Step Into Colour

5 habits that help me prioritise JOY 🌞💜🌈⚡️✨ everyday

1. Daily Journaling 📖 (ft a tiny J! Time really goes so fast)

Getting my thoughts and feelings down on paper helps me to understand how I’m feeling, what’s happened that day to influence my mood, acknowledge my emotions and process them. It also really helps me identify opportunities for joy that have come up throughout my day or that I can look for tomorrow 💫

2. A morning routine 🌅

I won’t lie, this one is veeeeery flexible these days due to pregnancy insomnia 🙃 but my routine involves something that helps me fill my cup up and start my day positively 🌞 Taking my time in the shower or with my skincare routine, a yummy breakfast, ticking off some of my to do list. Helps me feel ready to take on the day!

3. Noticing the small things 🌍

Getting intentional with noticing the small things throughout my day really helps to make me feel positive and in turn, helps me to notice even more joyful things. My first sip of coffee (aaaaah!), a cool crisp autumn morning 🍂 or a dog in a raincoat. Let the feelings wash over you and take in the moment.

4. Practicing Gratitude

Acknowledging what I am grateful for and saying thank you for the good things in my life really helps me to appreciate all the joyful things I currently have 💛 It helps me with perspective when I’m feeling like the world has turned to s**t and reminds me there is always something good in every day. In turn, this regular practice again helps to bring about more joy (or helps you to intentionally notice it) in each day!

5. Dopamine dressing

Wearing clothes that bring me joy and boost my mood is one of my favourite things! Some days I’m a “throw on all the colour” girl 🌈, others I embrace my inner goth and go all black everything 🖤☠️ Whatever mood I’m in, choosing clothes I love and feel good in releases those inner feel good vibes ✨

Share your joy filled habits with me 💛👇🏼

The reason I’ve been a little quiet for the last couple of months ✨✨🌈💙

We’re entering my favourite season and I’m not sad about it! 🍂🍁🍄🧡

Some tips for sprinkling a little joy into September ✨

A joy list for August 🌞🧡✨

Gratitude 💛💫

Our final session for this term was all about Gratitude 🙏🏻

🧠 We talked about what it means to be grateful
🙏🏻 The different people and things we’re grateful for
💜 How it feels inside when we feel grateful
🧘‍♀️ The children took part in a lovely meditation where they thought about all the different things they are grateful for and also what they are grateful for about themselves.
❓Asking, what is your favourite thing about yourself?

We then wrote on our leaves to fill our gratitude tree and made paper chains with people, things, animals and the food we’re grateful for 🥰

I am incredibly grateful to the children (and their parents) for joining me for this 6 week term and learning lots together along the way 🙏🏻💜

Nothing quite beats the children adding “Mindfulness” to the list of things their grateful for and telling me they don’t want the classes to end 🥹

Cup of sunshine 🌞 💫

This afternoon’s session was a continuation of our theme “Kindness for ourselves and kindness for others” 🌈🌍🌟

💛 We talked about how we can fill our own cup of sunshine 🌈 How we can help to fill or empty other people’s cups too
🌍 How the things we say and actions we take can impact others
🌟 How important it is to be kind and how kindness is our superpower!

We also practiced a Friendship Bubble Meditation 🧘‍♀️🫧 ☮️

Finally, we all sat down (grown ups too!) and filled in our cups of sunshine 🌞 and talked about what makes us happy 😊

We’ve only one class left until the end of term and next week’s theme is one of my favourites 🍃 🙏🏻

A joy list for July 🏝️ 🐚 🌞

Does anything resonate from this month’s list?

Self love / Inner Friend 💕💜💛

During today’s class we talked about what it means to be a friend to ourselves and the sort of kind things we can say to ourselves.

We did a short visualisation where we imagined our inner friend was sitting next to us.

🧒🏼 What do they look like?
🗣️ What do they sound like?
💬 What things do they tell us when we’re sad/angry/happy?

I then introduced my inner friend and the positive affirmations that they tell me/remind me of ⭐️

I read one of my favourite books by “Good Morning, I love you Violet” 🌟💫💛

The children then made their own inner friend and wrote their affirmations 💫

Looking forward to next week where we continue the theme of being kind to ourselves and also introduce being kind to others too 🌞

Feelings in the body 🌈

In today’s class we talked about how our emotions feel in our bodies and how we can take care of ourselves when we have big feelings.

🧠 We stuck our feelings to the outline of a body (not my finest drawing skills 😅) in the places we feel them. Sore tummies, fast heartbeats, clenched fists.
💜 We talked about how we could take care of ourselves - practicing our breathing, soothing touch (rubbing our tummy), dancing, talking to a trusted grown up
✋🏼 We named 5 grown ups we can talk to about our feelings
🌈 We drew our own pictures of what happiness, sadness and anger feel like for us
🪼We finished the session making our jellyfish so we could practice our Jellyfish Breathing at home

We also referred back to our Monkey Mind and practiced some awareness, holding different items in our hands and describing what they felt like 🐚

My favourite quote was “when I feel happy it’s like rainbows are bursting out of my heart” 🥺🌈🌟

Loved welcoming this group of children to our first Creative Mindfulness Class of the summer term 🌞🌟

🐵 We talked about our monkey mind and how busy our little monkeys are
👂 We gave our monkeys the job of listening and practiced being in the here and now
⛈️ We discussed all the different thoughts and feelings we can have in one day and how our mind can feel like a storm sometimes
🔮 We made our mind jars, adding LOTS of glitter ✨ to represent all our thoughts and feelings
😮‍💨 We practiced breathing to help calm the storm and clear our minds
🎨 We also did some colouring and had lots of fun playing together at the end of class.

I can’t wait for next week’s class 🌟