5 elementos essenciais para spirituality
Become fully alive to the present moment using the sensations of body and breathing as a method of cultivating mindful awareness.
Mindfulness enhances relationships: Research suggests mindfulness training makes couples more satisfied with their relationship, makes each partner feel more optimistic and relaxed, and makes them feel more accepting of and closer to one another.
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.
Fascinating though it is, we shouldn’t overplay meditation’s effects on physical health at the expense of its importance to emotional health. In fact, it may be difficult to separate out the two, as a key impact of mindfulness is stress reduction, and psychological stress has been tied to heart health, immune response, and telomere length.
People tend to lose some of their cognitive flexibility and short-term memory as they age. But mindfulness may be able to slow cognitive decline, even in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
An essential component of mindfulness is acceptance. Whatever you’re thinking and feeling at that moment is neither right nor wrong. You notice it, and accept it, and move onto the next moment without getting caught up in judging what you’re thinking or feeling.
Soften your gaze and lower your eyes, not focused on anything in particular. You may also close your eyes, if that’s more comfortable.
Tune into your body’s physical sensations, from the water hitting your skin in the shower to the way your body rests in your office chair.
While we may espouse compassionate attitudes, we can also suffer when we see others suffering, which can create a state of paralysis or withdrawal. Many well-designed studies have shown that practicing loving-kindness meditation for others increases meditative mind our willingness to take action to relieve suffering. It appears to do this by lessening amygdala activity in the presence of suffering, while also activating circuits in the brain that are connected to good feelings and love. For longtime meditators, activity in the “default network”—the part of our brains solfeggio frequency that, when not busy with focused activity, ruminates on thoughts, feelings, and experiences—quiets down, suggesting less rumination about ourselves and our place in the world.
JM: There are many. Some of the earliest studies, which involved the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, showed that mindfulness can help ease stress. Mindfulness fosters positive emotions and helps provide resilience against negative experiences. There’s also evidence that the practice of mindfulness promotes empathy and a sense of compassion. Indeed, brain imaging research shows that a half hour of mindfulness meditation a day increases the density of gray matter in parts of the brain associated with memory, stress, and empathy.
Mindfulness fights obesity: Practicing “mindful eating” encourages healthier eating habits, helps people lose weight, and helps them savor the food they do eat. Pregnant women who practice mindful eating gain less weight during pregnancy, and have healthier babies. Featured Articles
Any amount of meditation is better than no meditation at all. But the benefits of meditation are compounded when you do it relaxing sounds regularly. And daily? Even better. A daily meditation practice will yield benefits that will reverberate into every area of your life.
Participants also reported that they became more assertive in saying ‘pelo’ to others in order to lessen their load of responsibility, allowing them to become more balanced in acknowledging their own as well as others’ needs.
It can also be helpful to notice how emotions feel in the body. Is anxiety making us clench our fists? Is worry making us sweat? Is boredom causing us to zone out? Then we can use the breath to try and ease some of that tension.