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David Dunn

Nature Meditations -- How to meditate in nature | Meditation Oasis - 0 views

www.meditationoasis.com/...nature-meditations

shared by David Dunn on 02 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Our being resonates with the sight of a flower, sound of birds, feeling of the breeze.
  • In the nature meditations, we focus our awareness on the experience of nature — sight, sound, touch, smell (and perhaps even taste).
joshua gallo

How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...ractice-mindfulness-meditation

shared by joshua gallo on 02 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Cultivating mindfulness is the key to overcoming suffering and recognizing natural wisdom: both our own and others'.
  • Mindfulness meditation is unique in that it is not directed toward getting us to be different from how we already are. Instead, it helps us become aware of what is already true moment by moment.
  • Instead of struggling to get away from experiences we find difficult, we practice being able to be with them.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Perhaps surprisingly, many times we have a hard time staying simply present with happiness. We turn it into something more familiar, like worrying that it won't last or trying to keep it from fading away.
  • When we are mindful, we show up for our lives; we don't miss them in being distracted or in wishing for things to be different.
  • So, how do we actually practice mindfulness meditation? Once again, there are many different basic techniques. If you are interested in pursuing mindfulness within a particular tradition, one of the Buddhist ones or another, you might at some point wish to connect with a meditation instructor or take a class at a meditation center. Still, I can provide one form of basic instructions here so that you can begin.
Richard Ofosuhene

How Mindfulness Can Treat Anxiety - Carolyn Tucker MA, NCC, DCC, LAPC's Blog - Decatur-... - 1 views

decatur.patch.com/...ess-can-treat-anxiety-a1a88f02

richard

shared by Richard Ofosuhene on 01 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • From the poor economic climate, to traffic, to tragedy in the news, our culture contributes as well.
  • Mindfulness causes you to be fully presen
  • Mindfulness is defined as a state of active, open attention on the present
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • . When you're mindful, you exist solely in the moment, noticing what is going on right then to the fullest. The practice of acceptance goes along with mindfulness
  • In acceptance you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad
  • Instead of saying "I am anxious," notice the physical sensation and acknowledge that it is there
  • help clients daily learn skills to help them better cope with the effects of anxiety on their mind and bodies.
  • Mindfulness is most frequently associated with a practice of meditation. Even five minutes of meditation daily has been proven to show benefit.
  • Some of my clients report washing the dishes as being meditative for them, or gardening, or listening to music.
  • Any activity where you can be fully in the moment contributes to your ability to quiet that voice in the mind that causes anxiety.
  • By being mindful you are not denying your feelings, nor ignoring them. You are integrating them into your "whole self" and allowing your mind to get out of the way so that your body can naturally heal itself.
  • Even as our minds get busy, the physical sensations of anxiety such as muscle tension, tightness in the chest or stomach, fluttering heartbeat are still present. Every few moments our minds do a "check in" to be sure that all systems are functioning properly. When the mind locates the symptoms of anxiety it sends off a "code red" and all of the symptoms feel exacerbated.
  • ven as our minds get busy, the physical sensations of anxiety such as muscle tension, tightness in the chest or stomach, fluttering heartbeat are still present. Every few moments our minds do a "check in" to be sure that all systems are functioning properly
  • When we resist emotions or physical sensations they rear their ugly heads and demand to be noticed. The sheer energy of them increases due to our increase in attempt to squash them down. Our bodies were made to allow all energy, negative and positive to move through them and to be expressed in some way, whether spoken through communication, burned off through exercise or relaxed away. Acceptance allows our bodies to naturally self correct and allow that energy to pass through us without resistance.
  • Mindfulness is proven to increase our quality of life by improving our physical health (reducing blood pressure and increasing quality of sleep to name a few benefits) and our mental health (decreased rumination, increased ability to handle daily stress) and out relationships (One study showed that people who practice mindfulness deal with relationship stress more constructively.
  • indfulness is most frequently associated with a practice of meditation. Even five minutes of meditation daily has been proven to show benefit. You can practice mindfulness in many other ways too. Some of my clients report washing the dishes as being meditative for them, or gardening, or listening to music. Any activity where you can be fully in the moment contributes to your ability to quiet that voice in the mind that causes anxiety.
  • By being mindful you are not denying your feelings, nor ignoring them. You are integrating them into your "whole self" and allowing your mind to get out of the way so that your body can naturally heal itself
  • Richard Ofosuhene on 04 Oct 13
     
