Mindfulness - just 10 minutes a day

When my colleague Glynis told me about a brilliant Mindfulness video she had watched yesterday, and I took ten minutes to watch it just now, a lot of things struck home. In particular, Andy Puddicombe's comment that we spend more time looking after our clothes, our car and our hair than we devote to our minds.

10 minutes a day is all he advocates, which does not sound like much really, but it's 10 minutes purely dedicated to Mindfulness. That means no eating, no texting, no TV, no internet, no chatting.... not even any reminiscing about the past...  All you can do is nothing for 10 minutes a day.

I won't talk any more about the exercise or approach that Andy advocates, because that's all in the video. Just to say a little bit more about Andy, who is a former Buddhist monk and meditation expert - he has his own website called Headspace, and you can read a bit of a biog here.

You can actually sign up to a Mindfulness course in Powys. Following the successful launch of its first course in Newtown with Jo Mussen (now fully booked and about half-way through I'm told) Ponthafren Association is planning a course in Welshpool to take place in the summer. You can register interest with them now, however, by contacting Welshpool Outreach by ringing 01938 552770 or email welshpooladmin@virginmedia.com 

And you can find out more about Mindfulness on the Mental Health Foundation website here and in a recent Daily Telegraph article here.

So now I need to just log into my Google calendar and book a 10 minute slot... I wonder if I'll be allowed to ditch the 10 minutes I normally spend dusting my desk each day...