Are you present in your daily activities? Reconnect while you read.
In this busy world of ours, the mind is constantly pulled from pillar to post, scattering our thoughts and emotions and leaving us feeling stressed, highly-strung and at times quite anxious.
Most of us don’t have five minutes to sit down and relax, let alone 30 minutes or more for a meditation session.
But it is essential for our wellbeing to take a few minutes each day to cultivate mental spaciousness and achieve a positive mind-body balance. Did you know that you could spend those 30 minutes reading?
Reading is a good choice to practice focus meditation. It is almost as difficult to remain focused on reading, as it is to concentrate on our breathing.
The majority of us read to improve ourselves either at the personal growth level or to advance our careers. So wouldn’t it be smart to take advantage of this reading time and combine it with a form of focused meditation?
We can apply these same mindfulness principles to reading, and will result in us doubling our efficiency. We can train our ability to focus at the same time as getting our reading accomplished.
How to reconnect while you read
The first step is to avoid all the distraction that may disturb you when you read. Read in a quiet place.
Start reading, concentrating on the words, and sentences, as you normally do. But you have to look out when your mind wanders.
If your mind wanders about what are you going to read after this or the task that you have to get done. Simply put your mind back to read. Effortlessly. You don’t have to realize that it’s only a thought in your mind that come and go.
If you find yourself hard to focus, don’t judge yourself. Don’t get mad at yourself. It’s normal.
Practice mindfulness in the first time is always hard. It takes time for you to master this technique. Practice every day, continually. Each time you realize you have lost focus steer back your attention to the page.
The simple training of your awareness of when your mind wanders from reading and bringing it back to your point of focus is the essential part of focused type meditation. And you can get the same benefits of normal meditation while reading.
