Cultivating a Mindfulness Practice: The Park Bench

We’re in a time of great unknown. If you have anxiety, it might be ramping up right now. If you’re someone who has been fortunate enough to not count anxiety amongst your feelings/experiences, you might be having your first taste of just how consuming it can be. Anxiety often plays to our fears of the unknown, exacerbating them into the worst-case scenario, pushing us to live in some scary future we can’t control.

And, right now, as we wake up every morning, trying to discern the difference between clickbait media and public health information so that we have some semblance of what our next day, week, month, or several months might look like, it’s hard not to get lost in the unsettling unknown.

If you’re in therapy right now, especially at Gather & Grow OC, it’s likely that your therapist has been spouting the benefits of mindfulness practice! Right now is an especially important time for us to stay present and release attachment to what we can’t control but we know that’s easier said than done! Mindfulness is called “a practice” for a reason, it’s a tool you have to take out often and utilize so that it’s accessible when you need it. Many of us utilize it in our own healing journeys and engage in other wellness practices that remind us this work is challenging but worth it!

If you’re new to mindfulness, or are familiar but would like to deepen your practice, this exercise is a simple start. Try it out and journal a bit about how you feel afterward. Being able to harness our thoughts when there’s a lot going on in the world is always going to be a useful tool!

In it together,

Traci

Co-Director, Gather & Grow OC