I have never liked the ideas of relaxing parts of your body, imagining a safe place (there is no such place for me), and so on. When I try that I actually get MORE anxious. That is NOT what I consider mindfulness. To me, mindfulness is being aware of what my real thoughts and feelings are, as opposed to the false thoughts and feelings I have been taught to have in order to obtain "approval." It is hard to get onto those real thoughts and feelings, since we (I, anyway) have been so thoroughly brainwashed to have only the "correct" thoughts that would not bring down ruthless punishment. One technique is to slow down your thoughts so you can examine all of them without judging them. If I can work on mindfulness long enough it starts to become very rewarding. I begin to feel genuine and my thoughts are quite non-standard and they produce lots of insights. But it is hard to hold on to that mental state, because there is so little quick reward for it in this world.