Free mindfulness training & resources for inner calm
Learn to use this powerful psychological tool to optimise your emotional wellbeing with a month’s worth of free mindfulness resources.
These resources are designed to guide you through the foundations of mindfulness and some techniques you can use to bring more peace, awareness and calm into your life. Dip into one a week or move at your own pace and start anytime.
Week 1: How can mindfulness help me?
Mindfulness is an approach to life, as well as being a powerful psychological tool.
Because it actually changes the structure of your brain, mindfulness is a practical way to promote improved emotional health and wellbeing. You can use it to deal with internal experiences such as feelings and thoughts in reaction to the external world. By regularly practising mindfulness, you can help cultivate more presence, awareness and peace in your everyday life. Discover even more reasons to practise mindfulness.
Although it has roots in Eastern philosophy, mindfulness isn’t all about meditation.
There’s no need to sit cross-legged and dedicate yourself to spirituality if that doesn’t feel right to you. The basic premise of mindfulness is about noticing both your internal and external experience as an objective and conscious observer. It’s about developing awareness of your:
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internal world (such as emotions, thoughts and bodily sensations)
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external world, without judgement of whether something is good or bad.
Learn more about how mindfulness can work for you and listen to an audio introduction to mindfulness from Dr Phoebe.
Week 2: Mindfulness of breath
Here’s a mindfulness exercise that can help to reduce stress and anxiety.
Your breath is so important in mindfulness and for general health and wellbeing. This exercise uses belly breaths and trains your mind to be grounded in breath, so it can detach from your thoughts. There are two parts to this exercise.
You first need to learn to breathe through the belly.
This kind of breath expands our belly and doesn’t rely on heaving your shoulders or chest. By using these deep belly breaths, you can start to shift your stress response to a rest and digest state. This is a powerful way of signalling to your body that you are not under threat.
The second step is training your mind to notice when it wanders and bringing it back.
This is all about developing awareness, noticing when you are thinking and then refocusing on the rhythm of the breath. It’s ok to be having thoughts. What’s important is that you don’t judge them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thoughts and that you resist going down the thought 'rabbit hole’. Instead, each time you realise you’re thinking, gently bring your attention back to the breath. In doing this, you can start to experience your internal world as a conscious observer.
Discover more about why your breath holds the key to good health and wellbeing and listen to the audio for this week's mindfulness exercise.
Week 3: Mindfulness of emotions
You can learn a new way of relating to and experience your emotions.
This week’s mindfulness exercise helps you build tolerance towards painful emotions and savour pleasurable ones. Instead of being swept up in your emotions, you can learn to be more in the present moment. This gives you the chance to watch your emotions at a distance with a sense of curiosity rather than judgement, almost like a third person. This distance gives you the important space you need to make wise decisions.
Learn more about taking a mindful approach to emotions and listen to the audio for this week’s mindfulness exercise.
Learn more about taking a mindful approach to emotions and listen to the audio for this week’s mindfulness exercise.
Week 4: Mindful eating
When you eat mindfully, you can enjoy food more and avoid overeating.
By regularly practising mindful eating, you can help reduce impulsive overeating. Often when we comfort eat, our minds are distracted by something else. This could be a painful emotion or something we’re watching. When we’re distracted, we’re not paying attention to what we’re eating or how much we’re consuming.
Mindfulness cultivates present awareness without judgement.
You will likely find your food tastes more delicious when you eat it mindfully. You may also notice you feel satisfied with less food than usual.
Here’s a script you can use to help practise mindful eating. You can also listen to the audio for this week’s mindfulness exercise.
