How to Mindfully Go Into the New Year
5 tools for going into the new year with mindful awareness and habits that will help you live your life with more joy and ease.
Breath & Body
Our portal to presence is really our human suit. By utilizing our breath and paying attention to our bodily sensations, we can be here for more in our lives. Starting your day by inclining your attention in this direction will quickly prime your mind to default to that throughout your day. This is how meditation can change us!
While there are many skillful means we can rely on during silent meditation, a body scan is a wonderful way to begin your day—starting at the toes and working your way up to the top of your head. We’re paying attention to these areas one at a time and noticing what we are feeling. In this space, you may silently name your sensations, without creating a storyline or attaching an emotion to it, and then breathing into the sensation. On the inhale, envision yourself inhaling spaciousness into the area, and on the exhale, envision yourself exhaling any tension.
This visualization with the breath is a wonderful way to stay present in the practice and will become something you can lean on throughout your daily life. Getting distracted or losing focus is perfectly normal—as soon as you notice yourself somewhere else, gently bring your attention back to your breath, using the visualization as an anchor. Once you are done with your body scan, you may choose to sit quietly for a few minutes for as long as you feel comfortable (or until your timer goes off). I like to place my hand on my heart and simply breathe into my heart space.
To ensure your success, I recommend doing this before you’ve done anything else—in a dimly lit room with no distractions, before you’ve looked at your phone, and on an empty stomach. If you still find yourself struggling to stay present, you may find more benefit with a guided meditation.
Mantra
In the same way that having a gratitude practice—such as a gratitude journal or any habit of reflecting on things you are grateful for—can rewire your brain, so too can a simple mantra that you recite in your everyday life. “I’m sorry and I love you,” is one of my favorite mantras to use as an anchor. What it does is awaken compassion for ourselves, allowing us to sit more at ease with the life that’s here. I think of the quote, “Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain,” and how that’s wildly true—but how many of us live with that expectation of ourselves? This mantra helps us to see the life that’s here with compassion and non-judgment, especially towards ourselves, because it all starts with us.
Music
Listening to music that feeds your soul and inspires you can uplift you in many ways. Songs that get you excited about the day, or even classical or mantra music that you feel comfortable keeping on in the background while working, reading or doing household tasks, all work great. I once went a period of time without listening to any music. As soon as I started playing music again I found myself more upbeat, more positively inclined, and more engaged with everyday activities like cooking, showering or doing the laundry. I was even more present at work during tasks I usually find less interesting!
Some of my favorite musicians include Snatam Kaur, Ajeet Kaur, Mirabei Ceiba and Bole. Mostly mantra artists, a great benefit of this genre is that it’s not distracting. When the lyrics are in a language our brains don’t understand, you can keep the music on while writing or reading. (I highly recommend learning the mantras that you love for the times when you do want to chant along.)
Ritual
Employing self-care rituals is a must when setting out to live more mindfully. When life gets crazy, as it inevitably will at some point in the new year, it may seem non-essential to take a bath, meditate, or to turn on your essential oil diffuser. The power of ritual is that these practices become part of our everyday lives, where they belong. We may not take a bath every day, or cook our own meals from scratch every day, but habitually we learn to engage in activities that take care of our wellbeing when timing allows.
When it comes to taking care of ourselves, there can be an essence of unworthiness for many of us—which is one reason why everyone’s relationship with their rituals will look different. Keep in mind that any self-care practice is wonderful, even if you can just do one—including anything you do to make your home feel more relaxing. One of my favorite low-hanging practices includes dimming the lights and lighting a few candles in the early morning and as soon as the sun begins to set in the evening. Another is simply taking bath or hot shower, utilizing essential oils and candles, and taking care to notice how the water feels on my skin and how the light of the candles flicker in the dark.
Mindful cooking and eating is one that most of us can employ in some way every day—carefully cutting our vegetables, touching and smelling our ingredients, and consciously blessing the food. Before eating, taking note of the colors, the shapes and the smells, and as you take your first bite, noticing the flavors, the textures and the temperature. Savor the experience. While this can be hard to fully embody when eating with others or when short on time, you may still find that you can bring heightened attention to one aspect of the experience, such as the colors in the food. Especially after preparing a meal with my toddler around, simply taking five deep intentional breaths before taking my first bite of food can be enough to take me out of autopilot. Simple practices like this can even begin to heal long-standing unhealthy relationships with food—such as snacking out of boredom or turning to food for emotional support.
— Learn More: Long-term smokers participated in a smoking cessation study that explored the effectiveness of mindfulness-based practice to overcome addiction. After learning to bring mindful attention to everyday activities, participants were instructed to keep smoking as usual, but to do it mindfully. This proved incredibly effective in changing behavior. —
Input
Lastly, ensuring that we stay interested, open to learning, and excited about our lives is important in cultivating a joyous state of being. The inputs we feed ourselves throughout the day—such as podcasts and books—can make a huge difference when it comes to wellbeing. Keeping a book that you enjoy in your bag while at work, running errands, or when otherwise out-and-about can take the place of a phone or computer during times where you might feel inclined to distract yourself. Spurts of reading time throughout the day may start to feel like a little retreat every time you get a moment to advance a few more pages in your book.
I hope you enjoyed these ways to go mindfully into the new year! My wish for us all as we enter 2023 is that we may live with more joy and ease, that we stay inspired, and that we feel anchored in our sense of being.
Emilía Rún
Emilía Rún is a plant-based chef, Kundalini Yoga teacher and mindfulness instructor. Throughout her own life, the teachings of yoga and mindfulness have allowed Emilía to cultivate an unbroken connection to the heart, which serves as a compass in her daily life. Emilía is the host of Heartful: Practices to Awaken the Heart.
