6 tips to start a home mindfulness practice

Here are our top 6 tips for starting your mindfulness practice today

• Think little and often. This way, habits are formed and new neural pathways in the brain formed. Ten minutes six days a week is far more beneficial than 45 minutes once a week.

• Build your meditation into your everyday routine – perhaps practising in your lunch-break, or on the train en-route to work.

• Use a meditation aid – there is an amazing amount of (often free) material on the internet for your use. Try the app Insight Timer or Headspace.

• Don't stress if you miss a day, or even a week. Just start afresh when you can.

• HOW you practice is an important, or more so, than WHAT you practice. We are cultivating an approach that is gentle, patient and curious. So when the mind wanders for the hundredth time, be gentle and patient with this, allowing rather than resisting. Aim to bring an open-hearted attitude of curiosity and lightness of touch to the way you attend to present moment experience.

• Remember it's not just the formal practice that counts – we have so many moments every day when we can pause, check in and notice. Take a moment to notice your breathing, and what thoughts are here (remembering we are not trying to clear our mind of thoughts - just gently observe them). Or stop for a moment and look at that flower that's caught your eye; really looking. Observe the sun setting; notice the taste of the froth as you sip your morning coffee. This is life – here, now. Can you really be present to it? Blink, and it will be gone.