Applying yoga in your daily routine? Read these 6 Tips for living mindfully – Meaningful Travel

Applying yoga in your daily life? I’ve been doing it for years. And so I am happy to share with you these handy tips for living mindfully or living an easier and finer life, so to speak. Practising yoga is a step in the right direction in this regard. At least for me, a step towards going through life pain-free. Pain I felt in my body but also in my thinking. Pain that I largely inflicted on myself because if I asked another person how they thought about it or looked at me, they really saw something else.

And then often from an angle I didn’t see, but more about that later in this blog.

Applying yoga in your daily life? – Living Mindfully

What exactly is mindfulness?

You hear the word mindfulness every so often. Of course, it is very hip to name and I must honestly admit that I then quickly tend to avoid it. I don’t want to be hip, I just want to be me. But yes, the fact is that if you live more mindfully you will be more yourself. And then sometimes I try to name and describe it differently but in the end everyone understands what you are talking about when you name mindfulness.

Because when you live more mindfully (in the moment) you experience that you enjoy the present moment more and that you tend to worry less about the future or the past. Nobody benefits from mulling and most of what you mull over doesn’t even happen. You also experience more restlessness, negative feelings, anger, powerlessness, etc. due to mulling.

Did you know that 90% of all your thoughts are repetitions or thoughts that lead nowhere and most of them turn out to be negative as well?

Time to get those thoughts under control….
Let’s at least try to keep that to a minimum.

6 tips for living mindfully – Applying yoga in your daily routine

Why is living mindfully important?

Mindful living also means being kind to yourself, not always demanding the utmost. Asking yourself, what do I really want? What makes me happy? What makes me feel really good? And also. Why do I feel like I always have to fight? Am I not allowed to choose the easy path? Why is that? Who is punishing whom? Do we remember this or do we still often pursue something that is thought to ‘should’ make us happy because the advertisements or someone else made us believe this? Or is it because it made someone else happy too? At first glance? Because is it really?

So exploring what you really care about is the first step to being happy. By living mindfully, you learn more about yourself.

Tip no. 1 of 6 tips to live mindfully

1. Applying moments of reflection

How do you see the world?
Are you impartial in it?
With how much ‘colour’ do you judge?
How are you treated and how do you treat the other?

• Do you find meditating difficult?

Do not immediately label it as meditating but simply as a moment to have/have nothing to think about. Schedule 10 minutes where you don’t have to do anything. In which you don’t have to rush and don’t have to do any chores. In that moment, try to become aware of where am I? Where am I in my life? What am I happy with? What is good right now? So you don’t have to think about nothing but make sure your thoughts remain positive, constructive and renewing.

Chances are your thoughts keep distracting you. Sometimes you can’t ignore them … In that case, just write them down and then don’t let it be an ‘excuse’ from your mind that otherwise you will forget … and that it is therefore so important that you really need to think about it now.

If your thoughts do go there again, smile, don’t take them too seriously. They are just doing what they are used to and that you are now demanding something different from them just takes time. If you attach a negative emotion to it, it will take longer and go deeper and take more time from you.

So look at it with a soft touch, don’t condemn it, put it aside and go back to this moment: What is it that makes me happy now? So what is it that gives me that happy feeling. It sometimes seems or sounds so obvious but be surprised at what can sometimes surface.

Once I took part in a Time Surfing workshop by Paul Loomans, he called this brief moment of doing nothing ‘a whitening’. So staring for a moment at a piece of white paper, watching the grass grow or the clouds drift by. Just staring without thinking…

You can also ask yourself the questions: How do I see the world, how do I think the world sees me?

Read how I first started meditating for 10 days and how it went.

• Observe a line of thought impartially

Perhaps you can also become aware of how coloured we view the world. Take a conversation/meeting/thought in front of you and observe what happened on a deeper level. Everyone sees something different … While we look at the same thing … So how much colour is there to that judgement we make about what we see? And where does that colour come from? Where does that have its origin?

