“Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of what’s happening in the present moment, focusing on positive thoughts, enjoying experiences and objects as they come into your life leading to a happier life”
“Happiness is when what you Think what you Do and what you Say are in Harmony” – Mahatma Gandhi
Mindfulness has enjoyed a tremendous surge in popularity in the past decade, both in the popular press and in the psychotherapy literature. The practice has moved from a largely obscure Buddhist concept founded about 2,600 years ago to a mainstream psychotherapy construct today.
Several disciplines and practices can cultivate mindfulness, such as yoga, tai chi and qigong, but most of the literature has focused on mindfulness that is developed through mindfulness meditation — those self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calmness, clarity and concentration (Walsh & Shapiro, 2006).
Mindfulness may be used to describe a variety of practices and processes nevertheless, it is most often defined as a two-component process that includes attention to present moment experience, coupled with an attitude that is open, non-reactive, and accepting of things as they are.
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Research on mindfulness has identified these benefits:
Stress reduction
Mindfulness-based stress reduction training has been shown to decrease total mood disturbance, including stress, anxiety and fatigue.
Boosts to working memory.
Improvements to working memory appear to be another benefit of mindfulness, research finds.
Focus.
Mindfulness meditation affects a person’s ability to focus attention and suppress distracting information.
Less emotional reactivity.
Researchers found that mindfulness meditation practice helps people disengage from emotionally upsetting events in ones life.
Relationship satisfaction.
Several studies find that a person’s ability to be mindful can help predict relationship satisfaction — the ability to respond well to relationship stress and the skill in communicating one’s emotions to a partner. Evidence suggests that mindfulness protects against the emotionally stressful effects of relationship conflict (Barnes et al., 2007),
Better quality of life.
The brain is made up of billions of neurons. These neurons need to communicate with one another and with other parts of the body. The more you meditate and practice mindfulness, the more the brain’s synapses strengthen, which can help improve your life.
Parent-child improved relationship
Mindful parenting involves applying the skills of mindfulness into the child-parent interaction. This includes listening with full attention, having a non-judgmental acceptance of the self and the child as well as self-regulation in the parenting relationship.
Benefits for healthcare workers
Mindfulness can also be very beneficial to healthcare providers as well. Burnout is a big problem in the healthcare industry, and trials indicate that mindfulness can help boost resilience and create positive changes while reducing stress, anxiety, and burnout amongst healthcare workers.
Keep in mind that every time you indulge in those negative thoughts and feelings, you are strengthening their effect on you.
However, every time you engage in positive thoughts and behaviors and let go of the negative ones, you are retraining your brain to think a little differently.
As Aristotle once said: “We are what we repeatedly do.”
By practicing Mindfulness and Meditation, you can then begin to more fully understand how your emotions, thoughts, and feelings impact your life.
If you want to to take one small step in support of a happier, healthier, and calmer way of life, Mindfulness and Meditation is a great place to start.
Sources:
American Psychological Association
The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation. (2017, February 24). Retrieved March 12, 2019, from https://chopra.com/articles/the-neuroscience-of-mindfulness-meditation.
