Anyone who stays with us at Smarmore Castle practises mindfulness, helping you develop the skills you need to keep yourself strong and continue into a healthy recovery when you leave treatment with us.
If you’ve been with us and are looking for a reminder of this, take a moment to remember being in the meeting room with your peers. Now that you’re at home, life can get overwhelming, especially when you are in early recovery. You may be thinking about a new career, tending to your family, trying to save some money, or doing them all at once! Things can get really busy, really fast.
Practising mindfulness at home is an essential part of finding joy in the tough times of life and enhancing recovery.
This means those times when you think “This is awful! How can I keep doing this? I can’t cope!”
This is where I am right now. I feel like I have zero time to do anything. I feel like I am barely getting by with doing the bare minimum of what I need to. Pure survival mode.
And whenever I am in survival mode it becomes hard to be mindful, to live in the present and to stop looking ahead to bedtime, the weekend -whatever time or event is supposed to be better than the here and now. But the thing is–this is life, this is it! and I do not want to miss it.
Benefits of mindfulness at home
Studies show that mindfulness can improve your overall well-being and happiness. Mindfulness exercises have also been shown to:
- Decrease stress.
- Decrease “overthinking”.
- Improve memory and focus.
- Improve relationships.
- Enhance self-insight, morality, intuition.
One aspect of my recovery is that I really love that life happens through chores, tending to animals, cooking from scratch, etc. Home life can be the ultimate mindfulness practice but even at home we can use some reminders to stay in the present and stop rushing through things. Here are my tips for practicing mindfulness at home.
- Mindful breathing
- Mindful daily chores
- Mindful eating
- Mindful parenting
Is mindfulness possible with kids?
Yes, though it is not easy. When you have kids, especially small ones, your days tend to be filled with more noise than quiet. It is hard to find the time to become mindful when you are cooking dinner and the kids are screaming and there are messes everywhere.
It is tough but not impossible. There are some huge benefits to practicing mindfulness at home with your kids too. If mindfulness can help you become a more calm, happy person then your kids will see this and benefit from it. They will have a calm, happy parent and they will learn how to become calm and happy themselves.
