On Jan 20, 2008, I discussed the steps for a simple mindful exercise. I often use this exercise during my workshops. I used it this afternoon. It worked again!

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Last time, we talked about paying attention to our breath.

How do we usually breathe? Using our nose or our mouth? Deep or not?

In the mindful exercise of breathing, we will take deep breathing (i.e. the belly will be full) slowly. We pay attention to how we breathe in and how we breathe out. Slowly, we will discover the counts of breaths in a minute will be fewer and the breaths will be deeper gradually.

You can observe your breathing when you are sitting down, standing up, lying down or walking. In whatever posture, make sure you are comfortable, relaxed and in no danger (such as in the middle of a road, or at the top rung of a ladder, ha ha).

Also remember in this mindful exercise, you do not need to close your eyes. On the other hand, I would suggest you to keep your eyes open so that you may not fall asleep easily.

Now I ask you to do an extra thing: stop thinking. One way to stop thinking is to catch your thought when it is activated. So pay attention to your breathing and to any thoughts popping up. Anyway, thoughts come and it is normal. Don’t blame yourself if you find yourself "thinking" all the time during the mindful exercise. You are just in the beginning of paying attention to your breathing and your mind!

Ah, if one minute is not enough, try one more minute.

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This is a powerful exercise. We can do it wherever we are. Hope you will enjoy it and learn how to re-focus. There are thousands of distractors, or information. The first step to control one’s attention is to be aware of what one is attending to and when one is not attending to what one wants to focus on.