Ideas to Help You “Dance” Through the Mindfulness Fundamentals Course
Taking care of your health and wellbeing and managing your time effectively are crucial for leading a fulfilling life.
This two-part article will help you explore these areas in your life. Part one focuses on areas that will improve your health and wellbeing. Part two addresses helping you create space and time in your life to devote to your priorities. Together, they will aid you in your efforts to fully participate in the Minfulness Fundamentals course.
Part 1: Ten Strategies to Improve Your Health and Wellbeing
Although it might seem overwhelming at times, implementing small changes can have a significant impact on your overall wellbeing. Notice which of these areas need some attention in your life, and do your best to lean into the recommended healthy practices.
1. Prioritize the Mindfulness Fundamentals course. Prioritizing the course is a good way to prioritize mindfulness, stress-reduction, self-care, supportive relationships, and mental health. Prioritize the course to learn the practices and integrate them into your life so they can serve you for the rest of your life.
Effort creates energy. Commit to giving full effort to the course to help unleash your inner energy that will help you succeed during the course, and in life.
To enjoy the fruits, you must plant the seeds. The more you put into this course, the more you will get out of it. The course’s central theme question is: What contributes to my wellbeing and happiness while at the same time contributing to the wellbeing and happiness of others? As you do the practices taught during the course and explore this central question, you may find yourself becoming more compassionate towards yourself, less reactive to things that usually trigger you, feeling more peace, ease, and joy in your life, and enjoying other benefits that may be unimaginable to you right now. But to enjoy these benefits, you must do the work. Do your best to participate fully.
2. Prioritize Sleep: Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep every night to rejuvenate your mind and body. Establish a regular sleep schedule and create a relaxing bedtime routine to promote better sleep. Here are some beneficial sleep hygiene practices:
Create space in your morning routine for mindfulness. The course asks you to spend 5 minutes setting intentions and 5 minutes meditating each morning. If you have a packed and deadlined morning routine, and you generally wake up refreshed, and have good energy during the day, start going to bed 15 to 20 minutes earlier than normal, so you can wake up 15 to 20 minutes earlier each morning.
Get more sleep by going to bed earlier. Go to bed early enough at night to get the sleep you need to wake up refreshed and have energy throughout your day.
Sleep is more restorative than comfort activities. Prioritize going to bed early over other comfort activities such as watching TV, reading, playing video games, eating junk food, messing around on your phone, and so on.
Get off all screens (TV, phones, and computers) 1 or more hours before bed. If you still have trouble falling asleep, try getting off screens 2 or more hours before bed.
Limit electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure. If you have WiFi, turn it off at night. Power down your phone, smart watches, and any other “smart” devices and leave them outside of your bedroom. The EMFs generated by WiFi, “smart,” and “Bluetooth” devices can rob you of a good night’s sleep. If you depend on your phone for your alarm clock, get an actual alarm clock or use the alarm on a traditional watch.
Get ready for bed early. If you sometimes get too tired before bed to do your end-of-day rituals (changing into PJs, brushing and flossing, taking off makeup, etc.), get ready for bed earlier in the night while you still have energy.
Practice healthy nap hygiene. Take naps on days where you didn’t get your typical amount of sleep the night before. If it is too late in the day, a nap could interfere with your ability to go to sleep, so stay awake and just go to bed earlier. If your daytime naps prevent you from falling asleep when it is bedtime, try limiting your naps to 30 minutes in length. Experiment and find out what works for you.
3. Prioritize Mental Health: Mental health affects every aspect of our lives, from our relationships and work performance to our overall well-being. It impacts how we think, feel, and act on a daily basis, shaping our resilience, coping mechanisms, and ability to navigate challenges. Taking care of our mental health is essential for building a fulfilling and balanced life, fostering emotional stability, and promoting a positive and healthy relationships.
The practices you will learn during the Mindfulness Fundamentals course will aid your mental health. At the same time, continue to do whatever other mental health practices work for you, such as seeing a therapist, taking medication, spending time in nature, journaling, and so on.
4. Foster Quality Connections: Cultivate meaningful relationships and surround yourself with people who love, respect, and value you exactly as you are.
Surround yourself with loving friends. The Mindfulness Fundamentals course is a good place to meet people who will respect, support, value, and appreciate you exactly as you are. You can’t choose all of the people in your life, but when have a choice, choose to be with people who value and support you, respect your boundaries, and care about your wellbeing.
Practice relationship-building skills. The Community Heart Shares offered during the course provide us with a safe space where we can practice heart-based, relationship skills such as: valuing others unconditionally, compassionate listening, being vulnerable, holding each other’s pain without being overwhelmed, listening to and responding to our body’s inner wisdom, and offering emotional support. You will have the opportunity to process difficult feelings and situations, find emotional support, mourn and celebrate in community, and deepen your relationships with each other.
