(Week 1) Mindfulness: Getting in Tune With Your Body!

On January 12th, Dr. Lorayne Robertson dedicated most of the first class to getting to know all the participants in her course while reviewing the course outline.  However, at the end of the session, Lorayne did manage to introduce the concepts of "the learning log", "personalized learning reflection" and "mindfulness".  It is the short description of mindfulness which I would like to reflect on in this post, especially about becoming more in tune with your body.

On this particular day, I was excited to attend Week 1 of this course but I was also little distracted because of something that happened to one of my closest friends over the holidays.   My friend Mike, who is in his early 40's, started to complain about headaches and blurred vision a few days before Christmas which led to a complete loss of his sight in both eyes on Christmas morning.  To this day, he remains completely blind despite visits to different doctors/clinics/specialists who are all trying to determine what is causing this abnormality. Of course, my friend's situation continues to preoccupy my thoughts so far in 2016 and Lorayne's description of mindfulness really hit home for me. 

As the old adage goes, "We all take our health for granted" and until something of this gravity happens to you, a family member or friend, people have a natural tendency to not think about it. My friend Mike is employed as a head plumber for a company in Sault Ste Marie and he is responsible for quality of his crew's work.  This was very stressful for him as he was constantly training new apprentices and had to be at the job site both day and night.  The last few times I talked to him before he lost his eyesight, he told me that he hadn't been sleeping or eating well and feeling very exhausted from all the overtime he had been putting in.

For my job, I have similar workload issues as I have to keep irregular hours and I take on a considerable amount of responsibility.  My goal for 2016 is to listen more attentively to my body and start putting more focus on my eating/sleeping habits.  As Lorayne mentioned in her talk, just concentrating on your breathing patterns for 5-10 minutes every morning can be a good start to a healthier living.  

I will be reflecting more about mindfulness in later posts.  As the picture above portrays, you need to strike a balance between work, family, friends, your hobbies while saving time for yourself to concentrate on your own wellbeing.