Winnie the Pooh knows a thing or two about mindfulness!
Anyone who has seen the 2018 Christopher Robin movie will be familiar with Winnie the Pooh’s classic travel game - “Say what you see”.
While on the surface this might seem like a child-like way to pass the time, Winnie is actually a Mindfulness Ninja!
In encouraging us to really notice and to voice out loud what we see, Winnie introduces us to two mindful themes:
being present
recognising and naming our feelings and emotions.
Pooh Bear, “sees” and then articulates out loud what he sees…
It’s the same principle that employees of the Japanese Subway use as a core element of occupational safety practice. The principle of “pointing and calling” has been credited with reducing mistakes by almost 85 percent when doing a simple task. The act of focusing and then calling out what you see acts to increase presence and stops our brains moving into automatic pilot and making potentially dangerous assumptions - whether those assumptions relate to passenger safety or the perceived meaning we might attribute to a situation in our external world.
How can we apply Pooh’s wisdom to our internal world?
How many of us can identify with the cloudy, muddled, overwhelmed sensations when our minds are running at 200 miles an hour and and we feel, well sometimes we don’t know what we feel.
Time to call on Pooh Bear once more….. For pointing and calling works just as well for the internal mind as it does for the external environment (or how we choose to interpret the external environment). But how?
Set a timer for 5 minutes
Take 3 deep breaths and close your eyes
Notice the thoughts you’re having, emotions you are feeling or any physical sensations you are experiencing
Without passing any judgement about whether these thoughts or emotions or sensations are “good” or “bad” simply name them out loud and invite them to go.
Bring to mind a joyful thought or memory of a happy time and focus on intensifying the feelings that accompanies the memory
Open your eyes and enjoy a calmer mind.
Like some help in channelling your inner Winne the Pooh