Mindful in the City
Thoughts & Musings
Originally published on January 31, 2022 by Ryan Castillo with Redfin Blog Updated on May 19th, 2022
Mindfulness Home Design 2022: Expert Tips to Inspire Mindfulness at Home
The original post can be found here.
We all strive to have a haven that brings us peace, security, and tranquility. However, amidst all the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities that pop up in our lives, oftentimes it can be hard to take a break, center ourselves, and focus on mindfulness. Having a dedicated space or bringing in items and decor that inspire mindfulness into our homes can serve as a reminder to take a breath and focus on what is going on around us. To help you get started, we reached out to mindfulness experts across Chicago, IL to Kelowna, BC to give us their best tips to inspire mindfulness at home. From emphasizing things that create heat to incorporating plants into your decor, keep reading to see what they had to say.
Don’t buy into short-term decor trends, instead choose what makes you happy, invest in quality items, and play with the idea of creating mini zones throughout your space such as a meditation, reading, or yoga corner, always ready for you to plug into. – Sabrina Weber of Femme Du Soleil
The first step to cultivating mindfulness at home is identifying a designated (and nonnegotiable) mindfulness space. Intentionally creating a special space for mindfulness will help you practice it more consistently, effectively, and comfortably. So, whether you’re designing an elaborate meditation loft, or just trying to make the corner of your bedroom a little more zen, it’s important to make that space sacred. – Loretta Turner, MA, CNP, Certified Mindfulness Coach
Heat is pleasant and regulating for our mind, body, and spirit, and brings us back into the present moment. Emphasize things in your home that bring you heat. For example, the bathtub, a fireplace, heated blankets, or a tea kettle. Bring more things into your home that can provide you warmth when you need it. – Kerry J Heckman, Therapist
Sound healing is an ancient healing art that is making a modern resurgence. Having Bluetooth speakers in each room of the home playing calming, peaceful, or joyful music can bring mindfulness to whatever you’re doing. – Empowered Meditation and Sound Healing
Though our minds may wander throughout the day, our external space can serve as a reminder to mindfully reconnect with our internal space – a diffuser with your favorite scent, soft textures around you, energizing plants, and objects that remind you of our values. A space created with mindful intention has the power to bring us back to the here and now and to experience life more fully and peacefully. – Elizabeth Alli, Founder at DesignerUp
Be sure to add natural materials, plants, and water features to your designs, keep clutter to a minimum, and consider carving out a comfortable spot to create a relaxation retreat. There are even products that can help you see how your brain responds to different paint colors, scents, views, and decor as you plan your new, calming designs. – FocusCalm
Turn your home into a sanctuary by introducing mindful self-compassion into your space. Add elements that soothe and comfort – faux fur blankets, a warm fire, comfy pillows, an essential oil diffuser, gentle music, warm lights, and soft colors. Place a hand over your heart as you listen to soft sounds, take in the healing scents, and sink into the comfort you’ve created. – The Counseling and Mindfulness Group
Mindfulness is all about coming back home to the present moment and nothing does this better than connecting to your senses. To create more mindfulness in your space try and create a sensory experience by using textured pillows, unique fabrics, scented candles, patterned artwork, and anything that makes you feel connected to nature. – Katie Cheadle
Bringing a snippet of nature indoors by incorporating houseplants into your decor is a simple and easy way to create a mindfulness space. There are many options to complement your personal style. – Mindful Modern Living
Clutter in the home can be distracting. My favorite way to create a mindful living space is to simplify it without limiting the colors, textures, or designs. – Alex G Shearer
Create a home that is true to who you are. Mindfulness begins by being in tune with things that speak to you. It’s easy to fall into design trends, so always make sure that it is true to who you are so that your space reflects your personality and in doing so, creates a peaceful retreat. – Emmygination
Creating a dedicated spot in your home for contemplation and meditation is a simple way to commit to daily mindfulness practice. Incorporating your natural surroundings can help you tune in and become fully present, for example, placing a chair in front of a sunny window. You can devote time to paying attention to the sensation of the sun on your face as a focal point for your meditation. – mindful.nyc
Clutter and disorganization can cause stress and anxiety. You may be able to improve your mood and mental clarity by simply removing things that no longer fit your home and making space for things that do. – Kady Brown Interiors
Mindful design is about paying attention, tuning into what each room within the home’s purpose is, and how it supports those living in the home. Mindful design is about creating a sense of balance within each room and the home as a whole. We can use elements like plants, natural lighting, scents, and colors to create the feeling, look, and vibe we each need to balance and thrive in life. – Nourished Home
As a business owner, movement instructor, and busy mom, creating space for a mindfulness practice has been key in keeping me balanced and grounded. To help set the tone for a mindful practice in your own home, find a corner where you can set up a few things that bring you a sense of calm such as a yoga mat, candles, and a journal. Even placing these items in a small basket in the corner of your bedroom will remind you to take 5, get down on the floor, and breathe. – Mindful Movement with Maggie
Allow your home to be as conducive as possible to living mindfully, create zones within your home that are completely tech-free, and give you the opportunity to “just be” rather than always doing. This could look like the kitchen bench or breakfast bar, so you enjoy present conversations with your family to start the day while making breakfast or your morning brew or a nook complete with a rocking chair facing a window or door with a view or a leafy outlook. Have a side table for your drink or journal, a plant to inspire mindfulness, books or mags within easy reach, a lamp, and even a cozy blanket. – Slow Coaching Co.
