Everyday Mindfulness

H There.
My name is Emma.After many stressful years and suffering from Anxiety and Agoraphobia i am now ready to start living a more peaceful relaxing and more fulfilling life.
I have written a list of things that will help me achieve this and Mindfulness is very high up on it.
Do you have any tips/advice please?
I am very excited to be starting this journey as i feel like i deserve a new start.
I have just moved up to the Scottish Highlands from a busy city some 600 miles away so already feel much calmer.
Hope to hear from you.
Have a great day.
Emma J.

Hi Emma,
Welcome to the forum.
Regarding mindfulness, the most important thing is that you get a firm grounding in the practice. Some kind of structured approach is highly recommended.
One option is to follow an 8-week course via a book. The one I usually recommend is Finding Peace In A Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman.
An even better option is to find a teacher. Maybe there are options in your local area. If not, and I imagine options are limited in the Scottish Highlands, please feel free to PM me and I can talk you through some online options, including the online course that I run.
If, at any time, you have any questions, we will endeavour to do our best to answer them here on the forum. It's what we are here for, so please fire away.
All good things,
Jon

Hi Jon.
Thank you, looks like a good forum.
Ok i will check out the book, yes i am not sure how easy it will be for me to find a teacher in my area.
And maybe yes an online course might be good for me too, can you please message me with some courses?
Many thanks.
Emma.

Hi Emma,

I am not coming from a background of anxiety or phobia, so these views are on basic mindfulness, but maybe you can find them useful anyway.

I started out with a teaser 1/2-course and then continued with the free online Palouse mindfulness course <https://palousemindfulness.com/>. I found that course a good starting point, it goes through many of the same things as the book by Williams and Penman mentioned by John above.

From there I continued to follow material on the net (youtube) and read books by teachers like Kabat-Zinn, Eckhardt Tolle, Tara Brach, Pema Chödrön, Ajahn Brahm and so forth, there really is a great wealth of material even for free on the net for those who go out looking. Some of them come at it from a Buddhist tradition, but that's where Mindfulness originates, so I don't see that as a bad thing. I have also found using a meditation timer, like the one in the Insight app (android or i-) quite useful.

So to summarize, as John is pointing out above it is probably important and good to start with a structured (8 week) course, either with a teacher, book or online, but after that there is a wealth to explore. Good luck!

Hi Emma. Welcome to the site.

Keep posting, and we'll do our best to help you get a mindfulness practice off the ground.