Mindfulness: The Key to Building Your Presence
Military life is beautiful, exciting, heartbreaking, and exhausting all at once, from OCONUS to CONUS moves, trainings that seem so frequent it all becomes a blur, to deployments that go by at a snail’s pace. On what feels like a rare occasion, when you and your spouse get downtime to sit and chat, have you ever reflected on all that you’ve been through as a military family?
Hope For The Warriors is here to tell you that you’re resilient. Need proof? Just look at the number of curtains you’ve accumulated from all the moves. Life in the military, whether you’re an active-duty service member, veteran, or family member, necessitates resilience.
You need to be flexible enough to bounce back from the news of an unscheduled deployment.
Agile enough to pivot when your spouse’s VA appointment is canceled last minute.
You need to be able to recover when life decides you’re going in a different direction. And sometimes, that means taking a deep breath and reconnecting with your purpose.
This is where “mindfulness” comes in. But what is mindfulness?
Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress-Reduction, describes mindfulness as, “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”
Through Hope For The Warriors’ Resilient Warrior and Resilient Family trainings, veterans, military spouses, and caregivers can learn how to effectively practice mindfulness activities and incorporate them into their everyday life.
You’re probably thinking, “How can I add another task to my day? How is that even possible?”
Here are five ways you can effortlessly incorporate mindfulness practices into your day to reduce stress and increase your presence:
1. Think about breathing.
Incorporate breath awareness into an activities you already do: Jogging, vacuuming, lifting weights, washing dishes, or when walking to and from the mailbox. Check out these great breathing activities for the whole family on the HOPE blog.
2. Think about what you eat.
Mindful eating not only has psychological benefits, but it also makes you more aware of what you are putting in your body so the effects can reverberate into the domain of healthier eating.
3. Focus on the positive.
Be aware of the small positive things that happen in your daily life. In the Resilient Warrior course, there is an exercise called “New and Goods” where each person takes a turn saying something good that happened that day and refraining from downplaying those positives with a “but…” statement.
4. Do Yoga.
Incorporate some yoga stretching in your everyday routine. Some simple seated stretches can easily be done at several points in the day. Sitting at a red light? Do some shoulder shrugs. Inhale your shoulders up high to your ears. Clench them tightly. Then exhale through your mouth releasing your shoulders down. Do this until the light turns green. At the next red light do some gentle neck rolls. Voilà! Multi-tasking at its finest.
5. Practice gratitude.
Spend some time every day, thinking about, discussing, and/or writing at least one thing that you are thankful for and make sure to think about how grateful you feel.
Want more ideas? Here’s a tip from a Hope For The Warriors social worker:
I keep decks of cards on my desk at all times that give suggestions for mindfulness activities. In the day-to-day, there are times when we need a kickstart to ground us in a mindfulness practice. When I have a three- to five-minute window before a meeting, while waiting for someone, or as a re-centering transition from one activity to another, I will pick a card from one of the decks. Some cards provide a suggestion for a mindfulness activity that I can use for the rest of the day, and some include inspirational messages that I can meditate about. There are a whole variety of these card decks out there for you to choose from. Find one that inspires you!
Author’s note: For a list of mindfulness apps, go here.
By Kristy Schwartz, Hope For The Warriors Social Media Coordinator
Since 2015, Kristy Schwartz has served as the Social Media and Military, Spouse, and Caregiver Scholarship Program Coordinator for Hope For The Warriors. Originally from Pittsburgh, Kristy received a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania and continued her education at Rutgers University in Social Media Marketing. Being a military spouse, Kristy feels very fortunate to advocate for higher education and employment for military families. After a recent PSC move from MCAS Iwakuni, Japan, she currently resides in Beaufort, South Carolina, with her husband and three-year-old son.
