Diving Into Mindfulness
Throughout my fieldwork placement at Davis Occupational Therapy, I have been working alongside another student OT, Emily, to create a nature based mindfulness group program for adults with ADHD. Beginning this program, I had dabbled a bit with mindfulness exercises, mostly only completing them during OT classes where we learned about mindfulness and the benefits. I had yet to try mindfulness exercises in my own daily life and/or as a student OT.
This placement has encouraged me to jump right into mindfulness exercises and explore the variety of different settings to practice mindfulness exercises and get first hand experience of the benefits.
Creating this program has given me a wealth of knowledge on mindfulness exercises for attention and executive functions that I will summarize below.
1. Whenever, wherever! A huge advantage to doing mindfulness activities is you can complete them whenever and wherever you need and/or want to! Many activities are short and require only your breath and body (which you always have with you). They can be completed at work, waiting in lines, in your home, even briefly while stopped at a red light. A brief exercise that I have incorporated into my day is called “Phone Breath”. In this exercise, whenever I receive a text this is a reminder for me to take a mindfulness breath and bring my awareness to the present. This can also be done whenever you receive an email, or while stopped at a red light while driving. I find this exercise to be helpful to provide me with short reminders throughout the day to bring may awareness to the present and keep me on task. Tell us in the comments below where you complete mindfulness exercises!
2. Benefits, benefits, benefits! Mindfulness exercises have so many benefits. Exercises can be tailored to provide you with the benefits you are seeking. Different exercises can help with racing thoughts, drifting attention, pain and restlessness, managing emotions and being in the present. This makes mindfulness practice adjustable to what symptom or experience you are having in that moment. Our new mindfulness in nature group program provides participants with a variety of different mindfulness exercises and a toolkit with all of the exercises plus more to have with them outside the program.
3. Mindfulness is like a muscle! Like many activities, with practice, mindfulness exercises become easier to complete, more automatic and more easily incorporated into your daily life. We like to say that mindfulness is like a muscle, the more it is worked the stronger it gets. Thus, in order for me to feel comfortable and build my mindfulness muscle, I practiced different mindfulness exercises throughout my placement. This practice has prepared me for completing mindfulness exercises with clients and answering questions about mindfulness exercises in practice.
We are currently recruiting participants for both in person and virtual pilot sessions for our Mindfulness in Nature Group Program. Click the button below to explore pilot session options and sign up! Pilot sessions are donation based. All donations will go towards funding to send a child to camp at the Larchwood Farm Nature OT Summer Camp!