Gimmie Five?

Can five minutes really make a difference to your mood, your mind or your whole day?

YES!

I found the difficulty in introducing meditation and mindfulness to people, is that it’s not really beginner friendly. From the outside it can seem one of those things other people do, those ‘travel loving hippy vegan types’, dare I say it, a middle class white people thing, almost elitist.

We have taken something deeply rooted in Eastern culture and religion, and twisted it to fit our world, leaving behind the true nature. We have taken it and evolved it to fit our lives. And that’s okay, as long as we recognise it’s roots, and talk about it’s evolution.

It’s not about McMindfulness, or making a quick buck out of the trend (although, let’s be honest here, I am trying to earn a living). For me, it’s about recognising that I need something to help me with my stress, and learning how to help myself.

What if it were as easy as learning to breath again? Taking 5 minutes a day to breath?

Stress happens, but we don’t have to allow it to take over our whole day. If you can find five minutes of space – you can change your whole outlook.

How? We all have one thing that can ground us, and that’s our breath.

By controlling our breath we can change our sympathetic nervous system – this is the part of our bodies and minds that control the “fight/flight/freeze” response. By taking charge or our breath we can activate the parasympathetic response – this is the part of our bodies and minds that control the “rest, digest and reset” response.

Now, this all seems a bit complex – right? But it’s not. Basically we’re turning our minds and bodies from a state of “damn we have to do something – we’re under threat!” to “ahhh man, this feels really safe and snuggly and nice”.

And we can do this in five minutes – through breathing. You can do this anywhere, at any time.

There are 100’s of videos and articles online which can help you breath easier, but few do it in five minutes.

I have a range of digital downloads you can buy for £3 which address this exact thing – fitting in stress reducing exercises in a short time.

Will this leave you floating on air feeling like you are a new person? No. But it will give you breathing space to refocus, and take the time out you need and deserve, without feeling like you need a dark meditation room, a meditation cushion, 58 candles and a deep understanding of transitional meditation.

It’s for people like me, who don’t have much down time – and when they do need to have some chewing gum for the eyes before bed time.