Hello and welcome to Mind the Mind with Mindfulness offered with Stimuli tutorials. My name is Ellie Sturrock. I'm a mindfulness teacher, largely in the NHS, and I've almost certainly got an ADHD mind. I'm pretty convinced of this because I was given an assessment of ADHD as a form. And I sat down and started to do it, and I got distracted and I started looking around. And then I got up and I did something and I came back down to it and I looked at it again. Didn't take long before I got distracted and I wandered off and did something else, or I sat there thinking about something else and then lost interest in it. And then I looked at the form and I thought, it's a very long form. And so I didn't ever do it. And that racing mind, that easily diverted mind is, as you know, a very clear indication of that ADHD mind. But actually, the attention economy is changing for everyone with the increasing amount of readily accessible information and stimuli. I think the word stimuli is an excellent name for these tutorials.The normal attention span of humans has shrunk from an average of 12 seconds before 2013 to now an average of eight seconds - and there'll be outliers to that. A goldfish is estimated to have an attention span of nine seconds. And I don't find this hard to believe because I've been drawn to some short videos on the computer showing that goldfish can be shown how to play football. So that is how things are. Minds are like this, and minds are changing. They're not set. Minds change as the world changes, and that's good. We need to be able to quickly shift because especially as we use computers and the fastly reported pieces of information, things we can choose to do, we need to be able to change and take in. We can take in a lot of information, much more than we could when we were just plowing fields. And looking after animals. We didn't need, we didn't have the opportunity and we didn't need to take in so much information. So this Stimuli program and mindfulness are great ways to both understand the human condition as it is and to develop a greater appreciation of the way the mind is and all that, it enables us to do whatever it's foibles. If we can see how productive, ambitious, multifunctional, clever, artistic, funny, satirical, kind our minds are, then we can let ourselves off wishing them to be different than the way they are, promoting an idea of accepting the mind as it is. Having said that, by practicing very old traditions of meditation comes from the philosophy of mindfulness that are 2,500 years old.We have the opportunity to do something that steady settles and nourishes the mind. Mindfulness has traditionally been taught using a variety of longer practices and shorter practices rooted in the way that we live our lives, the normal things that we do, and that's what we are gonna be doing here within this Stimuli program.Research tells us that mindfulness is very acceptable to people with ADHD. I've been doing it for 20 years, and I totally get this because when we are really busy doing a mindfulness practice, however short, offers a little reprieve from the busyness of mind. It offers us a way of studying, settling, and nourish.Now the courses I've taught, I have had feedback from over 700 people, and people tell me that by practicing mindfulness, they are able to be less harsh on themselves. They report that they realize that not all thoughts are true or helpful. They learn how to disengage from the mind when it's not being true or helpful.And also people report to me that they enjoy the little things in life. They give up unrealistic and unnecessary expectations of themselves and also of others. And this really helps people to be kinder to themselves. Internally in the way that they look at themselves and in the way that they live their lives and of others. So people report that their relationships change too. This program is a tiptoe into mindfulness, and by doing this program, you haven't really done mindfulness. You've got a little taste from the whole meal of mindfulness and I would, if you have an interest in it, have a benefit from doing it. I really would recommend trying to do an eight-session course.Lots of these available look for a good teacher. So by doing these practices, they will cultivate a greater awareness of what's going on in order that we can respond better to whatever life throws at us. We become more accepting of ourselves and others, the world around us. We may improve mental ability and agility.We relate to life differently - i.e better. So welcome to this program of Mind the Mind with Mindfulness. Enjoy it and practice well.