At each step of the decorating process, whether you are sitting down to begin planning your project or deep in the midst of making final color and layout choices, pause and breathe, feeling sensations in your body as you take three, slow, deeper breaths, then notice what decor choices feel truly pleasant and supportive to you. Try this practice to tune into your own natural, inner wisdom or home designer, to let go of ideas about how your space ‘should’ be, and discover how to create a space that supports the authentic life you dream of. – Julie Woodward, MSW
If it’s out of sight, it may very likely be out of mind. If you love to practice seated mindful movement, you might try keeping your dedicated chair where you can see it often, free of any clutter. If you work from home and struggle to make time for breaks, you might try keeping a mindful chime on your desk to remind you to take an informal 5-minute mindful moment. If you want to be more intentional in practicing compassion mindfulness, you might try keeping your mindfulness journal on your coffee table where you sit and drink your coffee in the morning. – Mindfulness First
For decompressing, we have a sauna and a steam shower, as well as a saltwater pool that we keep on the warmer side to float in for relaxation. I also think it’s important to embrace an indoor/outdoor connection not just with plants, but with a design element that feels like you’re bringing nature in. For example, we have a large accordion door that opens up to the backyard from our main living space and in our bathroom, we choose a tile that looks almost wood-like surrounding the bathtub that I like to soak in after a long day. – Mindfulness Matters
Place a pretty jar or container with a notepad and pen in a central location in your home and take the time to jot down simple words and phrases that represent moments of gratitude or creativity, brilliant ideas, sincere emotion, and affirmations. Multiply these “mindful moments” by designating a time each week to reflect on the notes in your jar, recalling how you felt about each one at the moment you wrote it, and noticing how you feel about it now. Living mindfully often requires a willingness to slow down and capture these small, yet meaningful moments amid the busyness and to-do lists of every day, which in turn helps cultivate a sense of ease, accomplishment, happiness, and peace. – HomeGirl by Design
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Redfin does not provide medical advice. This article is not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on Redfin’s blog.
Ryan is part of the Content Marketing team and enjoys writing about market trends and local insights. His dream home would be a large cape cod-style house by the beach.
I recently wrote a piece for Psychology Today on dating during COVID-19. I provided four questions to ask yourself to figure out your boundaries around dating during a global pandemic—starting with the question of whether or not you should be dating at all.
While many outlets are trying to untangle guidelines around safely getting to know new people—from video dates to socially distanced meetings—it’s important to start with this question. Dating during a pandemic can raise the stakes and make dating feel more intense. Just one reason is that many new partners are becoming monogamous immediately to lower risks of transmission. Some people may like the new focus and clarity. Simultaneously, negative outcomes like ghosting can feel more hurtful when we’re spending most of our time at home near our phones, unable to seek as much in-person support or distraction as we normally would.
Whether or not you decide to date, it’s important to focus on grounding yourself and taking care of yourself on a daily basis. Grounding may look like meditation, yoga, journaling, or speaking with friends who make you feel supported and confident. Taking care of yourself means both focusing on physical care (getting enough sleep, exercising, eating healthily), and finding pleasure in whatever forms work for you (taking nature walks, watching horror movies, making art). With self-care as your primary goal, you’ll be more likely to handle whatever emotions come your way in dating or not-dating.
Image Source: Glen Anthony on Unsplash
But, the thing is that there all types of different types of traumas--because trauma is an event that is relative to the individual. Meaning, it's a composite experience of the event, your perception of the event, and how your body responds. Something traumatic for one person may not be traumatic for another.
Shelter in Place has left many of us cooped up at home for the past many months. You may be struggling with feelings of fear, sadness, and anxiety--all of which are valid. These are strange times that hold a lot of uncertainties and unknowns. The reality is, there’s no right or wrong way to feel. But many of us still have work to do, relationships to nurture, and lives to live!
If your feelings are getting the best of you, keeping you from doing the things you want or need to be doing, it might be time to reach out for some extra support (like seeing a psychotherapist!).
