5 Ways Mindfulness Meditation Significantly Reduces Stress
Ive been practicing mindfulness meditation for almost a decade now and I find this metaphor helped me understand the real-life significance of mindfulness:
Im sitting on the bank of a river under a big oak tree focusing on my breath. There are boats floating by. On each boat something different is going on.
The first boat is a party boat where people are dancing and singing and cavorting. For a moment, I loose connection with my breath and listen to the music. Then I realize Im caught up in the music. The music is nice but I decide Im going to keep focusing on my breath instead.
The next boat is filled with angry people complaining about their illnesses, describing terrible past experiences with doctors, and saying they feel hopeless. In a split second, without being conscious of it, Ive hopped on that boat and am complaining about my sore back and how my butt hurts from sitting in meditation too long and how I resent the superior attitude of people who are able to sit in meditation for hours.
Then suddenly I become mindful that Im on the deck of the anger boat. As a result of this awareness, I now make a conscious choice to get off the boat and sit on the bank under the oak tree again. I became aware and made a decision about where I really wanted to be in that moment.
It is in this awareness that I gain control. I feel free, the tightness in my chest loosens, and I am able to breathe fully again.
Mindfulness meditation has the potential to help us become free from the control of internal and external forces that make us unhappy.
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The results of studies are now reinforcing what people have known about the stress reduction benefits of mindfulness meditation for hundreds of years:
1) You worry less. Its not that meditation will suddenly eliminate all problems from your life but it will help you cope with stress and problems better. It softens the edges. I still worry about money and the well-being of my loved-ones but overall I feel calmer. During the winter when I have to drive my little Smartcar on snowy, rural highways, instead of spending the entire ride worrying about potential accidents, I tap into my breathing and am able to focus on driving. I stay in the moment. And in this moment everything is okay. Instead of worrying about what might happen, I live in the present.
2) It makes you less judgmental. It cultivates empathy towards yourself and others. You see the clear truth about yourself and other people rather than seeing things as filtered through our own opinions or theories or through the perceptions of others. Studies have shown that it also makes people more accepting of their bodies. It helps us connect with our bodies in an experiential way we notice how our bodies are feeling rather than what they look like.
3) You get less distracted by unimportant crap the TV, the internet, gossip at work, social media, and all the chatter around us. Through meditation, our mental processes come under our control. We no longer get caught up in the whims of popular culture or the opinions of others. We are able to focus and concentrate on what we want to focus on rather that letting our minds get carried away by all the stuff happening around us.
4) Relationships get better. We become better able to respond well to relationship stress. We are seeing our own emotions in a clear way and become more skilled at communicating our emotions to our partners. Plus, it makes you more empathetic see #2.
5) You have fewer knee-jerk reactions. Ever find yourself overreacting to a seemingly benign situation? Do you wonder what the heck made you yell at the hard-working waitress who brought you scrambled eggs instead of sunny-side-up? Are eggs really that anger-inducing or is something that happened in your past making you overreact today? Through mindfulness we come to realize the truth of the current situation we are involved in rather than letting our reactions be shaped by things that happen to us in the past.
Through mindfulness we become skilled at seeing the truth. {Tweet this}
Instead of applying biased stories to what we observe about ourselves, about others, and about the world, we learn to see things as they really are. Through mindfulness our eyes are opened to the truth of what is. This truth sets us free.
How has mindfulness meditation made a positive impact in your life? Leave your comments below.
SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MINDFULNESS MEDITATION
http://evp.harvard.edu/book/where-can-i-find-evidence-based-research-mindfulness
http://evp.harvard.edu/book/mindfulness-and-wellbeing
http://marc.ucla.edu/workfiles/pdfs/marc-mindfulness-research-summary.pdf
http://sciencenordic.com/your-cerebral-cortex-thins-age
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886907004242
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15256293
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/ce-corner.aspx