Article Found on ScienceDaily
Mindfulness meditation programs have shown promise for the treatment of anxiety, one of the most common mental health disorders in the U.S. New research suggests people can begin to derive psychological and physiological benefits from the practice after a single introductory session. Read more
Article by Michelle Gale | Found on Mindful.org
It seems everywhere you look these days someone is touting the benefits of mindfulness — a practice that Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, describes simply as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” Research shows that people who practice mindfulness are less stressed, more focused and better able to regulate their emotions.
But, if you’re a busy working parent, how do you build mindfulness into an already-packed day? Those of us with kids and jobs often feel tired and rushed. We’re constantly multi-tasking, juggling personal and professional responsibilities, and feeling stressed about all we can’t get done. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, 56 percent of working parents say they find it difficult to balance their time between work and family. Though I now counsel others on how to break this cycle, I can certainly relate to it.
Years ago, I worked as Twitter’s head of learning and development when the company was growing 350% year after year. It was like being on a rocket ship, and I loved the work. But I found myself struggling to stay connected to my family. I can remember the afternoon my son’s school called to make me aware that no one had come to pick him up. He was in first grade at the time, and I burst into tears.
Although I was already committed to a mindfulness practice (I would sometimes sneak away to the meditation and yoga room we had in the office), I was still having trouble figuring out a way to weave presence and awareness into my day. Here’s the solution that I came up with and now recommend to others:
Start by spending a few minutes writing down what you do each day. It might look something like this: wake, coffee, family breakfast, pack lunches, prep for school day, walk dog, shower for work, drive car, train ride, walk to office, work all day, walk to train, car ride home, dinner, bath time, family reading or games, bedtime.
Now consider where mindfulness practice can fit in. For example:
Coffee: Make sure to pause before the first sip. Smell the aroma, feel the heat of the mug on your hand, and take three intentional breaths. Now enjoy.
Train ride: Once you’re settled into your seat, set a timer for five to ten minutes and practice mediation. Sit in silence and focus on your breathing or use a mindfulness app on your phone to listen to a guided meditation. Your eyes can be open or closed depending on the situation and what feels safe or comfortable.
Work: Each time you sit down to your computer, take a pause. Close your eyes, notice the sensation of your feet on the floor, your body in your chair, feel your breath come in and out of your body. Continue with your day.
Dinner: As you are preparing the meal, spend a moment reflecting on where the food came from. Imagine who planted it, picked it, or drove it to the store where you purchased it. On occasions when your entire family is sitting around the table at the same time, take a moment to feel grateful.
Bedtime: Decide on a ritual that cultivates mindful awareness. For younger children, consider having them put a stuffed animal on their belly as each of you count how many times the animal rides up and down with their breath. If your children are older try a head, heart, gut check-in at bedtime. Is the mind busy or calm in this moment? Are any emotions present or lingering from the day? Is there anything that needs to be shared or said that has not been already?
Does mindfulness seem a little more doable now? Research indicates that it takes just eight weeks of relatively regular practice to make positive changes to the brain. But if we wait until we have enough “bandwidth” to devote big blocks of time to it, we may never start. For working parents, my advice is to instead insert just a few small moments of mindfulness into your day, even — and especially — when life seems too busy, hectic and out of control.
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in its relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
Article by Kristen Peck | Found on MindBodyGreen
I’m quick to regret the label of chronic pain. I believe in the power of words and thoughts, so the idea of labeling a consistent pain as “chronic” feels like a resignation of control and possibility. For about two and a half years now, I’ve experienced persistent little nudges and discomfort in various parts of my bodies—mostly symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, joint pain, and the general discomfort that comes along with a desk job. Yes, I visited doctors and specialists to no avail and eventually turned to alternative healing modalities—like acupuncture, exercise, hot and cold therapy, physical therapy—searching for answers in the form of relief, management, and prevention. And while these methods worked, only temporarily so. Plus, I never feel that these practices address the root of the pain circulating throughout my body, which is sharp and rarely dormant these days.
Recently, my symptoms have fluctuated in and out of remission, except for, I noticed, during the periods of heightened stress and anxiousness, which seemed to exacerbate the symptoms. On my quest to further investigate the mind-body connection in relation to pain and body trauma, I stumbled across Pyeng Threadgill’s work with mindful movement.
Threadgill came across the Alexander Technique years ago as a vocalist and performer looking for tools to help strengthen her voice and body instruments. “I learned a lot about how we’re using our whole system. There’s an opportunity for openness. Time feels less rushed,” she told mbg during a session at her studio in Brooklyn. Today, she’s a certified instructor who’s reframed the technique as mindfulness and movement re-education to help everyday people focus on their movement habits and the stresses that can trigger chronic injuries and pain. “It’s about guiding people on how to be more integrated into all areas of your life. It’s a practice, not an overnight thing.”
During our session, Threadgill led me through a series of exercises steeped in awareness and conversation. Different from other bodywork treatments like massage, both Pyeng and I guided the treatment, with Pyeng adjusting the moves depending on how I responded to a particular feeling, a gentle pull on my arm there, a guided neck stretch here. After all, one of the primary principles of the technique is cultivating awareness. She explained that the moves were to help retrain the nervous system. “A lot of what we’re connecting to is connective tissue—loosening the grip of connective tissue to allow the muscles underneath to move more freely.”