However, at Mindful NYC, we recognize that these uncertain times have left many of us with some financial anxieties. While we do offer sliding scale services, we also pride ourselves in providing resources through blog posts and social media to the larger-Manhattan community.
So! Here are a few of our favorite ways to keep the quarantine blues away:
1.Make your bed
New York apartments aren’t known for their square-footage, you might be surprised what a difference a made bed can make to your day. Making your bed every day can serve as a ritual, or cue, to let you know the day has started. While also acting as a micro-cleaning practice to help you keep your space clear and clutter-free!
2. Take a shower
When you’re not leaving the house for anything (except maybe to get groceries), it can be easy to let your hygiene slip. Take the time each morning (or night!) to shower, paying attention to your showering experience. Take note of how the water feels on your skin, use your favorite soaps and conditioners, savoring their scent--really allow yourself to be in the moment while you pamper yourself!
3. (safely) Get moving!
Movement has so many benefits, it can lift your mood, enhance learning, promote creativity, and decrease stress! Safely going for a walk, riding a bike, or doing some stretching on your balcony or in the park can make a BIG difference in your day--allowing you to take a break, change up the scenery, and get those feel-good neurochemicals going.
4. Cut yourself a break
It’s really important to remember that these are unprecedented times. We’re in the middle of a global trauma. There’s a lot of hype in the world right now about using quarantine as a time to learn a new skill! Get fit! Actualize your best self! Blah, blah, blah. Your value is not based on how much you can do. You deserve a rest, no matter how much or how little you’re doing right now. It’s ok to take a break and honor your limits.
5. Pay attention to your body
The pandemic is causing us all a lot of stress (individually and globally). Stress is a physical process in our bodies that raises our blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration rate--along with a host of other physiological reactions known as the stress response. When our stress response is sustained for too long like during a pandemic, our bodies become strained. We may find ourselves feeling depressed and anxious. Paying attention to what is happening in our body can be the first step to experiencing some emotional relief.
BONUS: Anything that helps us relax physically can help us feel better emotionally. Some ways to relax physically might be: taking a hot bath or shower, getting some movement, putting on a weighted blanket, taking a few deep, slow breaths, meditating, practicing some yoga, or drinking a hot cup of tea.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of ways to stave off of the quarantine blues. Still, we hope it gives you some idea of ways you might incorporate small, but impactful acts of care into your day-to-day routine.
Children always see, hear, and pick up on more than parents think. It’s likely that they have noticed people out in public with protective masks, heard pieces of adult conversations, or have talked about it with friends.
Children are not immune to feelings of fear, worry, or anxiety. Here are 6 ways to guide your child through the outbreak:
Take care of yourself
In order to help your child regulate their emotions and anxieties, as parents, you have to manage your own first. Your child is likely very aware of your emotional state and will be able to pick up on your feelings of fear and worry.
Before talking to them, take some time to notice your own feelings and do what you need to do to take care of yourself. You can check out my last blog post [link to above article] to learn more about how to manage feelings of anxiety.
2. Provide age-appropriate information
There is a wealth of misinformation on the coronavirus. It’s important to be a reliable source for your child(ren), while also filtering out unnecessary details and delivering only what’s pertinent for their age.
Generally speaking, it’s helpful to frame the coronavirus within a context that is already known to them, such as having a cold or the flu.
3. Validate your child’s fears
If your child expresses feelings of fear or anxiety, take a moment to notice your own reactions. Many parent’s attempts to reassure their children often end up invalidating how they are feeling. Instead of telling your child “everything will be ok” try saying something like, “I can see why you are feeling this way.”
4. Let your child know who’s protecting them
Letting your child know that they are loved and that as a parent you won’t let anything happen to them adds a layer of protection. Another can be added by letting them know that doctors and scientists are working to keep them safe as well.
For older children, letting them know that as a parent you are a shield of protection against the coronavirus may not be enough. Empower them by collaborating on a “family game plan”, which is yet another way of opening up a dialogue. By listening to their ideas, you can learn more about their fears and attend to them as needed.
5. Stay on schedule
Maintaining routines is an important part of helping children to feel safe. They feel safe within structure, and notice when schedules are changed or not followed. As time goes on, some of this may be outside of your control as a parent, with closures of schools and other public spaces being a real possibility.
Should this happen, keep as many structures in place as possible, and help children to highlight what does remain the same: “We didn’t go to school today, but we still brushed our teeth when we woke up and will brush our teeth before we go to bed.”
These changes in routine can also be framed as exciting rather than scary, with potentially more time to be spent with family, playing, watching tv, doing crafts, or reading.
