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By experiencing one minute a day of mindfulness meditation some significant changes can occur in your life because the effects begin to multiply and the one minute meditations become a more frequent part of your life. You will feel more calm, resilient, creative, clearer thinking, focused and peaceful. Here are the instructions:
You can do the one minute meditation with eyes closed or eyes open, but eventually after practice you will want to learn to do it with your eyes open. If you choose eyes open in the beginning, I suggest you focus your eyes on something that has little meaning such as a doorknob or a speck of dust on the floor. If you are driving you can use stopping for a red light as a cue to practice your one minute mindfulness meditation focusing on the red light until it changes.
Your focus of attention during the meditation is the experience of your breathing in and out. You will focus on some aspect of your breathing that feels natural to you, such as your chest moving, the feeling of air moving through your nose or mouth, your belly moving, your shoulders moving, or any aspect of breath that feels comfortable and natural. As you breath out relax any tightness in your body.
During the one minute you will likely experience your mind having shifted your focus from your breath to focusing on something else such as your thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, memories, conversations, movements, and/or other things. You may suddenly notice sounds you had not noticed before. You may find yourself reviewing conversations that you had earlier, or you may notice yourself solving problems that you have been working on, or you may notice tensions in your body that come into awareness.
When you notice that your awareness and attention has shifted away from your breath, you will mindfully, gently, calmly, peacefully return your attention to your breath just noticing the distraction without pushing it away, or taking it in, or evaluating, judging or getting involved in the distraction. Just gently and lovingly return your attention to your breath. You may find yourself doing this from 10 to 100 times during your one minute meditation. Eventually you will find that your meditation muscle gets stronger and there are fewer distractions. The distractions are normal and are part of the nature of our minds. Thoughts are like clouds in the sky, if you just notice them without trying to push them away or analyze them, they usually just pass away. The mindfulness practice will eventually bring you more peace, compassion, joy and calm for yourself and for others.
Peace,
Dr. LoPresti