Engage in social activities that promote wellbeing. During the course, continue to engage in those social activities that really nourish and support your relationships.
5. Stay Hydrated: Adequate hydration is essential for optimal health. Drink 8 or more glasses of water daily and reduce or eliminate sugary beverages. Infuse your water with fruits or herbs to add flavor and make it more enjoyable.
Is it thirst or hunger? When hungry between meals, drink a glass of water before eating a snack. Our body often signals hunger when it is thirsty.
6. Practice Healthful Media Hygiene: The proliferation and ease of access to endless amounts of media seeking our time and attention, makes is it crucial for us to place healthy limits on our media use. While technology and media have their benefits, excessive usage can have detrimental effects on our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Consider which of these limits may help you make conscious choices around your media use that empowers you and your wellbeing:
Device-free zones: Designate certain situations, areas in your home, or specific times during the day where screens are not allowed, such as at family meals, when spending time with your children, when socializing with friends, or in the bedroom 1 to 2 hours before bedtime. If possible, power down your phone at these times.
Curate your content: Be mindful of the types of media you consume. Choose content that uplifts, educates, and inspires you, rather than mindlessly scrolling through irrelevant or negative information.
Time restrictions: Set a specific time limit for media use each day, ensuring that it does not encroach upon crucial activities like spending quality time with loved ones, sleep, exercise, or work.
Regular media breats: Take regular breaks every hour from media to give your mind and eyes some rest. Use these breaks to relax the eyes by looking out a window at the clouds and horizon, take a movement break as described below, or engage in some other activity that doesn’t invovle screens.
Limit notifications: Minimize distractions by turning off unnecessary notifications that constantly pull your attention away from the present moment. Only allow notifications that are essential for your day-to-day life, and even those may require some healthy limits too.
Consider what media hygiene practices may help you make conscious choices around media use that empower you and your wellbeing.A day of rest: Some people designate one day a week to be tech-free and use this day to focus on social and spiritual pursuits or hobbies. It may be a worthwhile experiment to try.
7. Regular Exercise: Engaging in regular physical activity is vital for maintaining both physical and mental health. Find activities you enjoy, whether it's jogging, dancing, swimming, practicing yoga, yard work, or playing sports. Aim for 30 minutes of moderate-intensity movement on most days of the week.
Seek out excuses to move! Look for, and take advantage of, opportunities to move throughout your day. For example, take the stairs instead of using an escalator or elevator; bike or walk when doing nearby errands; carry a basket instead of pushing a cart when buying a few items at the store.
Incorporate “movement breaks” throughout your day. During a movement break you can do a set of one strength training exercises like push-ups, squats, lunges, sit ups, pull ups, etc. Or you can do a cardiovascular exercise for a few minutes like walking up and down stairs, dancing, or jumping rope. Follow these activities with some gentle stretching.
8. Spend more time in nature. Author of Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louve, says a lcak of time in nature correlates to: “diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses, a rising rate of myopia, child and adult obesity, Vitamin D deficiency, and other maladies.” Consider what you can do to spend more time outside. Possible ideas include:
Eat more meals outside. Eat on your porch, in your yard, or at a nearby park.
Take work-breaks outside. At work, consider taking your breaks and eating your meals outside more often.
Bike or walk for short errands.
Can you move any of your exercise, relaxation, or socializing activities outside more often? Instead of meeting friends for drinks, meet them to go on a hike, go to the beach, go on a bike ride, play an outdoor sport, or enjoy the outdoors in another way. Instead of relaxing indoors, consider going outside to read, sunbathe, bird watch, walk in nature, and so on. Instead of exercising indoors, go outside to stretch, run, lift weights, play sports, garden, do yard work, or move in some other way. What are activities might you enjoy doing outside? Do them on your own, and invite your friends to join you when they can.
Connect with nature through the window. When taking short breaks from screens that don’t allow you time to go outside, or if it is a day when the weather makes it challenging to go outside, at least look outside the windows and appreaciate the sky, clouds, trees, rain, sun, and whatever other nature you see.
9. Nutritious Diet: Focus on eating a well-balanced diet consisting of whole, unprocessed foods. Include a variety of vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, and seeds and nuts to provide your body with essential nutrients.
Maintain self-control while grocery shopping. Shop from a list and on a satiated stomach, to avoid impulse-buying unhealthy foods. If you buy mostly healthy whole foods, you won’t have constant temptation at home to eat less healthy foods.
Keep a variety of healthy meals at hand. Prepare healthy meals in bulk, store some as leftovers to be consumed in the next few days, and freeze the rest. Preparing meals in bulk helps us reduce the time it takes to prepare food and clean dishes. It also means we always have healthy meals ready to eat.
Prepare and keep healthy snacks available. This may include fresh fruits, nut mixes, cut vegetables, and plant-based, whole-food dips like hummus, or spreads like peanut butter.