And with it the insight that they are just thoughts … thoughts that I can change just as easily…. Even if they come back 10 times, as long as I am aware of them I can change them again. Slowly my world becomes different because I look and think about it differently.

And with this exercise too, it is important not to judge…. It is what it is. It is much more interesting to find out where it had its origins.

Tip 2 of 6 tips for living Mindfully

2. Do a relaxation exercise

• Savasana / Bodyscan

At the end of a yoga class, we always do 10 minutes of savasana. Google it, it’s the dead man pose. Orterwise; you lie on the floor and your body just lies as relaxed as possible. But you yourself are actively scanning, feeling your body, scanning your body piece by piece. And then in as small pieces as possible. So no big bites, head – neck – shoulder – etc. No, tip of your head. Where is that extreme upper tip located? And then cm by cm down through your hair…. Wrinkle by wrinkle down your forehead… to the first hair on your eyebrow… Can you find it? Etc. Also, feel where your body touches the mat… and also where exactly not? Can you find that exact point?

These are very difficult exercises for us because we have actually lost touch with our bodies a bit. The sensitivity is lost, which is why meditation and mindfulness have become so difficult for us. We can no longer stand still and feel, we only run and talk a lot. We are focused on the outside world so go inside again….

• Asana

Try staying mindfully in the same asana for 5 minutes.

This is something I also really enjoy doing. Grab a seated yoga asana and try to get right into it. Get into the stretch of that pose and then go with your attention to those spots that you tighten when it is not necessary. Mostly your face ( tip: make a little smile to relax your muscles in your face) often your shoulders too…. Push them away from your ears… But also muscles in your chest/abdomen… etc. If you can let go of all that, then go with your attention to the muscles you need to hold this asana and see if you can let go of this tension a bit, i.e. get into the stretch better.

Often when a muscle is at its longest we start holding it back To stop overstretching. And that’s good, of course, but if you work with your body attentively, you can let that control go a little bit. So you can relax the muscle slightly and let it stretch.

Asana tips:

Then do e.g. the Paschimottanasana : The seated forward bend. Bend from your hips towards your feet/ankles. Grab your ankles or feet if necessary. Try to keep a straight back and look forward. Then try to relax your legs, back muscles and neck muscles consciously. Feel carefully where the tension is, where it might not be present and where in the stretching you can give the muscle some space.

Or the Baddha Konasana : The butterfly pose. Again, try to keep a straight line in your back and your shoulders relaxed. Then try to lower your knees as far away to the ground as possible. Do nothing, relax, feel and let go.

3. Do a mindful walk

Go for a walk alone and don’t take a phone with you. Try paying attention to nature and your surroundings. What lessons can you learn from the nature around you? What elements do you recognise that mirror themselves in you? That tree that has been there all your life. That path you walk that may have been there for hundreds of years? But also the newly cut piece of forest? Or that new path which crosses other old paths?

Can you reflect in peace? What does it say to you? What would it want to tell you if it could talk. Do you know that we can teach ourselves the best lessons if we just dare to listen and want to hear it?

The question that always works well is:
What would a close friend, someone who knows you well, advise you to do right now?

4. Start breathing consciously

Breathing is something we often don’t think about either. It happens without us having to think about it and that’s fine. But so more things happen that we don’t think about. And then when we think about it, we notice that we can optimise. That we might be acting without any depth. Of course, that danger is there in breathing too. Are you breathing deeply enough? Do you do it through your nose? Do you ever breathe your lungs completely full, do you have high breathing? You don’t want to dwell on it too much and too often either, but make sure you breathe properly.

• Conscious nose breathing

Do we drench our whole body with oxygen? Breathing is very important and we know it …but we often stop there. Start consciously breathing through your nose. Make sure you breathe in longer than you breathe out. Try to imagine yourself drenching your body with oxygen all the way down to your fingers and toes. Read more about it in my blog pranayama

There has been research into what your brain can activate in your body. It turns out that just thinking about exercise makes your body react a little bit with you. Basically, you are fooling your body but it still reacts to it. Use this to your advantage and visualise yourself supplying your body with good energy, oxygen, to every point with every breath.

