20 Mind Work

Mind Work written by Samantha Montgomerie

busy minds Our minds are very busy. They think about things all day long. We are always thinking about what we see, what people have said and about what has happened. We think about what we have learned. We make our minds work hard to solve problems, we use our imagination. Thinking is a great thing for our minds to do.

getting stuck We can also get stuck in our thinking. Often we can not stop thinking about things that worry or upset us. Often our minds make us think about the same thing over and over. When we get stuck in our thinking, we can start to feel bad. We might start to feel sad, angry or worried. These thoughts are unhelpful.

our feelings Sometimes when we get stuck in our thinking, we can also get stuck in the way we are feeling. When we focus on our breathing, we can help our minds and our bodies to move away from feeling stuck. Taking deep breaths can help us to relax. It can help us to stop and to slow our bodies down and calm our thoughts. It gives us a moment to pause our thinking and notice how we are feeling.

balloon breathing To do this, we can imagine that we have a balloon inside our bellies. If we put our hands on our belly, we can think of it as a balloon. We need to take a deep breath to fill up the empty balloon of our belly. We take a deep breath in through our nose. We can feel our chest grow big with air. We can feel the air making our belly big like a balloon. We can feel our fingers rising on our belly balloon.

breathing to relax Once our belly is big, we can then relax and gently let the air out of our mouths. We can feel our belly go small again. We can make this breath long and slow. We can feel our bodies starting to relax as we let the air out. We can feel our thoughts slow down. We are now thinking about how our breath feels as it moves out of our body. This is called mindful breathing.