Browse Tag: focus

Mindfulness and mental well being

You may feel stressed-out when waiting in a line at the bank or the post office, when driving in traffic or along an unfamiliar route, when facing a deadline, or when having an uncomfortable conversation.

You can even experience stress reactions as a result of anticipating or remembering such events.

Though these stresses seem fairly minor, they can cause all sorts of symptoms, such as muscular tension, headaches, insomnia, gastrointestinal upset, and skin conditions. Long-term stress can also be a factor in serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and dementia, particularly if you rely on unhealthy strategies to cope with stress, such as smoking, substance abuse, overeating, or overworking.

One of the gifts that mindfulness offers is helping you recognize that there are choices in how you respond to any stressful situation.

Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, describes this eloquently: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” (Pattakos 2008, viii).

Even amidst Frankl’s imprisonment, he found ways to provide comfort and healing to those around him, underscoring that, with awareness, everyone has freedom of choice how to respond. The key is awareness.

Of course, conditioning is a powerful force that can make it difficult to change. Just as water finds the path of least resistance, you’ll tend to fall back on habits because in many ways this is the easiest course to follow. This includes habitual ways of seeing and reacting.

To help provide motivation for the challenging work of turning off your autopilot and resisting habitual reactions and behaviors, mindfulness activities such as Mandala art , meditation or breath awareness will help you explore how stress is impacting your life.

Becoming truly aware of the stress in your life and how you interact with it is a necessary first step in choosing new responses that will serve you better.

Let me ask you today – Are you aware in the present moment? And from a scale of 1-10 how aware are you?

(Adapted from the book- Mindfulness Stress Based Reduction workbook)

Can 8-Minute Meditation Give You a Quiet Mind and Change Your Life Forever?

What exactly is meditation? It seems that so many people nowadays are hooked up with this form of activity. By definition, meditation is often used to describe the individual’s state of intense attention on an object of awareness or thought. The individual tries to turn his or her attention inward. Meditation is said to be of Vedic Hinduism origin. This is usually practiced in the eastern religions but now even the western culture is already involved in such activity.

People want to practice meditation so that they can focus their mind to God for their personal development, to attain peace of mind, and to be healthier.

Many people are now involved in some form of meditation. According to Time Magazine there is one meditation practice that can be used by almost anyone.

This can be considered as the basic primer of people wanting to begin meditation but have no idea where to start.

There was a book published last November 2005 authored by Victor Davich that is all about the 8 minute meditation. If you purchase the book and study it carefully, you will learn a lot of things about meditation, and you can do it in just 8 minutes.

Almost every individual who starts with anything new to him or her will often have lingering questions, hopes, and doubts about it. There are even people who hopes that when they begin to meditate, they will be enlightened. Or perhaps you’re one of those individuals who think that meditation is just like an exercise or diet that you’ve been trying to do for the past few months. But these things are normal; so don’t be surprised if you’re also like that.

The best thing to do is to face all the positive and/or negative expectations, and after doing so, forget about them and start with a clean slate. If you want to try the 8-minute program of meditation, you should learn how to approach it one minute at a time.

While many people think that meditation is a simple practice, then you’d better think twice. You might not notice it, but your mind is always racing from here to there. You can’t concentrate. According to the book’s author, you must watch your breath. This is the very first step to meditation. Do your inhalation and exhalation by breathing deeply. If you always do this and just keep on practicing, you can become good in meditation.

As a word of reminder, if you catch yourself thinking about other things, or in other words your mind strays off, focus again on your breathing. After all, meditation is all about concentrating and if you realize that you’re not on the right track, you can always return to that state of mind gently. Don’t get discouraged easily and just keep on practicing.

There is a popular saying that says practice makes perfect; so always keep that in mind. If you quit easily, then you will remain a quitter.

Meditation can help you in achieving peace of mind. With all your problems at work, in your family, and the entire world, you should at least experience a few minutes of peace. Don’t miss this chance to attain personal development at no cost at all.

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