    It shows how to do mindfulness and the benefit of it
Emily Vargas

17 Ways Mindfulness Meditation Can Cause You Emotional Harm - 4 views

mindfulconstruct.com/...n-can-cause-you-emotional-harm

mindfulness meditation

shared by Emily Vargas on 01 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • “nonjudgmental” process, but what happens most of the time — judgment of negative emotions
  • When you really don’t judge a negative emotion, you let it run its natural course — without trying to step in and control the situation through cultivated mental discipline.
  • Many use it to avoid having to feel emotional pain. But of course they won’t tell you that.
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  • Who’s to say if you should experience “unwanted” thoughts and emotions” as you start to become aware of them? That’s your call. (We do emotion regulation all the time.) But it’s not the issue; it’s the deception.
  • Getting in touch with your true nature, de-stressing, and being happy are all possible without suppressing negative emotions.
  • Of course you’ll temporarily feel better if you don’t have to face your unwanted thoughts and emotions
  • But you’ll have to meditate again to get that high
  • You start to judge uncomfortable thoughts and feelings as inferior, unreal, or bad.
  • ou get good at stuffing anger and other negative emotions
  • If and when a traumatic or emotionally painful experience occurs, you don’t fully process it, and cut your grieving process dangerously short.
  • You expect meditation to fix your problems for you, resolve your relationship conflicts, and make you happy
  • xpecting that meditation will get rid of the negative emotions
  • You detach from your partner or loved one when they’re upset or experiencing an emotion you see as undesirable
  • Because you’ve trained yourself to avoid them
  • You struggle to empathize with others, or understand their pain. If you don’t feel your own pain — you can’t expect to have compassion for another’s pain.
  • You lose your ability to naturally feel upset, sad, or concerned when there’s an issue in your life that you need to address
  • Your ability to feel positive emotions is also affecte
  • d. Because you don’t allow experience of the negative.
  • You start to feel dissatisfied with your life, and alone
Savanna Canale

Meditation at Work - Project Meditation - 0 views

www.project-meditation.org/...meditation_at_work.html

shared by Savanna Canale on 03 Oct 13 - No Cached
    • Savanna Canale
      Savanna Canale on 03 Oct 13
       
      Meditation companies are being hired to come into the businesses workplace to teach the employees how to meditate and be mindful. This has been proven to increase productivity. This lowers stress levels as well.
  • effort to lower stress levels and boost productivity
  • has been shown that less mistakes are made after meditation sessions. 
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • less likelihood of injury and accidents.
  • number of sick days taken by staff also fell dramatically
  • benefits
  • lowering of blood pressure
  • strengthening of the immune system
  • There are many triggers to stress in the work place including meeting deadlines, dealing with customers and also colleagues,
  • cutbacks, job sharing
  • they are less anxious about promotions and other managerial issues and feel they can relate better to colleagues and feel more confident in themselves
  • greater capacity to deal with stress.
  • teaching the group how to focus on a single thought or icon and tune out to thoughts and problems,
  • There is no doubt that the more technology advances the more people will come under increasing levels of stress
Emily Vargas

Mindfulness - 0 views

www.mentalhealth.org.uk/...mindfulness

mindfulness

shared by Emily Vargas on 04 Oct 13 - No Cached
    • Emily Vargas
      Emily Vargas on 04 Oct 13
       
