As little as a year ago, say well-being and you would hear mindfulness, then echoes of meditation, followed by yoga, and possibly tofu.

And while social media remains laden with Well-being Wednesday posts of impressive yoga poses and beautifully scripted affirmations, mindfulness seems to take less of a centre stage in the world of well-being these days.

Are we becoming aware of the multi-faceted nature of well-being?

There’s definitely more to well-being than mindfulness. The Our Well-being Matters programme launched by EIS in February considers well-being through a different lens each week. For example, the Digital Well-being webinar is mindful of the fact that much of our online time is unavoidable, so how do we make more effective use of this time? The Food and Nutrition webinar helps us understand the connections between what we eat and our stress and anxiety levels, without the mention of a diet. The aim is to explore how to create and sustain some good practices that will make a positive difference to how you think and feel about yourself, your life and relationships, and your work.

Who has time for mindfulness, or any kind of well-being?

At times of stress and anxiety, we want to see and feel quick results. Approaches such as meditation, healthy eating, cutting down on social media, and getting into a sleep pattern take time and practice, rather like building up physical strength through continued training. So, while we may only become aware of our well-being at times of stress and as a result look for strategies as a quick fix, what can help in the long run is investing a few minutes of training each day to build the strength and resilience needed to deal with issues before reaching crisis point.

With so much information out there, how do we choose something that works for us? While it’s great that everyone from the BBC to the various health and well-being related charities, to local authorities are providing information guides on being healthier, it is easy to become paralysed by choice, and even closed off to messages related to wellbeing and mindfulness. Our Well-being Matters includes a round up of tried and tested resources around each topic, to cut down on the amount of research you have to do to find what works for you.

A positive picture of wellbeing.

Over 30 teachers and college lecturers recently participated in a webinar exercise that asked, ‘What are the words we associate with well-being’?

Two things are striking about the Word Cloud that was created. Looking at the image, it would be easy to think that the exercise had asked for words associated with positive well-being only. It is really heartening that individually, then collectively, all participants contributed positive words, such as ‘calm’, ‘happiness’, ‘loving’, ‘relaxed’.

The breadth of answers illustrates the many different ways that well-being is present in people’s lives. While only explicitly mentioned once in the image, mindfulness is evident everywhere, from ‘contentment’ to ‘balanced’. Similarly, techniques to cope with stress and anxiety can be rooted in mindfulness practices.

So, returning to our original question – has mindfulness fallen out of fashion? The resounding answer is ‘no’ – we might not see it, we might not set out to practice mindfulness, but stopping to count to ten, making the time to regularly have a walk at lunchtime, making contact with a friend at the end of the work day, are all mindful practices, and help build our well-being strength and resilience. These things will never fall out of fashion.

To find out more about the Our Well-being Matters programme, visit our programme page.

If you are facing crisis point right now, the EIS Teacher Health and Well-being Resource includes information on services to contact if you need some support.