5 elementos essenciais para spirituality
5 elementos essenciais para spirituality
Blog Article
Some seem to believe mindfulness practice will invariably induce a sense of peace and calm. While this can be the experience for many, it is not the experience for all. At times, sitting quietly with oneself can be a difficult—even painful—experience.
Meditation is a highly personal activity, with everyone finding their best own way to practice. Some find guided meditations to be useful, especially when starting out, to help focus their attention.
In many organizations, there are bigger, systemic changes that need to be made, but I don’t think that instituting a mindfulness program will prevent those changes from happening. At the least, a mindfulness program provides workers with some relief from stress and anxiety while they campaign for systemic changes; at best, it helps to catalyze those bigger systemic changes.
It doesn’t matter when (or where) we meditate, so choose whatever time works best. Meditation could be nice to do first thing in the morning before our day begins or at night in bed.
Pair meditation with another daily activity, such as a 1-minute meditation as you wait for your morning coffee or tea to cool, or as you sit in the carpool lane.
“It’s about living your life as if it really mattered, moment by moment by moment by moment.” Here are a few key components of practicing mindfulness that Kabat-Zinn and others identify:
’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good
So what do I do? Keep returning from our distracted thoughts to our breath. This trains the mind to let go of distractions more easily. Eventually, we’ll notice that we can meditate longer without getting distracted.
However, social bias isn’t the only kind of mental bias mindfulness appears to reduce. For example, several studies convincingly show that mindfulness probably reduces sunk-cost bias, which is our tendency to stay invested in a losing proposition. Mindfulness also seems to reduce our natural tendency to focus on the negative things in life. In one study, participants reported on their general mindfulness levels, then briefly viewed photos that induced strong positive emotion (like photos of babies), strong negative emotion (like photos of people in pain), or neither, while having their brains scanned. More mindful participants were less reactive to negative photos and showed higher indications of positive feeling when seeing the positive photos. According to the authors, this supports the contention that mindfulness decreases the negativity bias, something other studies support, too.
Become a subscribing member today. Help us continue to bring “the science of a meaningful life” to you and to millions around the globe.
PJ: Some tech companies have been criticized for harsh working conditions. Could mindfulness training become a “Band-Aid” fix to serious workplace problems?
But having something to eat prior to meditation may also mean you won’t be distracted by hunger. Use your own judgment and experience as a guide to what works best for you.
, Jared Lindahl and colleagues interviewed 100 meditators about “challenging” experiences. They found that many of them experienced fear, anxiety, panic, numbness, or extreme sensitivity to light and sound that they attributed to meditation. Crucially, they found that these experiences weren’t restricted to people with “pre-existing” conditions, like trauma or mental illness; they could happen to anyone at any time. In this new domain of research, there is still a lot we do not understand. Future research needs to explore the relationship between case histories and meditation experiences, how the type of practice relates to challenging experiences, and the influence of other factors like social support. What kind of meditation is right for you? That depends. “Mindfulness” is a big umbrella that covers many different kinds of practice. A 2016 study compared four different types of meditation, and found that they each have their own unique benefits.
There are many, many studies that find a positive link between mindfulness and relationship quality, which is probably a byproduct increase positive vibrations of the effects we’ve already described. For example, in one 2016 study, researchers measured mindfulness in 88 couples. Then they took cortisol levels in each couple before and after they discussed a conflict in their relationship. Unsurprisingly, cortisol levels spiked during the discussion, a sign of high stress. But levels in the most mindful people—both men and women—were quicker to return to normal after the conflict ended, suggesting they were keeping their cool. This result is echoed in many studies of mindfulness in romantic relationships from the beginning to the very end—in fact, there are quite a few studies that find that mindfulness makes breakup and divorce easier. Mindfulness is also linked to better relationships with your kids. Studies have found that mindfulness practice can lessen stress, depression, and anxiety in parents of preschoolers and children with disabilities. Mindful parenting is also linked to more positive behavior in kids.