5 Ways to Manage Emotions Through Mindfulness

To incorporate these mindfulness practices into your daily routine, start by setting aside a few daily minutes to engage in them. This can be done in the morning, evening, or even during lunch. By incorporating these meditation and mindfulness practices into your daily routine, you can develop greater self-awareness, reduce stress and anxiety, and build stronger, more fulfilling relationships with those around you.

Here are 5 ways to achieve these goals:

1. Meditation

What is meditation? Meditation is the practice of enhancing self-awareness by connecting thoughts to the body and mind. Mindfulness through meditation seeks to create a deeper understanding of oneself. Meditation is great for balancing the mind and reconnecting the body. Apps like Calm, Headspace, Healthy Minds, and YouTube provide guided meditations to help kick-start this journey.

2. Bodily Scans

This practice involves noting how you feel in each part of your body. It's essential to do this practice in a comfortable and rested position, either lying down or seated. You will start at the top of your head and work your way down the neck, shoulders, arms, fingers, chest, midsection, lower back, legs, feet, and toes. As you conduct this scan, note how your body feels. Does it feel tight? Do you feel aches and pains? Do you feel fine or no sensations at all? These are all signs that the body is trying to return to baseline and help you understand where energy is being held within.

3. Mindful Eating

It's easy for us to turn on the TV or keep our minds going on social media while having a meal. With mindful eating, we want to step back and be intentional about the meal. Take note of your 5 senses. What colors do you see? What odors are you smelling? Do you hear people talking or notice external noises? How heavy is your meal? What flavors are you tasting? We engage in this practice to connect to life's mundane parts. Many of us just scroll through our phones or watch TV while eating. By taking the time to implement mindfulness into your routine, it can help with emotion regulation and feeling satiated after a meal.

4. Engaging the Senses

Sight- What are five things you can see around you? What do they look like? Maybe they’re something you haven’t seen before, a pattern on the wall, a piece of wallpaper, or light reflecting off a surface.

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Taste- For this practice, you want to chew on something, maybe a piece of gum, a fruit snack, or a cracker. Notice the sensation the object brings out. Notice how this food tastes on your tongue. Do you like it? Do you wish it tasted different? What feeling does it emit?

Feel- Where are you at this moment? Are you sitting down or lying down? What do you feel under you and why? If you are seated, do you feel your feet on the floor? Think about how touch impacts our everyday lives.
Hear- What do you hear? Notice the background noises you have been subconsciously filtering out. Do you hear birds chirping? Cars passing or nothing at all?
Smell- What do you smell around you? Maybe it smells of flowers, coffee, or freshly made food. Why do you like or dislike this smell?

These practices are meant to ground you into the present moment. Engaging the five senses helps us focus on slowing down and observing the world around us in real-time. When dealing with a stressor, it is important to engage the senses to help regulate the body's physiological response to stress and increase feelings of calm and relaxation.

5. Paced Breathing

Breath-work and focusing on your breathing pattern can be beneficial in many ways. Breath- work is helpful not only to our minds but also to our bodies. Focusing on the breath actively improves lung capacity and anxiety, and alkalizes your blood pH. Now, for the mind, breath- work helps keep your mind focused on one particular action at a time. The body is subconsciously breathing all day, but when we stop and tell the body what we want it to do, the mind gets stimulated in a different way.

How do we do it? We do it through a method called box breathing. With this method, we want to breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breathe out for 4 counts, and hold for another 4 counts. In your mind’s eye, you can think of creating a box. Through this, we want to expand our awareness, take deep breaths, and continue holding our awareness. By doing so, we can become more attuned to our physical sensations and promote a greater sense of presence and mindfulness in our daily lives.

By: Shireen Shahidi 

Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist (#131353)