6 Mindfulness Exercises

Being mindful is a powerful process that can truly change the way you look at the world. Monks from many different traditions work for years to learn to be mindful all of the time. This is a hard concept for most Western people to even try to understand. But being mindful can help you to feel better and have a different view of the world. There are some easy and simple exercises that you can do to help you be more mindful.

One Minute Breathing - This mindfulness exercise can be done any time of the day as many times as you feel called to do it. All you have to do it check the time and focus on your breathing for one minute. Your mind will try and distract you with other things, but try to just watch your breath for one minute throughout the day.

Mindful Observation - This mindfulness exercise is good to do throughout the day. Pick an object that is within your sight and watch it for one minute. You should not critique, examine, or make comments on the object; just watch it. Observe it for one full minute.

Mindful Listening - This is the same as above, except for one minute you will listen, just listen. This mindfulness exercise is best done outdoors, but it can be done anywhere. Allow your ears to open up and hear the noises around you. Don't try and determine what they are or give them a name; just listen.

Touchstones - For some people a cue for mindfulness is the key to doing the practice. Take something that is going to happen every day, hopefully more than once. For example when you touch a door knob. At that moment when you touch the door knob you allow yourself to be completely mindful of where you are, how you feel, and what you are doing. Cues don't have to be physical; it could be that every time your phone rings you take a mindful moment. It could be that every time you smell food you take a mindful moment. Choose a touchstone that resonates with you.

Regular Routines - Take a regular routine that you don't think about and make it a mindful one. For example when you clean your house pay attention to every detail of cleaning. Be mindful of what you are doing. Watch as you sweep the floor or scrub the toilet. Be hyper aware of what you are doing. This can be done with any activity that you do on a regular basis on auto-pilot.

Five Things - This is another mindfulness practice that can be done several times a day, but it works especially well when you are being triggered by something. All you have to do is notice five things. They could be things you hear, smell, feel on your body, or see. Ideally you will pick at least one from each of the senses, but it doesn't have to be that way. For example you could say; I see the carpet, feel my shirt on my neck, smell the rain coming, taste my morning coffee, and hear my music playing in the background.

A Brief History of the Internet

The internet was a twinkling in the eye of scientists and dreamers alike since before the second world war WWII. There were dreams of automated libraries, cybernetics to extend human abilities, and of global villages.

After the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite 1957, the Americans bounced back in 1969 with ARPA (Advanced Research Project Association) to regain the technological lead during the Cold War.

J. Licklider was appointed by ARPA to head IPTO in researching defences from space launched nuclear attacks. And it was IPTO as an organisation who considered the possibilities for a USA wide network of communications to help defend the states.

Scientists in the states and the UK invented packet switching and created a computer enabled to manage this, and from there ARPANET was created, linking the East coast of the US to the West coast. The aims of ARPAnet were to allow parts of the country to continue communicating and operating should an attack occur, reducing parts of the country without communication or leadership.

By the early 1970's the network was being used for passing of information that was not related to ARPAnet such as e-mail and electronic news. It was around this time that some engineers amused themselves by sending practical jokes, of false or annoying messages, and gained the name of hackers. These hackers were harmless, and did not produce and malicious attacks, but kept to jovial messages to people they knew personally.

Protocols were created in the 1980's to pass data across this small network and these were gradually upgraded and replaced as the networks expanded.

In the late 1980's the first known internet security issue arose, the Morris Worm debuted in 1988. With almost 90,000 computers networked together by this time, a large number of people were affected by the inability to communicate. This s when DARPA the new network defence ay received funding to create CERT to coordinate efforts to keep the network safe for future attacks.

By 1990 ARPANET was retired and a greater network linking the universities of the US together were created. At the same time in Europe EUnet was created to link the universities.

Following this and the popularity, the networks were opened up and expanded, and released to independent organisation to be managed from 1995.

And then boom we had the internet and all of the good and bad that has been created since. It has gone from a network based on the sharing of data for educational purposes to benefiting mankind in medicine, commerce and personal networking.

Courtesy: Matt Cowley