Values like generosity (kindness to self leads to kindness to others), patience, and trust, provide a solid foundation for mindfulness practice (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). It cultivates a loving attitude towards oneself, accepting one’s limitations and weaknesses, and realizing own potentials through the beauty of giving to others. Langer & Moldoveanu (2000) found that awareness of different perspectives in problem solving is enhanced when one practices mindfulness. Other benefits of mindfulness include having a greater sensitivity to one’s environment and more openness to new information.
Bishop et al (2003) explains how this loving kindness towards the self is developed when mindfulness is practiced.
“In a state of mindfulness, thoughts and feelings are observed as events in the mind, without over-identifying with them, and without reacting to them in an automatic, habitual pattern of reactivity. This dispassionate state of self-observation is thought to introduce a ‘space’ between one’s perception and response. Thus mindfulness is thought to enable one to respond to situations more reflectively (as opposed to reflexively).”
An interesting relationship between
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It has also been noted in the literature on positive psychology that mindfulness is another dimension that is beneficial to well-being and has been getting attention across clinical and academic disciplines (Zylowska et al. 2008; Siegel 2007). It was given special notice in the field of traumatic stress studies and considered mindfulness, yoga and even martial arts as healing channels. Experts in the field of neurobiology discovered the key role of these mindfulness practices in activating the pre-frontal cortex, which promotes a greater sense of concentration and introspection (Graham, 2013; Porges,
This source discusses various mindful based approaches that are used today. It gives a brief overview of the different approaches and provides examples for each of the approaches. I plan to use this source to illustrate the various mindful based approaches specifically those that include mindful meditation and mindful based cognitive therapy.
When I think of mindfulness I contemplate of ones empathetic to interpret a situation. For two weeks every night before I went to bed, I wrote down three items I was grateful for. Some of the words were “Health”,” Family”,” Friends”,” Food”, and” Childhood”. This list goes on, what I grasped is whatever I did that day predisposed what I wrote down. On days I lifted I would appreciate my health, when I went away with my family I recognized how much I appreciated my family, when I was home for a day I realized how much I adored my bed. The new custom I obtained made me appreciate how indebted I am in my life to points I didn’t fathom before. This taught me to feel empathy for people who can’t say the same good things as me which gave me very good insight on to be grateful for the life I have.
The prolific success rates of mindfulness-based therapeutic techniques among the body of evidence only highlights how we can further incorporate mindfulness into not only psychological treatments, but also into our daily lives as preventative measures against unnecessary distress. The cognitive perceptual and interpretive control afforded via mindfulness practices seems to influence the appraisal of the situation at hand affects our reaction and response to it. The advantageous ability to objectively reflect on an issue before responding is not confined only to the realm of treating psychological symptoms.
Mindfulness is an incredible skill, it is a practice that is taking the world by storm and helping more and more people live in their present.
Each thought carries with it an emotional context. As the quality of thoughts is improved, the emotion that accompanies these thoughts is improved as well. Stillness enhances the feeling of peacefulness and quiet. This healing space allows the destructive emotions and thoughts to stop their constant bombardment. Consciously creating a healing space gives you the opportunity to choose the thoughts that you want to have instead of the constant flow of thoughts that have become your
Lissa Balisson came into class to discuss the significance of mindfulness. She described mindfulness as being in tune with yourself, but most importantly being in the present. One of the benefits being presently mindful and aware was to lessen the likelihood of being turbulent and agitated throughout the day. Often, we do things without thinking much about it, and we lose appreciation of the experience.
Mindfulness is an abstract concept that can take on many different meanings to individual people. This form of self care is when one is mentally aware of the present or accepting of the moment. Many benefits come with practicing mindfulness, which is why all people should try to understand its importance.
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“Mindfulness” takes on a slightly varied definition based on the practitioner and the researcher. The Oxford dictionary (2016) defines mindfulness as “A mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.” Weijer-Bergsma et al. (2012) states, “Mindfulness is a form of attention training using meditation techniques, in which participants learn to pay attention in a specific way” (pp. 238-239). Mindfulness has also been described as “the process of engaging a full, direct, and active awareness of experienced phenomena that is spiritual in aspect and that is maintained from one moment to the next” (Van Gordon et al.,
Mindfulness is a practice that requires an individual to be cognizant of the present state of mind. As a practice, mindfulness challenged everything that I was accustomed to. I tend to often think about the past and the future immensely, which made thinking about the present almost impossible. I preferred to reflect on the present after it happened, rather than while it was occurring. In this essay, I will be talking about how mindfulness aided me in being more accepting at Samaritans and being more forgiving in my personal life. Both values were deeply connected, and it is through mindfulness that I was able to realize how important they are.
The more mindfulness that we put forward into the world, the more likely we will see
The article provided a combination of the benefits of mindfulness that are empirically supported by different research. Mindfulness is defined as a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgment. According to the article, it is viewed as a psychological state of awareness rather than a trait. Mentalization and intersubjectivity are some of the concepts that have similarities with mindfulness in a sense that mentalization also includes understanding of others, while intersubjectivity enables a sense of connection with others. Meditation, as a way to enhance mindfulness, causes different brain activity patterns such as the stimulation of the middle prefrontal brain. The benefits of mindfulness discussed in the article were divided into three: affective
The neural pathways in the brain have the potential to adapt; they are flexible. The structure of the brain can change through the experience of mindfulness. Through the practice of mindfulness, we have the capacity to change pathways in the brain to develop new healthy habits. Extensive scientific research has shown that mindfulness leads to activation in the left prefrontal cortex. The change in the prefrontal cortex is a change associated with wellbeing, with an increase in positive feelings and emotions, physiological sensations and a faster recovery time from exposure to negative
Mindfulness is the state of being aware of the present or what you are going through. It is a psychological procedure, in which you focus your attention or mind on the experiences happening in the very moment.
In this paper, I will describe my initial thoughts about the practice of mindfulness and my development regarding practicing it. Furthermore, I will explore the idea of being a mindful therapist and how I am hoping to apply this with patients in the future.