Week 8 Assignment
Application Assignment: Being in the Moment With Mindfulness
When was the last time you took a bath or a shower without
feeling pressured to get your day started? The next time you take a shower (or
bath) practice being mindful. Stop for a moment and smell the shampoo. Feel the
water on your skin and the changes in temperature. Taste the humidity rising
from the water. Listen to the sound of the water. When thoughts about the day
wander into your mind, gently set them aside and go back to focusing on each of
the senses. With practice you can experience the mundane in more vivid and
exciting ways.
Unfortunately, as people get busy living, the mundane passes
away without acknowledgement and they fail to remember each day in its
entirety. Instead, they remember moments of a day. Memories are built from
moments when you were paying attention to what your senses were bringing into
consciousness. To tune in and be mindful, stop and pay attention to what the
five senses are bringing in and processing. What do you hear at this moment?
The hum of your monitor, perhaps some soft music creating a peaceful
environment? What do you see, smell, taste, and feel?
Maybe you know people who are aware of every aspect in their
environment. They notice the broken pattern in an improperly installed tile
floor. Maybe they notice every crack in the sidewalk or pick up on the melody
that birds sing. While this tendency toward mindfulness may seem like a
characteristic of their personality, mindfulness is not a personality trait. It
is, rather, a set of skills and processes individuals may use to enhance
coping. Mindfulness begins as daily meditation, but the practice is intended to
become a way of life with awareness encouraged in every moment. Mindfulness
allows moments of self-awareness and personal growth. Herbert Benson (1976)
described mindfulness meditation as mental control to induce the relaxation
response and reduce cognitive vulnerability to stress and emotional distress.
Stress management techniques frequently employ mindfulness approaches.
For this Application Assignment, review this week’s Learning
Resources. Then select a daily activity and apply the concept of mindfulness to
the performance of the activity. Note any differences in stress level while
performing the activity with mindfulness and how you felt while performing it
in comparison to past instances of completing the activity.
The Assignment (3–5 page APA-formatted essay)
Describe the daily activity you selected and explain your
experience with applying the concept of mindfulness to the performance of this
activity
Explain whether applying mindfulness to your daily activity
did or did not have an effect on your response to stress.
Explain how you felt in terms of stress response while
performing this activity with mindfulness compared to past instances of
completing the activity without the influence of mindfulness.
Describe any barriers to mindfulness you may have
experienced and explain one way you might overcome one of the barriers.
Explain how performing the activity with mindfulness might
influence how you will perform the activity in the future.
Support your Application Assignment with specific references
to all resources used in its preparation. You are to provide a reference list
for all resources, including those in the Learning Resources for this course.
Submit your assignment by Day 7.
Also, you should begin planning and research the content for
your workshop evaluation assignment due in Week 9.
Reference:
Benson, H., & Klipper, M. Z. (1976). The relaxation
response. New York, NY: HarperTorch.
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