Mother’s Day on Sunday and I have started advertising my next adult mindfulness course. This course is called Just Relax for Adults as relaxing, resting and sitting with ourselves is a lot of what we will be doing so for this blog I want to talk a little about the benefits of mindfulness for mothers and how taking time out for yourself.

Self-care is essential, not a luxury, so anyone feeling any mum-guilt needs to push it aside because you practicing mindfulness, self-care and relaxation can actually benefit your whole family.

Mum-guilt is something I’ve heard every mother talk about in my classes. They feel guilty that they may have said or done the wrong thing, they worry that their child is missing out on essential developmental and social activities, they worry if they are providing the most nutritional food, or the amount of screen time their child consumes. The list goes on. All of this guilt and worry that that mothers are experiencing means that it is no surprise that when it comes to taking time out for themselves so many experience the mum guilt all over again.

A student in my adult Cultivating Inner Kindness course told me this week that every time she has to leave her daughter with her dad in order for her to attend my course, she feels guilty. She feels bad for doing something for herself when she ‘should’ be with her daughter.

The student continued coming to the classes and even signed up in the first place because she knows that her practicing mindfulness creates a calmer, more peaceful mind for herself and then in turn she is able to provide a calmer atmosphere for her daughter to live in. However, not everyone is aware of this so I’m here to help you!

Mindfulness helps to relieve stress and anxiety and it creates a sense of peace and calm as we move our attention out of our ever-busy mind and into our physical body. It has been proven that if one person in the household practices mindfulness that it benefits everyone in the household.

Mindfulness and meditation teaches us to become aware of our thoughts so that our thoughts do not have control over us. All too often we find ourselves thinking about something and we don’t even know how we got onto that subject. A mindfulness practice helps us to gain control of our thoughts. As we learn to step back from our thoughts we can become aware of how we think and what we think. This in turn results in us being able to step back from situations as they arise in our life, we can step back and assess what to say and do. We learn to respond and not to react.

Now, imagine that you are a mother who feels a sense of peace and calm in your body and mind. How do you think that peace would affect your family?