sort your priorities and help you to see your situation more clearly. When your mind is rested and renewed, so is your focus and intention. 

·       Slow down and become mindful.

You are not a robot, so stop expecting yourself to run infinitely on an automatic pilot. Throughout our day, we encounter many changes, some of them we create, but at other times circumstance or other people create change for us. This all has a bearing on the ‘style’ of our day. I tend to set far too many daily goals. I use my computer for everything I do, and I expect things to run smoothly. But the truth is that my workload rarely runs without a hitch. There are many times more than I would lie when my computer is low. The broadband network might be overloaded, and the downloads or uploads take forever. This ties my computer up, and all I can do is patiently wait. There are times when my computer has crashed for no apparent reason. I use Dragon text to speech as it helps with my dyslexia, and to my frustration, it often refuses to open. Then I must take time out to make a call to customer service. All this puts a spanner in the works taking me away from my precious work schedule. By the end of the day, I go to bed feeling defeated, not having addressed most of my tasks which must be laid over till the next day. I looked hard and long at this recurring problem and decided to approach it prayerfully but also mindfully.

How did I approach this mindfully? I began each new task far slower than usual. I intensely focused on the task at hand and tried to resist the temptation to multitask. I did my best not to call to mind all the other tasks waiting for me, so I could concentrate on what was at hand. When my computer decided not to play ball, being in the mindful mode, I felt an inner calm and dealt with it in peace rather than panic. Being mindful helps me to roll with the wanted and unwanted changes in the course of my day. Slowing down and being ‘mindful’ of each task helps me to be one with that task achieving far more in less time.

Allowing myself to approach my lifestyle changes mindfully brings healing like no other and the courage and strength to help me today. The Lord tells us to be strong and of good courage. And it seems to me that God leaves it to us to discover how to be a solid and courageous person. I have found that Practicing mindfulness enables me to achieve what I want to and also ‘be’ the person that I aspire to.

Thank you for visiting me here, I hope this post was helpful. Please like, subscribe or like and feel free to leave a comment with any questions!

 If feel you would like further support, please contact me. Details of How to get in touch with me is found in the top menu on my home page.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvdQ4NPTNfXSnwd3pimPh0g

 HEAD OVER TO YOU TUBE and catch up with my latest VIDEOS and I see you in my next blog post!

Paula Rose Parish