10DAY KICKSTART: DAY 7 MINDFULNESS

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness in movement is self-education. You learn yourself. At first it’s physical things, like you learn how your ankle tracks when you step forward, and that lunging warms up your quads. Then it’s more than physical – just the other day, I learned that my breath tightens with thoughts of the approaching holidays! 

Our workout today is the most mindful one on the ellenbarrett.com platform. It’s Moving Meditation, 20minutes of meditative flow, where we take our time and pay attention to the details of moving and breathing. At first, you’ll think there isn’t much to this workout. You’ll think it’s boring or slow. However, this is the journey one must take to get to mindful. Once the breakthrough happens, you’ll observe how un-boring being in the moment is, even when there is nothing happening!! It’s ironic but such good news. Perhaps you’ll begin to understand the term “happy for no reason” because of it. 

DAY 7 OFF-THE-MAT ACTION STEP:I’d say, more than anything else, cellphones have stolen opportunities of mindfulness. That darn phone pulls us out of the moment so often.

Today, the off-the-mat action step is to put your phone away, turn it off, or leave it behind. Spend a portion of the day without it. For some of us, it’ll be 20 minutes and for others it’ll be 5hours. Do what you can. The intention is to get into the moment and be more mindful…and make your phone one less obstacle.