How to Have a Mindful Weekend Getaway

By Christine Ascher on January 26, 2018

As a college student, you’re probably pretty busy, dividing your time between school, work, and other extracurricular activities. With everything on your plate, it’s not uncommon to find yourself feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or just tired. When this happens, the best way to deal with it is by treating yourself to a weekend getaway. Being able to take a break every once in a while is important for maintaining good mental health, so if you start to feel bogged down by stress as the semester gets going, don’t feel guilty about scheduling a nice, mindful weekend getaway for yourself. Mindfulness, according to the website Mindful.org, just means that your mind is “fulling attending to what’s happening, to what you’re doing, to the space you’re moving through.” By taking some time to re-center yourself and to practice focusing solely on the present, even if it’s just a couple of days, you’ll be re-energized and ready to get back to work when you return to school. In order to have the perfect mindful weekend getaway, wherever you decide to go, keep these tips in mind.

Girl, leaves, nature, laying

Image via https://pixabay.com

Sign Out of Social Media

As addicting as social media can be, it can also become fairly draining at times. Being constantly tuned in to what your friends are doing and feeling like you have to be a consistent presence on your various social media accounts, can take up a lot of your time and energy. The first step to being mindful is to get rid of those distractions that take your focus off of the present and sap you of the energy to deal with the world around you, so consider logging out of your social media accounts for the weekend. This will help you take advantage of your weekend getaway in all that it has to offer, rather than wasting a portion of your time scrolling through your Facebook feed to see what you’re missing out on. In addition to freeing up more of your time, avoiding social media for the weekend will also help you enjoy what you’re actually doing, rather than worrying about what others are doing with their weekends—and, in doing so, you’ll start to become more mindful of the world around you.

Turn Off Your Phone

Like social media, smartphones, in general, provide you with a number of ways to spend (and perhaps waste) your time. If you want to be even stricter on yourself, consider going phone-free for the duration of your weekend getaway. The best way to do this is by asking your friends and family not to contact you unless in the event of an emergency; that way, you can avoid using your phone without having to worry that you’ll be unreachable if something happens that you need to be notified of. Disable your email and the apps on your phone as well, so you have nothing left to distract you on your weekend of relaxation. While it may be difficult at first to adjust to a few days without your phone, you’ll probably find it freeing not to feel like you have to be available to your contacts at a moment’s notice, and to get some time just to yourself. If you really want to focus on staying in the moment during your weekend getaway, putting away your phone will be a huge help.

Pay Attention to Your Senses                           

In mindfulness practices, there’s often a strong focus on the senses. Linda Katz, a writer for the website Mindbodygreen, asserts that the senses are a great way to help ground yourself in the present moment. Wherever you go for your weekend getaway—or even if you decide to save some money by staying at home and enjoying a relaxing weekend in your normal environment—spend some time focusing on and truly experiencing your surroundings through the lens of each of your senses. Take a moment to notice what you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel at a certain moment; you may end up noticing details in your surroundings that you normally would pass over. This is a great way to ground yourself in the present moment and to pull your thoughts away from those nagging worries that might typically fill your mind.

Try Journaling

Instead of spending time checking your social media accounts, a more mindful way to expend some of that time and energy during your weekend getaway is by journaling. Take some time to jot down how you’re feeling that day and the sensations that you’re experiencing at that moment. If there are any unwelcome thoughts or worries that keep finding their way into your mind, take note of these as well; by writing them down on paper, you may find that you have an easier time letting them go when they come into your mind. Journaling is also a great way to preserve your day-to-day experience, so that you can remember it for years down the road. In addition to helping you stay present in the moment, it also helps prevent that moment from being forgotten once your weekend getaway is over.

When you’re looking to have a mindful weekend getaway, both to help you clear your mind of the stresses that normally weigh you down and to regain the energy to move forward, what you do is going to be far more important than where you go. You don’t have to spend tons of money going on a yoga retreat in order to have a mindful trip; instead, you just need to encourage yourself to focus on the present moment. Between minimizing distractions and practicing some techniques to help you ground yourself in the moment, a mindful weekend getaway is perfectly attainable on any budget.

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