Fox 19: Optimize your well-being

UC mindfulness expert offers tips for surviving a pandemic

Sian Cotton, PhD, director of the UC Center for Integrative Health and Wellness, and UC family medicine professor, spoke with Fox 19 about using mindfulness techniques to cope in the midst of a stressful COVID-19 impacted world. Cotton explains how a mindfulness practice can help increase our focus and reduce our ability to not waste time. To be focused in the moment allows us to attend to the task at hand and get the job done with time to enjoy life, explains Cotton.

“Mindfulness is a skill that we can learn,” Cotton told Fox 19.

She explained that mindful techniques can be used during formal practice such as yoga or mediation or informally with an activity done daily such as brushing your teeth.  “Imagine the last time you brushed your teeth. You were thinking about your day or what I am going to feed the kids or that I am late for something. To practice mindfulness pay attention to the sounds, the sights and the tastes, the actual activities associated with brushing your teeth.  It is a mindfulness activity.”

Listen to the Fox 19 interview with Sian Cotton, PhD.

Learn more about mindfulness with UC Answers.

Register for an October 17 virtual symposium promoting mindfulness online.

Featured image of women in a mindful pose practicing yoga is courtesy of Unsplash.

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