10. Upgrade Your Comfort Activities: When run-down, tired, or exhausted, many of us engage in comfort behaviors that, besides being easy and offering pleasure, may not contribute that much to our health, wellbeing, or joy. Which activities serve us and don’t serve us will differ from person to person, so pay attention to your comfort activities and see what really serves you and what doesn’t, and do more of those things that serve you.
Determine what truly serves you. You will know a comfort activity really serves you because it will do one or more of the following:
Uplift your spirit.
Express love and care for yourself and/or others.
Generate energy and motivation.
Help you process difficult emotions and situations.
Improve the health and wellbeing of your body or mind.
Upgrade TV-watching. If what you watch does not inspire, uplift, and motivate you, try watching TED Talks, or listening to podcasts or reading books by wisdom teachers. Other upgrades include meditating, going for a walk, playing sports, spending time in nature, and the list goes on.
Upgrade eating junk food. When craving unhealthy food, try drinking 8 ounces of water and, if still hungry, eating some fruit and/or nuts.
Upgrade late night comfort activities with sleep. If at night you find yourself surfing the web, watching TV, playing video games, squandering time on your phone, eating unhealthy foods, and similar activities that keep you up past your bedtime, recommit to prioritizing sleep over those comfort activities.
Upgrade binge-watching a show. Instead, try calling a friend, cuddling with a willing animal or human companion, journaling, doing a hobby, exercising, or another activities that truly serves you.
When the mind is exhausted, try physical effort that requires little mental effort. For example: weeding the garden, mowing the lawn, playing catch with your child, or fetch with your dog, going for a walk, dancing to your favorite music, etc.
Part 1 Journal Activity
Contemplate which of the ten practices listed above you are already doing well, and give thanks for your success in those areas. Then write in your journal the answers to the rest of these questions.
Which of the above ideas struck you as something you would like to try? Try implementing these.
Which of the above 10 areas would you think wise to improve? Of those that need improvement, which areas most negatively impact your life?
If you had full control over your body and mind, and craving and addiction was not an issue for you, what healthy boundaries, limits, or intentions would you ideally follow in these challenging areas of your life to aid your physical, mental, spiritual and emotional wellbeing?
Rank and impliment your ideas. For the answers to 2 and 4, put a star by all of the ideas that you think will be easy to implement, and start doing them. Then label all other ideas A, B, or C. “A” being for those ideas most beneficial to impliment, “B” for those that are somewhat helpful, and “C” for those that are probably not that significantly helpful. Once you have the ideas ranked either A, B, or C, then rank the ideas within each letter group with a number. So “A1” will be the most helpful, “A2” the next most helpful, and so on. Some people may be able to impliment everything all at once. If this is you, go for it. If this is not you, start by implimenting the ideas you ranked as most helpful.
Journal what strategies can help you impliment those intentions? Would it help to share these intentions with those you live with, so they can support you? Might you set alarms on your watches to remind you when to get off screens for the day and prepare for bed? Is their value in having a conversation with a close friend or therapist and asking for their input? What can you do to find people, books, articles, support groups, or other resources that exist to help you adopt these beautiful intentions? What ideas do you have that you think would help you impliment these health intentions?
Impliment these new ideas. Some helpful ideas to achieve them include the following:
Review your intentions. Take a few minutes to review these ideas every morning to remind yourself of your intentions.
Mindfully impliment the ideas. As you try to impliment the ideas, notice what works and what hinders you from following these intententions.
If you mess up, be compassionate to yourself. Please do not believe any thoughts that arise that judge, shame, or berate you when you make a mistake. Instead say to yourself something compassionate in a kind tone of voice, such as, “This is really challenging. At times, all humans find change to be difficult. I love and accept myself exactly as I am. And I’m going to keep trying.”
Learn from setbacks. Whenever something stops you from implementing your good idea, journal about it. What’s the issue? What strategies can you use to overcome the issue? What’s your game plan to address this moving forward?
Adapt and update your boundaries. As you gain insight, update your boundaries. For example, maybe you set a rule to go to bed at 10 PM every night, but you realize this prevents you from socializing with your friends on the weekends. Update the rule to: I will go to bed at 10 PM on all work/school nights, or I will go to bed at 10 PM at least five nights a week. Keep experimenting with, adapting and updating your boundaries until they best serve your overall wellbeing.
Mindfully enjoy the benefits. As you implement these healthy ideas, pay attention to how living this way improves your health and wellbeing. Enjoying the fruits of your efforts will help you impliment these ideas more consistently.
Keep going. As the most important ideas become routine in your life, start implimenting the next most important ideas as you did with the first ones. Over time, all of these healthy practices will be a part of your normal routine.
