As the winter season enters, you may have made New Year’s resolutions that you’re hopeful about keeping. Often those are about health and well-being. One of the best health related things you can do for yourself, without requiring any expensive exercise equipment or gym subscriptions, is the practice of Mindfulness Meditation. It is fairly simple and you can do it anywhere, anytime, because it is more about a frame of mind than a state of your body. Honest, no dumbbells or treadmills required.
Mindfulness Meditation is taken from a 2,500-year-old Buddhist practice of Vipassana or Insight Meditation. It is a form of meditation designed to develop the skill of paying attention to the present moment. It is about learning to live only in the present moment, rather than in the past or future. With this type of meditation, you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re feeling and sensing in the moment without any judgement or interpretation. The practice involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other methods to relax the body and mind and to reduce stress.
Most of us tend to live in the past or the future. Our minds wander from thought to thought, emotion to emotion, uncontrolled. Part of the reason for this is that we live in a highly distractible age because of all the technology around us. Cell phones beeping, text messages being received, emails waiting to be read. Then we have our friends and loved ones vying for our attention, our busy lives, and our demanding careers. We have little time to just calm our minds and stop to be aware of what’s around us. We are anxious, worried, stressed, and depressed. We plan, problem solve, daydream, and think negative or random thoughts. The past may have strong, pleasurable emotions and memories associated with it, so we think about that. The future may bring worries about its outcome, but also hopes for good things to happen, so we think about that. And all this is alright as long as we don’t get caught up in it. Sometimes we distract ourselves out of loneliness, unhappiness with our lives or ourselves, out of suffering from pain, or just out of habit.
But the past is already gone, done, and over with, and the future is not yet here, so it’s not constructive to live in either of those. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Life is available only in the present moment.” Our lives and all reality take place only in the present. Through Mindfulness Meditation, we experience our connection and interconnectedness with the rest of the world.
Here are some Mindfulness practices and exercises you may find helpful: to start with, find a quiet, comfortable place. Sit in a chair or on the floor. Straighten your head, neck, and back. Clear your mind of all thoughts of the past and future; focus on the present. Become aware of your breath. Pay attention to the feelings of air moving in through your nostrils and out through your mouth. Feel your stomach rise and fall. Watch every distracting thought of worry and fear come and go. Don’t ignore or suppress them. Just make a note of them and let them go, always returning your focus to your breathing. This exercise helps discipline your mind to be in the moment.
One of the most helpful aspects of this type of meditation is that you can practice it on everyday activities and tasks. Try to focus on being in the moment in simple, everyday activities like washing dishes, driving, taking a shower, brushing your teeth, exercising, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, folding clothes, or getting ready for bedtime. Turn these into meditation sessions where you’re aware of the sensual aspects of each activity. These sessions don’t have to be long; even three minutes of this type of awareness is beneficial. For example, when you're washing dishes, feel the warm soapy water on your hands; listen to the clatter of the dishes in the pan. When you're mowing the lawn, listen to the whirr of the lawnmower motor grinding away; see and feel the grass blades beneath you being cut down; notice the texture of your lawn.
Meditation of all types has been medically proven to have significant health benefits. It helps combat the negative effects of stress, anxiety, pain, insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, strong emotional reactivity, a suppressed immune system, diabetes, sleep disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, and much more. It does many other good things for you as well.
One other benefit worth mentioning is that it may also help you cope with grief over the death of a loved one. I can confirm this from my own experience. After my parents died, I was living more in the past than in the present moment. When the grief is fresh, raw, and new, that may be unavoidable. But as time passes, the present creeps in whether welcome or not. For example, if you stroll on a beach and focus on hearing the seagulls' plaintive cries and smelling the fresh, tangy, salty, sea air; if you take a nature walk and pause to slide your hands up and down the bark of a tree, feeling every bump and knothole; if you stop to watch the fiery sun set at dusk from a window in your home; or if you feel your tongue burning from the tantalizing ginger and garlic spices in a hot Indian curry dish your friend has brought for dinner – if you’re truly living in those moments as they happen – it is hard to also have your mind running back to the past and to your grief at the same time.
Mindfulness practice will help you learn to focus on the emotions, thoughts, and sensations that you’re experiencing in the present moment. This can help free you to enjoy the life you’re living for all it has to offer, and to fully experience the sensations in the world around you. It doesn’t mean that you miss your lost loved ones any less; rather, it just means you also love life, and want to be present in it. I think we'd all like to believe our loved ones who are gone would want this for us – to live our lives fully and be present in the moment to experience it.
I found some good reference sources while researching this blog and hope you will find them helpful:
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