This month is Mental Health Awareness Month and it will be our theme for May! Whether it’s tools, ideas, resources, or studies, this month’s blog posts will all be about mental health.
Just like your physical health matters, your mental health matters! If you don’t currently have a meditation practice and want to start, a great first step is just to create an intention for your day. An intention is much more than a goal, it helps you create purpose behind everything you do and stand for. It can help guide your decision making, which ultimately helps guide your actions.
When you go to make your coffee or breakfast in the morning, just take a pause and think of a word, feeling, emotion, or value that you want to live into for the day.
For instance if your intention is to cultivate gratitude that day. You can tell your partner how much they mean to you, or thank someone who impacts your daily life, or when you start to get upset about something remind yourself to also be grateful for something.
Another example: if your daily intention is to practice more self-care telling people “no” as a complete sentence or actually going to bed earlier instead of staying up later.
If you have an intention that you want to work on, ask yourself based on that intention what you should do and let that guide you forward.
Ways a daily intention setting practice can benefit you:
- Keeps you in the present moment
- Empowers your decision making abilities
- Helps practice self compassion
- Gives opportunity for response not impulsive reactions
This practice of intention setting can ultimately lead you to getting a little deeper by creating a meditation practice, or joining a community or group that also can help you or hold you accountable to your intention setting…ya know like YESyoga!
Practice writing down your daily intentions or even journaling about them!