Mindfulness Daily Check-in January 18, 2018
Mindfulness is a way to improve attention for the purpose of mental, emotional and physical well being. Mindfulness could help to reduce stress as well as reduce the risk of developing health issues like anxiety, depression among students. Even if helps to minimize them and allow students to perform well in their academics.
Mindfulness allow one to build resilence to deal with academic stress. Mindfulness could alos helps to improve the well being during exam period. So, it reflects that mindfulness practices help people to cope up with daily stress building.
I remember how stressful my academic phase was before practicing mindfulness. After school, stress of finishing homeworks, studying for topics ahead. During exams time, stress of covering all topics, Moreover, expectations of parents, teachers and classmates too. All this stressed a lot.
Then, when I started practicing mindfulness, initially it was all weird and awkward. Felt like what I am doing actually? Gradually as days passed and kept practicing, it allowed me to recognize specific causes which kept me stressing and focusing on fixing them allowed to deal with my stress.
I think if students practice or they taught about mindfulness practice, it could help them in their academic phase. As academic phase is really. Mindfulness practice not going to fix problems. But, it could help us to gain better perspectives on issues and concerns and make better efforts to deal with them.
How was/ is your academic life? How about practicing mindfulness or helping our kids or siblings to practice it? Will it be helpful?
@ASilentObserver
HI Silent thank you for this check in. Well I don't have academic stress, but I do have teens with very hard math
I have 1 child with autism/ADHD so things spiral very fast. I do the Observe DBT skill with her. She does it in a funny way that gets her in a better mood. Better focus for her so she can then refocus to her math.
Mindfulness is a very good thing to have in your life. It serves so much purpose. But I do know that it isn't for everyone.
@ASilentObserver
Hi Silent, thank you for the check-in for today 
I've been having a lot of academic stress lately, mostly because I tend to worry if I'm smart enough to even make it through uni. When I feel stressed out, I over-think a lot, especially when it's quiet around me. So during the day I take my phone everywhere so that I can always put some music on to drown out the thoughts.
But at night putting on music is obviously out of the question, so I meditate until I fall asleep. Every time my thoughts get side-tracked, and I feel stressed or panicky, I go back to focussing on my breathing. It really helps, and I'm glad I learned this simple technique on 7Cups because I remember how much it, excuse my language, sucked when I was stressed out and sleep-deprived.
So yeah, I guess this is my way of saying thank you too 
Acadmic stress was the stressor that started my quick downward spiral. :( I haven't been back to school since. I tried working but I had to stop that too. Right now I'm slowly learning skills (deceptively easy ones like mindfulness and deep breathing) that will hopefully allow me to return to school. I have scrupulosity OCD, which makes homework, tests, projects, etc. very stressful. I did well for years but it all just piled up on me and I collapsed. I see now that if I had been more careful and not put so much pressure on myself, I might have noticed the fractures before I shattered.
Learning mindfulness is more difficult than I expected. Today I did spend some time outside just enjoying the trees. I've been working out and doing yoga also to be more conscious of my body. As I made dinner today, I noticed myself tensing and taking short breaths. I had to consciously relax my muscles and take slow breaths. It wasn't anxiety or the beginning of a panic attack, but just noticing how much tension I can hold in my body even in a relaxing, familiar environment.