6. Talking to them about hygiene
Even if your child is too young to know about germs, it’s never too soon to talk to them about hand-washing. Framing hand-washing and other hygienic behaviors in the context of “virus-stopping powers” can help children to feel more empowered and secure.
For younger children, this can be made into a game, by measuring how long they wash their hands through singing songs such as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Happy Birthday”, or seeing who can wash their hands the longest. With children who know about germs, learning how to cough into their elbows and not touching their faces is just as important.
In times like these, it can be easy to get caught up in our fears and worries. Remember, the best thing we can do as parents is take care of ourselves. Don’t forget to be gentle with yourself and your children.
Over the past weeks, coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread worldwide. With more outbreaks being reported each day and conflicting information getting shared around the clock, it can feel harder than usual to stay calm.
With so much still unknown about the coronavirus, you may be feeling more fear and anxiety than normal. Feelings of fear and anxiety can feel unmanageable as they feed off of the unseeable and unknowable.
Here are some ways to manage feelings of fear and anxiety brought on by the coronavirus:
Seek out reliable information
Anxiety is an emotion that wants to plan and protect. It feeds off of information, and when it’s fed information that is wrong, it goes into a five-alarm alert, setting off fight-or-flight responses.
To help manage your anxiety, check for updates by reputable health organizations such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO).
2. Pay attention to how your feeling
Feelings of anxiety are normal and to be expected given the circumstances. Ignoring the anxiety will only make it grow louder in order to gain your attention. Paradoxically, only focusing on your anxiety can make things seem worse than they are.
Mindfulness can be a great tool to help you notice what you’re feeling, allow yourself to acknowledge the feeling without judgment, and continue on with what you were doing.
3. Identify other factors that may be influencing your anxiety
While there are valid reasons to feel anxious, there may be more happening beneath the surface. Get curious about your anxiety, and consider what other aspects you are responding to, especially if you are aware of heightened sensitivities to germs, death from illnesses, or hospitals.
4. Controlling what is controllable
There are plenty of things we have no control over. There are also a lot of things we do have control over. Consider engaging in habits that you do have control over, such as: hand washing, disinfecting household or workspace surfaces, and traveling with hand sanitizer.
5. Take a break from the news and social media
More information is not always what will help us feel safer. It can be easy to get pulled into echo-chambers of anxiety and fear when we’re constantly plugged in to the latest updates. Mindfulness can help us understand why we’re checking the news and how it serves us.
6. Grounding activities
It can be easy to get caught up in our worries about what might happen. Grounding yourself in the present moment can be done wherever, whenever. You can mindfully take a walk, wash dishes, or cook dinner all by noticing what you see, feel, and hear right here, right now.
You can also try, the 5-4-3-2-1 technique works by noticing and taking in the details of your surroundings using each of your senses:
What are 5 things you can see?
What are 4 things you can touch?
What are 3 things you can hear?
What are 2 things you can smell?
What is 1 thing you can taste?
Part of a disease's impact is psychological in nature. As humans, we tend to respond to information emotionally. This can include feelings of anxiety, hyper-vigilance, catastrophizing, and helplessness. Mindfulness can be a helpful tool to help us notice our fear, acknowledge it without judgment, and respond proportionally.
Next time, we’ll talk about how to support your child during this global health crisis.
By Harsh Dave with Lan Lan Yoga
Making friends can be hard sometimes. It’s hard to be yourself and have the courage to stay true to who you are while making friends with other people. Its hard for us, so it must be hard for our children. Here are a few tips to help your kids make friends!
Don’t be afraid to talk!
The hardest step can be simply talking and feeling free to express yourself. Its so easy to go through life with walls up, and hide what you are really feeling and thinking, but if you have the courage to speak up about what’s going on in your head, you might find that other people feel the same way!
Try to keep other’s feelings in mind!
Being sensitive to how other people feel is very important for making friends! People don’t like to feel like you’re not listening to them when they are speaking, or that your insensitive to what’s going on in their life. Thinking before you speak can help you avoid making other people feel bad when you don’t mean to hurt their feelings.
Do your best to handle conflict!
It’s hard when you get into fights with your friends. Try to remember that your friends like you for who you are, and even if you don’t get along sometimes, it doesn’t mean that they stopped liking you. Everyone is different, so when you get upset with your friends, remember that its okay to let go of your anger, because your friends are important, and you don’t have to agree on everything!
Don’t be afraid to share your struggles!
Everyone has bad days, but if you keep your bad day in your heart it will only stay with you. Don’t be afraid to share your problems with your friends! They are your friends because they care about you!
Be a friend to yourself!
Remember that you have to like yourself so you can show yourself honestly to other people! There are so many great things about all of us! Celebrate those great things so you can share them with your friends!