      G. The way mindfulness directly relates to mental illness. R. Mindfulness, Meditation, Yoga, Mental Illness, Anxiety, Depression A. To watch videos about mindfulness. This is spoused to relate directly to therapist and how mindfulness helps in treating mental issues. B. To definitely use mindfulness as a technique in helping with mental illness
  • MBCT is recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) for the prevention of relapse in recurrent depression
  • Mindfulness training helps us become more aware of our thoughts and feelings so that instead of being overwhelmed by them, we're better able to manage them.
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  • the way we think and the way we handle how we feel plays a big part in mental health
  • People undertaking mindfulness training have shown
  • Mindfulness is a potentially life-changing way to alter our feelings in positive ways, and an ever-expanding body of evidence shows that it really works.
  • are ways of paying attention to the present moment, using techniques like meditation, breathing and yoga.
  • Mindfulness meditation has been shown to affect how the brain works and even its structure.
  • ncreased activity in the area of the brain associated with positive emotion – the pre-frontal cortex – which is generally less active in people who are depressed.
  • More than 100 studies have shown changes in brain wave activity during meditation and researchers have found that areas of the brain linked to emotional regulation are larger in people who have meditated regularly for five years.
  • recurrent depressionanxiety disorders addictive behaviour stress chronic pain chronic fatigue syndromeinsomniaplus more mental and physical problems.
  • Mindfulness in the workplace can improve productivity and decrease sickness absence, and increasingly employers are looking to benefit from its effect on workplace wellbeing.
  • Almost three-quarters of GPs think mindfulness meditation would be helpful for people with mental health problems, and a third already refer patients to MBCT on a regular basis.
Alyssa Lau

West Meets East - 0 views

www.psychotherapynetworker.org/...1363-west-meets-east

shared by Alyssa Lau on 07 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The new centers often were staffed by Western teachers,
  • many of whom had first encountered meditation in the Peace Corps and later trained in monastic settings in the East
  • Creating a new wisdom tradition
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  • None of us wanted ou
  • supervisors or clinical teammates to think of us as having unresolved infantile longings to return to a state of oceanic oneness
  • how radically meditation practices could transform the mind. Therapists of the day typically viewed meditation as either a fading hippie pursuit or a useful means of relaxation, but of little additional valu
  • mindfulness meditation was making inroads into the medical community.
  • Jon Kabat-Zinn, who, beginning in 1979, had adapted ancient Buddhist and yogic practices to create Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester.
  • MBSR was used primarily to augment the treatment of stress-related medical disorders, and was of particular interest to clinicians working in behavioral medicine.
  • The first use of mindfulness in psychotherapy to capture widespread attention among clinicians was Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), introduced in the early 1990s to treat suicidal individuals with complex disorders for which little else seemed to work.
  • he central dialectic in DBT is the tension between acceptance and change.
  • In searching for a means of helping therapists and their clients to experience what she called “radical acceptance”—fully embracing helplessness, terror, losses, and other painful facts of life
  • Because she empirically demonstrated that DBT could help challenging and volatile patients, the method rapidly became popular
  • he next big development came from Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale, cognitive psychologists in the tradition of Aaron Beck, who were working on treatments for depression in the 1990s
  • They came across mindfulness practice through Jon Kabat-Zinn and MBSR
  • Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which combined elements of an 8-week MBSR course with cognitive therapy interventions designed to help patients gain perspective on their thinking and not identify with their depressive thou
  • ghts.
  • This standardized, 8-week course couched meditation practices in Western, scientific terms
  • “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, and nonjudgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment
  • Steven Hayes and his colleagues had
  • radical philosophical orientation that they called “relational frame theory.”
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which they describe as a psy
  • chological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behavior change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility
  • ACT doesn’t teach many formal meditation practices, but uses imagery, metaphor, and brief exercises to cultivate awareness of the present, loosen identification with thought, and increase openness to the experience of moment-to-moment change
  • ACT encourages clients to identify and pursue activities that give life meaning.
joshua gallo

Shambhala Sun - How to do Mindfulness Meditation - 0 views

www.shambhalasun.com/?option=content&task=view&id=2125

shared by joshua gallo on 02 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • In mindfulness, or shamatha, meditation, we are trying to achieve a mind that is stable and calm. What we begin to discover is that this calmness or harmony is a natural aspect of the mind.
  • There are certain conditions that are helpful for the practice of mindfulness. When we create the right environment it’s easier to practice.
  • Often we just plop ourselves down to meditate and just let the mind take us wherever it may. We have to create a personal sense of discipline. When we sit down, we can remind ourselves: “I’m here to work on my mind. I’m here to train my mind.” It’s okay to say that to yourself when you sit down, literally. We need that kind of inspiration as we begin to practice.
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  • The Buddhist approach is that the mind and body are connected.
  • we become more and more familiar with our mind, and in particular we learn to recognize the movement of the mind, which we experience as thoughts. We do this by using an object of meditation to provide a contrast or counterpoint to what’s happening in our mind. As soon as we go off and start thinking about something, awareness of the object of meditation will bring us back.
Emily Vargas