I walked away from my session with Pyeng lighter and with remarkably less tension and tightness. If we all learned to think about our full alignment and our daily habits, could we shift the conversation on chronic pain from coping to healing? Pyeng’s take: “It’s about the liberation from identifying with your energies. If we can recognize our body and habits, we can change the course of our movement and, ultimately, our outlook on pain.”
Below, Pyeng offers up four tips for incorporating mindful movement into your own life.
Pyeng notes smartphone usage as a major factor in body alignment issues. “Since so many people are using smartphones nowadays, it is important to raise your smartphone more often when texting, typing, or reading. This takes practice, but it will reveal how often you are closing off the front of the throat and therefore, part of your body’s lengthening and widening potential.” She says a question to ask is, “How can I allow my body to lengthen with ease?”
A key element of Mindful Movement is to practice noticing your body and habits while engaging with the world. Part of this engagement, Pyeng says, starts with our breath and “how it feels to pay attention to your breath with your eyes opened.” In what ways can you use less force or holding when breathing while fully present in a task, chore, or activity.
Try to look out at eye height when walking. Oftentimes, so many people look down when they walk, and as a result, they reinforce the shortening of their spines and entire torso by forgetting that we, like any other animal, lead our movement with our eyes and head, followed by our bodies.
Most of us get so wrapped up in any given task that we forget to sense ourselves. It’s as if we are TOO focused on the bull’s-eye to remember our feet being on the ground and heads being light above. Set a timer once an hour for a five-minute pause to take inventory of your body. Instead ask yourself what you notice in your body while sitting in a chair, your car, or even standing in line.
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in its relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
Article Found on Mindful.org
Has someone ever sent you an angry email, and then you found yourself, weeks later, thinking about it while you’re wide awake at 2am?
Emotions can be a major source of distraction, according to researchers Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman, who have chronicled what we know thus far about the meditator’s mind in a new book, Altered Traits, Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.
In this whiteboard session for Harvard Business Review, Davidson and Goleman talk about one of the most important discoveries: repeated practice helps us untether from emotional cues that keep us mired in distraction — specifically, rumination.
Research suggests mindfulness practice can strengthen the connections between the brain that direct our decision-making and impulses, so that when we encounter a strong emotional trigger, we’re not pulled to immediately react.
“[Mindfulness] strengthens the prefrontal (cortex’s) ability to say no to emotional impulse,” says Goleman. This increases resilience because it helps us hold things more lightly — like that snarky email — and not devote all of our attention to emotional cues. Davidson explains:
Goleman cautions that the science of mindfulness — what we know, what we don’t — is still in the early stages of study. There are benefits, but there is a lot of hype as well. Since the early 2000s, research on mindfulness has been expanding rapidly. For more, here’s a look at 10 leaders in the field, what their research has shown us, and the future directions their studies are taking.
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in its relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
Article by Tara Healy | Found on Mindful.org
Our faces are windows into our most intimate feelings. Yet we’re apt to treat them as strangers, reserving for them our harshest criticism.
We’re surrounded by mirrors that show us our faces. But how often do we really take the time to look at our faces, as opposed to concentrating on ways to conceal what we consider to be their less than agreeable qualities? The onslaught of internal commentary is probably familiar to us all. “My nose is too big/too small.” “I wish I had more hair/less hair!” “Why can’t I be more like my sister?” “…my brother?” “…my daughter?” “…my friend?” Read more
Article by Judson Brewer | Found on Mindful.org
When I was first learning to meditate the instruction was to simply pay attention to my breath, and when my mind wandered, to bring it back. Sounded simple enough, yet I’d sit on these silent retreats sweating through t-shirts in the middle of winter. I take naps every chance I got because it was really hard work. Actually it was exhausting. The instruction was simple enough but I was missing something really important. Read more
Article by Elaine Smookler | Found on Mindful.org
Change comes whether we want it or not. If we can stay open and curious to an ever-new landscape of life’s possibilities, change can actually be the key to resilience. By learning to explore what presents itself, we ride the waves of change rather than losing ourselves in the undertow. Read more
Article Found on RickHanson.net
What can you do when you’re shaken?
The Practice:
Find your ground.
Why?
I’ve been to New Zealand, and really respect and like it. There’s a Maori term – turangawaewae, “a place to stand” – that I’ve come back to many times.
I’m sure I don’t know the full meaning of the word in its cultural context. But at a basic level, it’s clear that we all need a place to stand. A physical place to be sure – hearth and home, land and sea, a bed to curl up in – but also psychological or spiritual places, such as feeling loved, a calm clear center inside, knowledge of the facts, compassion and ethics, and realistic plans. Read more
Article Found on PocketMindfulness
In this busy world of ours, the mind is constantly pulled from pillar to post, scattering our thoughts and emotions and leaving us feeling stressed, highly-strung and at times quite anxious.
Most of us don’t have five minutes to sit down and relax, let alone 30 minutes or more for a meditation session. Read more
Article by Ashley Hunt | Found on MindBodyGreen
We know meditation is a great way to improve our quality of life—it makes us happier, more productive, and improves our relationships. But practicing mindfulness is just as important for getting us through the hard times.
A year ago, I was faced with the greatest challenge of my life when I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at 26 years old. What started with a little pain in my feet within a couple of months had become chronic pain in my entire body. I quickly went from being a personal trainer, aerialist, and movement junkie to not being able to dress myself, cut my own food, or even tie my shoelaces. Read more