Everything about Mindfulness meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a practice to develop the skills of paying attention to our thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgment.
Mindfulness meditation benefits
The meditation technique helps to move your thoughts in the different direction when the mind is preoccupied with other things and thus helps you to look life from the different perspective so that you can appreciate every single moment of life.
Practicing mindfulness meditation can improve the physical and the psychological symptoms. Thus, it helps to bring great changes in your health, attitude and behavioral patterns. There is a number of mindfulness meditation benefits.
• Improves well being
Mindfulness meditation changes your attitude and gives you a contented life. It helps you to get fully engaged in various activities you do in your daily routine and have pleasure in everything you do. Many people who do mindfulness meditation find that they are less likely to get worried about the future and regret the past occurrences in life. They are less affected by things like self-esteem, ego, and success, therefore they are able to establish a better connection with others.
• Improves physical and mental health
Studies have revealed that the mindfulness meditation helps to improve your physical health by relieving stress, treating heart diseases, maintains blood pressure, improves sleep quality and relieves gastrointestinal problems.
It also provides treatments for a number of mental issues like depression, anxiety disorder, hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse etc.
Mindfulness exercises
Here are two exercises you can practice.
• Mindfulness meditation
Sit straight on a chair or sit on the floor keeping the legs crossed. Focus on your breathing pattern. Feel the sensations of flow of air into the nostrils and out of the mouth or rising and falling of the belly while inhaling or exhaling. By this, you will now become more aware of sensations, sounds, and your thoughts.
• Practice informal mindfulness
You can choose any activity or moment to go for informal mindfulness. While you are eating, walking, showering or doing any other activity, you can practice mindfulness. Inhale through the nose and allow the air to move down into the belly. It will expand your abdomen fully. Now exhale through the mouth. Now notice the sensations in your body. Involve your senses deeply and soon you will find that your mind has been distracted from the task at hand. Now you can savor each sensation.
How to practice mindfulness
There are many ways to practice mindfulness. But the objective of mindfulness is to attain a state of consciousness with the focus to pay attention to your sensations and thoughts but without any judgment. This helps the mind to focus on the current moment. There are different techniques used to practice mindfulness, all of them are a part of meditation.
Sit at a quiet place and focus on your breathing pattern and repeat a mantra silently. Allow the thoughts to come into the mind without judgment and put again your focus on breathing and chant mantra.
Mindfulness meditation involves concentration. Once you get concentration, you can easily observe the flow of emotions, thoughts, and sensations without judgment. Here the challenge is that not to get stuck in any of the situations that happened in the past or to worry about anything that will happen in the future. After a period of time, you will become more comfortable with this practice and gets a key to happiness and self-consciousness.
Mindfulness practice involves accepting each moment. At times, when your mind gets involved in planning, criticism and other such thoughts then gently redirect your thoughts and sensations in the present moment.