NHS recognition of mindfulness meditation is good for depression | Mia Hansson | Societ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ness-meditation-depression-nhs

mindfulness meditation depression

shared by Emily Vargas on 03 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Previous studies have found that mindfulness meditation can cut the recurrence of depression by 50%, and neuroimaging scans have shown significant positive change in brain activity of long-term meditators
  • says that when we are depressed, attention is "consumed by negative preoccupations, thoughts and worries".
  • Letting go of thought felt as impossible as tearing off a limb; particularly when the leg and back pains started from sitting cross-legged.
David Dunn

A Meditation With Nature: A Special Way To Bring in the New Year - 0 views

www.mkprojects.com/fa_meditation.html

shared by David Dunn on 02 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • This meditation needs to be performed outside where you are physically present with Mother Earth and the Universe that surrounds her.  Find a quiet place outside, where you are away from other people, traffic noises, and alone with the beautiful sounds of nature.
  • Grounding is simply a word that describes the strengthening of your connection with earth.  It is an exercise that should be performed each morning as well as before meditation.  The process of grounding helps you to remain anchored in this dimension as you move through other dimensions in this meditation.
  • To ground yourself, close your eyes, breathe gently and deeply.  Imagine that there is a strong energy that flows up and down your spine, and then down through both legs.  Stay with this energy as it moves up and down your spine and legs – it’s a powerful energy.
Emily Vargas

Does Mindfulness Stress You Out? | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...oes-mindfulness-stress-you-out

mindfulness stress

shared by Emily Vargas on 01 Oct 13 - No Cached
    • Emily Vargas
      Emily Vargas on 01 Oct 13
       
      This is a small contradiction to my other articles Mindfulness causes anxiety?
  • It can be practiced virtually anywhere, anytime, requires no tools, no money, and no formal training
  • Yet I hear over and over from clients that the whole concept of mindfulness provokes anxiety
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  • the experience varies by culture and personal experience
  • especially relating to its application in pain and stress reduction.
  • acceptance, non-striving, and non-judging awareness.
  • we shouldn't be stressed out if we're practicing mindfulness or meditation
  • Wait, what? If that's true then why is the market flooded with meditation classes, audio guides, books, fancy retreats, phone apps, expensive pillows, bracelets, bobbles, and gizmos
  • Mindfulness is not a modern spiritual movemen
  • It's simply you at your most natural state of being.
  • That was mindfulness. It required nothing of you other than to be there
  • internalized someone else's idea of what it means to be mindful.
  • Maybe you tried it a few times and determined that your experience didn't match up with their description of what it should feel like. So you got frustrated and you quit. "It's too hard." "I'm terrible at it."
Robert Coady

Practicing Meditation in College | Diigo - 0 views

www.diigo.com/...Fpracticing-meditation-college

shared by Robert Coady on 30 Sep 13 - No Cached
    • Robert Coady
      Robert Coady on 30 Sep 13
       
      Not only is this article extremely relevant for college students, but it offers an insightful and unique approach to meditation in the modern world
David Dunn

Goat Path: How to meditate in the woods - 0 views

swchenkinphd.blogspot.com/...how-to-meditate-in-woods.html

shared by David Dunn on 02 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Just sitting still, using the yogic breath (slowly in, hold, slowly out, hold) is usually enough to allow the vibrations from the amazing forest and earth beneath me to bring me into a state of bliss.
  • I meditate outside everyday, regardless of the weather.
Savanna Canale

Celebrities Who Meditate | TracyQuantum - 0 views

www.tracyquantum.com/...celebrities-who-meditate

positive mindfulness mindful

shared by Savanna Canale on 02 Oct 13 - No Cached
    • Savanna Canale
      Savanna Canale on 02 Oct 13
       
      This article is interesting because it shows how celebrities in the spot light used mindfulness and meditation to either help them get over a hard time in their lives or helped them understand themselves. This allowed them to have a few minutes a day to just be alone in silence and relax since their lives are so fast pace.
Emily Vargas

