One Minute Mindfulness: OM Yoga Magazine September

September's Om Yoga magazine has a feature on a new book - One Minute Mindfulness by Simon Parke, which aims to help you live in the moment. 

Mindfulness is an awareness of present experience. With busy stressful lives - work, eat, sleep, repeat - sometimes we can lose touch with ourselves and not even realise that we're just going through the motions. We spend so much time looking forward, rushing on to the next thing, or looking backwards, stressing and worrying about things, that we rarely stop ourselves and our minds enough to be truly in the present moment.

The idea of the book is that each mini-meditation is no more than a page long, so it makes it easy to commit to reading one a day, and for that brief moment you are focused. 

Breathing exercises are a simple way into mindfulness because our breathing is always present. Wherever our thoughts or emotions may try to take us, backward or forward in time breathing brings us back. 

Notice your breathing now. As you count each breath in and each breath out, imagine you are being inwardly strengthened, simply by returning to the present. The present is nourishing because it's where you're meant to be, it's like putting a plant in sunlight (love this image!). 

As you breathe in and out, distractions will appear; one thought after another will try to snatch you from the present. Note each distraction kindly, however many there are; and return each time to your breathing; to being present, to being strengthened - to being conscious.