Mindfulness was practiced by our ancestors even before it became popular. Various religions and traditions in the different parts of the world were unknowingly doing this concept of Mindfulness. The most recognized of which is from the perspective of Buddhism and Hindu. These two were the inspiration to the yoga, meditation and other activities that we practice today.
According to the American Psychological Association (2012), it is “a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgement. In this sense, mindfulness is a state and not a trait.” It focuses on a person’s experience on thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations that makes a person become more aware of the present by giving more attention to oneself. This newfound self-awareness helps us get to know our inner self more and be somehow be at peace.
Mindfulness is a pause button in our chaotic lives. It helps suspend our judgement about the world and focus our energy in discovering the wonders of the mind.
During a state of mindfulness, the body and mind to be in full alert while in a focused relaxation. The goal of it is to divert all the attention to the sensations of the body and also frees the mind from unpleasant thoughts. It clears away the biases that the world and the person have. Aside from this, Mindfulness also stimulates the emotional, mental and physical process in the body.
Mindfulness is not new. Our ancestors were practicing it already even before it was introduced. You may not have noticed that you’ve been practicing mindfulness every day in your life. A simple silence a minute a day helps you relax and clear your mind. This is, in a way, a practice of mindfulness. By doing this you are relaxing your mind, heightening your senses and your state of mind.
Mindfulness is not only in the mind. Aside from being a mind concept, Mindfulness can be incorporated in your daily activities too. Mindfulness can be done during yoga practice and meditations on your free time. Spare a minute or two and keeps your day going.
Mindfulness is versatile. Everyone can practice mindfulness. No matter what job you have it can always find a way to be involved in your life. Its versatility makes it accessible to everyone who wants to learn even with little much time in their hands. In between breaks at work, you can close your eyes and spend some time to clear your mind.
Mindfulness has numerous benefits. Numerous studies and researches have agreed that practicing mindfulness is helpful in maintaining a person’s physical and mental well-being. It even boosts the immune system and lessens the chances of a person from acquiring infection. Mindfulness is a cheap trick that improves your health without making you spend your money.
Mindfulness helps build relationships. It improves our communication with other people and helps understand them more. The practice of mindfulness shifts the negative behaviors that affects your relationships to a more positive one. This lessens the possible conflicts and even helps build a deeper relationship with other people.
Mindfulness has a great role in the field of psychology. Mindfulness is not only a concept nor a state of being more aware of oneself. It can also be integrated to treatments and it has proven its efficiency in treating patients.
Last but not the least, mindfulness has a big impact on a person’s mental health. It has different ways of improving mental health: Mindfulness-based therapies and intervention and everyday practice of mindfulness was proven to be effective a person’s mental health. Mindfulness-based therapies and intervention, mindfulness is incorporated in activities to somehow decrease a patient’s symptoms or prevent a relapse from occurring.
References:
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindfulness/
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/mindfulness
]]>Did you ever had a hard time sleeping at night? Your mind keeps on repeating your thoughts and memories multiple times preventing you from having a good night sleep. It was found that mindfulness can improve your sleeping difficulties somehow. It creates a mental space where sleep is welcomed, and your everyday thoughts is interrupted.
There are many things that can make someone anxious some of it are related to mental health problems that might be a result of a major experience in someone’s life. Recent researches has shown that practicing mindfulness helps reduce someone’s anxiety by teaching them how to respond to better to the stress by being more aware of what is currently happening rather than acting instinctively without truly knowing the emotions and motives behind those decisions. Being more aware of oneself allows you to be more adaptive in difficult situations.
Everyday stress is inevitable. Mindfulness helps alleviate some of your worries and negative feelings and tries to convert it into a positive feeling. Mindfulness leads to a greater perceptions of body awareness. It makes you aware of the state of your internal emotions. It also better controls your attention making it easier to focus on tasks rather than being distracted.
Depression is one of the most common mental illness worldwide. Around 80% of people who were diagnosed with depression experiences relapse at some point in their lives. A therapy called mindfulness-based cognitive therapy or MBCT is a new approach found by researchers. It was proven to relatively prevent depression relapse as effective as medications. MBCT is an 8-week program that includes mindfulness exercises such as yoga, household chores and body awareness. People with depression are at risk of having negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs about themselves, MBCT increases their awareness of what’s truly happening around them, acknowledge it and respond in a different way
When people are stressed, they often result to stress or emotional eating. They tend to overeat as a result of having strong emotions and feelings. This is their way of coping with the conflicts, dulling their strong emotions temporarily. Mindful eating is a new technique which helps restore your relationship with food and eating. It involves using our senses while eating such as knowing how the food smell, taste, and how it restores our body after taking meals. Using this technique, we become aware of the internal cues of hunger and cease our desire to binge when emotionally challenged. Mindful eating can lead to weight loss and losing weight should serve as a determination.
Body dissatisfaction is one of the sources of anxiety of many women. Negative conceptualization of a person about themselves can lead to negative body image, body dissatisfaction and in some extreme cases, it might even lead to body dysmorphic disorders. Mindfulness encourages a non-judgmental of self-awareness. It can counteract fixation with one’s appearance and reflection that can provoke negative thoughts. Mindfulness helps women relate to their criticisms about themselves and avoid fixating too much on their bodies.
Mindfulness has a great impact on the processes of the brain. It helps control and direct the cognitive processes for working memory, planning, decision making, self-regulation cognitive inhibition and creative problem solving. Aside from enhancing a person’s cognitive function, mindfulness was found to improve higher-order level of thinking. The continuous focusing on breath while practicing mindfulness promotes attention switching or cognitive flexibility.
Since the focus of mindfulness is all about the mind and the body. A daily dose of mindfulness practice can be helpful on people who are in chronic pain. There is an increasing evidence that mindfulness has a great impact on a person’s pain experience. Pain is associated to three major components: physical sensations, emotional response to these sensations and social effects due to the experience of pain. Mindfulness can put together these 3 components in harmony. It reduces the experience of pain without reducing its severity. It also shapes you to become fearless and to accept that pain will be present in your life but not suffering.
Heart disease is one of the leading of causes of death in the World. In the United States, it accounts for about 1 in 4 deaths yearly. In a research by scientist, people who are pre-hypertensive were treated with mindfulness meditation or any program that promotes muscle relaxation, in adjunct to their drug treatment. It was found that the inclusion of mindfulness can significantly decrease the systolic and diastolic blood pressure of those people who are at risk of having a heart disease. It also slows down the heart rate and correct its rhythm which led to a better health of not only heart but the whole body.
References:
https://www.anxiety.org/can-mindfulness-help-reduce-anxiety
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/03/cover-mindfulness
https://www.headspace.com/meditation/weight-loss
https://inkblotuoft.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/janice-to.pdf
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01037/full
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