YMCA Healthy Living Magazine, powered by n4 food and health Autumn 2019 | Page 14

FIONA KRIARIS
Fiona is a health and fitness professional with YMCA Victoria, who is pioneering mindfulness
and meditation at the YMCA, to bring a more holistic approach to health and fitness. A
graduate of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Centre in Los Angeles, Fiona’s studies in
this field extend internationally, and she brings global leading trends to a local environment
with compassion and integrity.
MINDFULNESS
& CHANGE
Discover three key tips to help you thrive
through times of change.
hange is the only constant.
In a world that is rapidly
evolving, and with the all the
challenges we face in our daily lives,
how can mindfulness help? Here are
three steps to a mindful practice to
enhance your ability to make and use
it as a tool to help you thrive.
C
THE FIRST STEP:
Bring awareness
Take a pause every so often in your
day to notice something about the
present moment. It doesn’t have to
be anything of great significance;
just this small attention to the
present begins the practice of
awareness. Then, begin to notice
your awareness to your thoughts,
without judging them or creating a
story. Something that is common in
this modern world is bringing
awareness to ‘distractions’. How
often do you notice that you have to
be stimulated by social media,
picking up your phone, texting a
friend, watching TV, or eating food
when you are not even hungry? Just
that awareness is a start.
THE SECOND STEP:
Create space
Once you have this awareness, it’s
like a light bulb you can’t switch off.
Here lies an opportunity to change
your response to a thought, emotion,
or even behaviour. Say, for example,
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YMCA HEALTHY LIVING MAGAZINE AUTUMN 2019
your awareness brought insight that
you tend to eat food when bored. The
next time you are bored, the
awareness has now created some
space between the feeling of boredom
and the response to eat, which means
you now have a choice to either
proceed with the old habit of eating or
decide not to. Don’t underestimate
just how powerful this really is. Each
time you reinforce the new habit (in
this case of not eating food when
bored), you are creating a stronger
connection to re-wiring the brain to
keep this new, healthier habit.
THE THIRD STEP:
Allow for non-judgement
This process isn’t about being perfect,
it’s important to let go of any
judgements. Potentially, this could be
the most challenging step, because
as a society we are conditioned to
evaluate, label, analyse, and judge
most things. Maybe your awareness
is spent in this ‘judging’ versus ‘non-
judging mind’. Whatever your
experience, be kind to yourself as this
can be a diffuser to judgement.
Through this change process you
may feel uncomfortable, but this is
where the magic happens, this is
where growth takes place.
May you bring awareness and create
space, with a non-judgmental
manner, to allow for and to embrace
change.