Change #5: Mindful breathing

Breathing butterflies

Along the theme of mindfulness, I thought it would be a great idea to finally focus on breathing mindfully for a few breaths, every hour on the hour. Not as easy as it sounds. Distraction is probably one of the most insidious aspects of the 21st century, preventing me from being present in my life. Check out recent research on the benefits of mindfulness at the link. I spend as much time as others thinking about the past and the future and sometimes I reach the end of my day and wondered what happened in it. Facebook has that effect too, where does the time go. My eldest child will reach his quarter century this year; in my mind he exists in so many places and in one of them he is still very small with blond hair and chubby cheeks. I have increasing difficulty in filling in the intervening years.

I have decided I do not want to spend the next 25 years in a blur, although admittedly I do not particularly want to spend the next 25 years counting my breaths either.

1. 
   
   No alcohol - still holding strong; drinking more coffee
2. 
   
   Mindful eating - mindfully eating all sorts of things I don't want to eat!
3. 
   
   Daily body scan - when will the leg twitching cease?
4. 
   
   Charity shops - abstaining for the time being