There are several breathing exercises that are easy to do. I will name one that is easy to do. You can do these in the car, on the train or when sitting in a waiting room somewhere.

• Nadi Sodhana pranayama – Alternating nostril breathing

So how can you breathe through 1 nostril? Did you know that we largely already do this? We have a 7-8 hour nasal cycle where one nostril is used 3 to 4 hours more than the other. This is how we keep our bodies in balance without even knowing it. Breathing through the left nostril brings peace and breathing through the right nostril brings energy.

Doing this actively per inhalation activates both hemispheres of the brain and thereby the balance between them. These brain hemispheres naturally represent the female (left) and male (right) energy within us.

In doing so, this exercise is very good for calming the mind and increasing your ability to concentrate.

How to do the Nadi Sodhana?

If you do the Nadi Sodhana the way it is meant to be done then put your index and middle finger on the bridge of your nose / between eyebrows and with your thumb or ring finger/pink alternately gently press the nostrils closed. Then breathe in through the left nostril and out through the right nostril and then leave your finger and breathe in through the right nostril and out through the left nostril. So remember that the nostril through which you exhaled is also the nostril through which you breathe in.

Deepen: Try to keep your attention at the point where your fingers gently touch your nose bridge/forehead. This is the Ajna chakra (6th chakra), the third eye. Ajna means ‘to know’ and so this chakra represents inner wisdom and intuition, among other things. So very good to give it attention and activate or open it.

If you do this exercise in public, you can fold the two fingers that touch your forehead back into your hand. This way it is less noticeable that you are doing a breathing exercise.

5. Take a selfless action

Maybe I should also put this one at the top. As the first tip for mindful living. Of course, it makes the world a lot nicer and more enjoyable if we help each other, give each other just anything or think along with another person.

Do something for someone else for once without expecting anything in return. But realise that everything you give comes back tenfold. If you make someone else happy, you will become happier yourself anyway. And the world becomes a nicer place that way. Be like that pebble that is thrown into the pond and causes a ripple that eventually touches every corner.

Karma – The principle of causality

Here, of course, karma plays a big role. Karma means that physical but also mental actions will have consequences for this life – or a subsequent life (if you believe in it). It is a cause-and-effect principle of your actions. In Hinduism and Buddhism, they describe the law of karma and they actually live by it. That means you will come across a lot more selfless actions in those countries. I am always amazed at how much is given in Asia, to local homeless people but also to tourists.

That what you give really doesn’t always have to be very big or expensive….know that the impact you make on another person’s life can sometimes be immense.

6. Frame your day around a theme

Frame your day around a particular theme naturally lets you live well in the here and now. In the eightfold path of yoga, we have the first path to work on, the yamas. You can think of the yamas as the 10 commandments of Christianity. They are a kind of precept by which you improve the basics of your life a lot. For yourself but also for your fellow man. Everything you do for others you ultimately do for yourself and so it is that everything you do for yourself also benefits others. Just like the aforementioned karma principle. So a win-win situation.

For example, try not judging something or someone for a day. Handle your thoughts consciously. Controlling your thoughts will also help you in your meditation. Getting through drifting into thoughts earlier so you can get back into this moment, your meditation, faster.

Also read about the benefits of ‘standing on its head for a while’

6 Meaningful Tips for Living Mindfully

I hope these 6 tips for living mindfully can help you to be a bit more in the moment. To be able to take some moments in a day for yourself and let yourself be a bit more in the here & now. They seem simple and small exercises but you will notice in the long run that they will make you more relaxed, worry less and learn to deal with your thoughts and time more constructively.

Do you also have a ‘mindful’ tip for me?
I’d love to hear them! Share them with me in a comment below.

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Looking for more inspiration?

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Use the Power of Positive Thinking to Your Advantage!