Part 2: Ten Strategies to Free Up Your Time
Is it becoming increasingly difficult to find time for yourself and the things that matter? Fear not! We've compiled a list of 10 effective ways to unclutter a busy schedule and create more balance and joy in your life.
1. First things first. Start by identifying activities that nourish you in each of the following realms: spiritual, social, mental, physical, contribution (how you give back to your human community and the community of life), and financial. Knowing your priorities, in each category will help you stay on top of what’s important.
Prioritize the course. Do consider the course as one of your top priorities as the benefits it offers will positively impact all of the areas listed above.
2. Say “yes” to less: It's important to limit your obligations. Practice saying "no" to commitments that don't align with your goals, values, and priorities.
Drop commitments that don’t serve you, and pause some that do . Gently inventory your regular commitments and see if any of them no longer serve you, or if you might appreciate a three-month break from any of them. Then end or pause those commitments. You can tell those impacted by your decision something like, “I have committed to a transformational three-month course and need to free up time to attend the classes and do the assignments.” Please do not end any commitments that serve as your only or primary source of mental, spiritual, social, emotional, or physical health.
During the course, decline all invitations that you might normally do out of obligation, guilt, or an inability to say “no.” Try saying something like, “Thank you for the invite. I’m taking (or will-be-taking) a really important course with a heavy work load and I’m having to say ‘no’ to more things right now to prioritize giving the course my all. So, I won’t be able to make it, but I hope it goes well! And thanks again for the invite!” Keep saying “yes” to those activities that help you thrive and enjoy life!
3. Adopt time blocking. Schedule specific blocks of time for different activities or tasks. This practice helps you stay organized and ensures that you allocate enough time for each important aspect of your life.
Time block for the course. During the course, you will need to time block for your daily meditation, intention setting, and gratitude group message, your weekly class, readings and assignments, and the monthly Community Heart Share. Put these things in your calendar or planner to block out that time for them.
Set a time and prepare a space for your morning mindfulness activities. When in your morning routine will you do your 5 minute meditation and 5 minute intention setting for the day? And where will you do them? Be sure to keep your meditation space clean and ready to go so nothing stands in the way of you doing your meditation each day.
Set a time to send your daily gratitude. What part of the day will it make sense to send your group gratitude message? Is there something in your daily routine that you can link it to, like doing it before or after eating supper?
Set a time for reading and journaling. When can you set aside 10-20 minutes each day to do reading assignments and journaling activities?
4. Set boundaries. Establish clear boundaries with friends, family, and colleagues. Communicate your schedule and limitations openly to avoid unnecessary interruption.
Create a conducive space for class. Let everyone in your household know when you will be attending class (whether doing so live via Zoom, or by watching the recording) and request they keep the noise down and not disturb you during this time. Put away and turn off all distractions so they are out of sight and out of mind. This will help you focus on the class.
5. Simplify. Declutter your physical and digital spaces. Get rid of items and digital files that no longer serve a purpose or bring you joy. A clutter-free environment contributes to ease, creativity, empowerment, and joy.
6. Delegate. Delegate or share tasks that can be done by or with someone else, freeing up valuable time for you to focus on what matters most.
Can family or roommates help? See if your family members or roommates can help more with household chores during the course.
Who else can help? For the duration of the course, consider other tasks that you may be able to delegate to others -- be they friends, family members, or paid professionals.
8. Consolidate errands. Plan your errands in clusters rather than running them sporadically throughout the week. This strategy allows you to maximize your time and minimize unnecessary travel.
9. Batch similar tasks. Group similar tasks together and complete them in one go. For example, batch your email responses, phone calls, or financial tasks. By doing so, you'll avoid mental switching costs and increase efficiency.
10. Stack functions. Look for ways to combine activities to maximize efficiency and productivity. For example, meeting a friend for a hike at a park, gets you social time, time in nature, and exercise all at the same time. Stacking functions differs from multitasking where you attempt to perform multiple tasks at the same time, often diving your attention and compromising effectiveness.
Part 2 Journal Activity
Contemplate which of the ten strategies listed above you are already doing well, and give thanks for your success in those areas. Then write in your journal the answers to the rest of these questions.
Which of the above ideas gave you ideas of something you would like to try? Wrire them all in your journal, and try implementing these. See the strategies in Part 1 to aid you in prioritizing and manifesting them.
In your journal, create six colums and head each one with: spiritual, social, mental, physical (which includes sleep, exercise, nutrition, and hydration), contribution, and financial. Then write the activities or practices that most support you in each area. Include the course under spiritual, social, and mental categories. Also include the ideas you came up with in part 1. Then using the same ranking system described above, rank each column by A, B, C and then each letter by number depending on how important each item is. Use this to get a senes of your priorities in each of these realms in your life and to inspire you to keep doing those things that most support you in each category.
We wish you success with the course and in your efforts to live a joyful, fulfilling, rewarding life.
May your successes continue, increase, and never end!