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy: University of Oxford Centre for Suicide Research - 0 views

cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/...mbct.html

mindfulness therapy

shared by Emily Vargas on 03 Oct 13 - Cached
  • Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy has been developed with the aim of reducing relapse and recurrence for those who are vulnerable to episodes of depression.
  • the risk of relapse and recurrence in those who have been depressed is very high, and the amount of triggering required for each subsequent episode becomes lower each time depressio
  • n recurs.
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  • Research by Zindel Segal (Toronto), Mark Williams (Wales) and John Teasdale (Cambridge) has been investigating how meditation may help people stay well after recovery from depression.
  • negative mood occurs alongside negative thinking and bodily sensations of sluggishness and fatigue.
  • The discovery that, even when people feel well, the link between negative moods and negative thoughts remains ready to be re-activated, is of enormous importance
  • Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy includes simple breathing meditations and yoga stretches to help participants become more aware of the present moment, including getting in touch with moment-to-moment changes in the mind and the body.
  • and by listening to tapes at home during the week, class participants learn the practice of mindfulness meditation
  • It helps break the link between negative mood and the negative thinking that it would normally have trigger
  • Participants develop the capacity to allow distressing mood, thoughts and sensations to come and go, without having to battle with them
Emily Vargas

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy - 0 views

www.goodtherapy.org/s_based_cognitive_therapy.html

mindfulness therapy

shared by Emily Vargas on 01 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • clients with various medical ailments, including hypertension, chronic pain, and cancer
    • Emily Vargas
      Emily Vargas on 01 Oct 13
       
      This may be good for medical based social workers to help with clients who are experiencing medical issues that are causing anxiety and depression
  • Clients gain an ability to realign themselves away from their thoughts and feelings and focus instead on the occurring changes in their body and mind through yoga, breathing, and meditation.
  • This insight affords the client the opportunity to heal themselves by interjecting positive thoughts and responses to the moods in order to disarm them.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Participants are armed with knowledge regarding depression as an illness, and are given additional tools to combat their depressive symptoms as they arise
  • order to facilitate a complete and rapid progression to healing.
  • Clients who use this technique will often be able to revert to these methods in times of distress or when they are faced with situations that cause them to lose their sense of separation from their thoughts.
    • Emily Vargas
      Emily Vargas on 01 Oct 13
       
      You can work with clients in understanding how to use these techniques when they are feeling to anxious.
  • Training programs encompass a variety of activities, including role playing, lectures, yoga, meditation, group classes and sustained periods of silence.
  • . In addition, this method works equally as well to relieve the symptoms of various psychological issues including anxiety and panic.
  • The original platform was designed to address the needs of people who suffered from multiple events of depression
Tara Picudella

Mindfulness and music | Memorising Music - 0 views

memorisingmusic.com/...mindfulness-and-music

mindfulness music

shared by Tara Picudella on 29 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • “a moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness“
  • We are essentially absent in our own lives, failing to notice the experiences as they occur. Put simply, mindfulness is a way of paying attention.
  • Musicians spend unusually large amounts of time alone practising, in a state of what pianist-composer Rolf Hind calls “solitary absorption”.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Neuroimaging studies indicate that MBSR is associated with increased grey matter in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotional regulation, and self-referential processing
  • People have also reported that mindfulness meditation heightens “their listening experience by increasing their ability to focus on the music without distraction”
  • Constant micro-judgements about how to play each note, or how to shape each phrase, are crucial during practice but destabilise our ability to actually make music during a performance.
  • benefit of mindfulness in music,
  • Tara Picudella on 29 Sep 13
     
    benefits of practicing mindfulness before practicing or playing in a concert
Rebecca Lurie

Welcome to Inside Passages the website of Kurt Hoelting. Kurt Hoelting is a writer, gui... - 0 views

insidepassages.com

meditation

shared by Rebecca Lurie on 30 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • I feel myself immersed again in the world that actually gave birth to my body, the world that will receive my body back into itself when I die.
  • The world to which my mind and senses have the possibility of a direct relationship in real time.
  • I will need to give less attention to the menu of daily distractions that keep me from my real work, and to the open-pit mine that masquerades as daily “news”.
  • Alyssa Lau on 30 Sep 13
     
    A blog about a fisherman who practices mindfulness and his travels.
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