Micro Practice - Nature-Based Thoughts Awareness

A short practice to offer you nature-based imagery to support you to build awareness of your thoughts. It is easy to get caught up in our thoughts, but taking a moment to sit back and observe them can change the pattern and frequency of our thoughts.

Transcript

This practice is about bringing mindful awareness to our thoughts. It can be helpful to think about thoughts as clouds passing in the sky. Sometimes we will have lots of thoughts and other times not so many. It's easy to get carried away following the passing clouds floating away from the moment. In this practice we are simply using mindful awareness to allow us to keep coming back to sit and watch the thoughts pass by. We might find it helpful to name the thought or the category of thought such as planning or memories or it might be a more challenging thought where we can notice that for example we might be getting caught up in the worry of the thought and could notice this and name it as catastrophizing. Often there is an idea that mindfulness and meditation is aiming to get rid of all thoughts. Thoughts are a natural part of our experience as human beings. We don't have to get rid of them instead we choose not to get carried away by them. Instead bringing ourselves back to the present moment with mindful awareness of the thoughts. Another image that can be helpful is thinking about thoughts like leaves and branches floating along a river. Sometimes it might be really tempting to wade into the river and maybe even follow along with a thought down the river getting carried away. When we notice we are doing this we can simply take ourselves back to the bank of the river sitting back and observing the different thoughts as they flow past. If you notice yourself getting carried away by thoughts that is a moment of mindfulness. That is what the practice is about. You can gently bring yourself back down from the clouds or back to the bank of the river and come back to the present moment.