Sobre harmony
Sobre harmony
Blog Article
Our mind will wander. Even the pros get distracted by thoughts during meditation and forget to follow their breath, because no matter how practiced we are, the mind is always going to think.
One kind of meditation technique that’s good for beginners is a body scan meditation, which helps us check in with our bodies by mentally scanning each part.
We’ll be fidgety. As soon as we attempt to sit still, during meditation or any other time, it’s almost as if we can’t help but scratch an itch, stretch our neck, or cross and uncross our legs.
Instead, try this: When you wake up, spend two minutes in your bed simply noticing your breath. As thoughts about the day pop into your mind, let them go and return to your breath.
JM: They’re practically synonymous but they’re not exactly the same. Mindfulness meditation is one form of meditation, but it’s not the only form. And formal meditation is one way to practice mindfulness, but it’s not the only way. Once you learn mindfulness skills, you can practice them at almost any moment of the day—sitting at your computer, stuck in traffic, even eating.
Mindfulness helps health care professionals cope with stress, connect with their patients, and improve their general quality of life. It also helps mental health professionals by reducing negative emotions and anxiety, and increasing their positive emotions and feelings of self-compassion.
Life is sometimes difficult, stressful, and challenging. We can’t control what happens, but we do have the potential to change the way we relate to those things.
The pings included questions about the positive and negative emotions they had experienced recently, any unpleasant hassles that had occurred, and how mindful they had been, along three specific dimensions of mindfulness:
During body scan, for example, participants saw the biggest increases in how aware they were of their bodies (unsurprisingly) and the sharpest decline in the number of thoughts they were having, particularly negative thoughts and thoughts related to the past and future. Loving-kindness meditation led to the greatest boost in their feelings of warmth and positive thoughts about others. Meanwhile, observing-thought meditation seemed to increase participants’ awareness of their thoughts the most. Previous research also suggests that observing-thought meditation has an advantage in reducing our judgmental attitude toward others. Taken together, these and other studies suggest that if you’re tackling a specific issue—say, feeling disconnected from your body—then you can choose a practice aimed at helping that issue, like the body scan. Loving-kindness might help in conflict with others, while observing-thought meditation can help break rumination. Body-Scan Meditation
Like Loving-Kindness Meditation, this technique involves invoking feelings of compassion and kindness toward yourself, and specifically for difficult situations or feelings.
As long as our back is straight, our neck and shoulders are relaxed, and our chin is slightly tucked, we can sit wherever we feel comfortable for the length of the meditation. We can sit on our couch, a dining or office chair, propped up by pillows on the bed, or on a cushion.
When they do, rather than becoming frustrated and focusing on the noise, “Why is my neighbor having a dance party right now?” or trying to tune it out, “I wish this music would stop,” we can notice our thought, let it go, and return to our breath.
JM: There are many different approaches, from apps that provide audio of guided meditations to on-site workplace training programs run by outside facilitators. A growing number of companies are offering mindfulness workshops. The earliest model, developed by Kabat-Zinn, is an eight-week course run by a trained facilitator, with mindfulness personal development exercises that participants practice on their own.
But that doesn’t mean we’ll feel clear, calm, and kind as soon as we start or finish. Since the mind is always changing, our experience might feel different each time we meditate.