Much has changed since the turn of the century with the rise of the World Wide Web. Humans are now connected like never before, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, the constant barrage of email and instant message notifications has taken a toll on personal resilience. Since the chaos is not likely to subside, mental wellness experts suggest people adopt centuries-old mindfulness practices.
Often, the mind is akin to a battleground with hundreds of stimuli fighting for control of a person’s brain. As soon as the day begins, emails, texts, teachers, co-workers, friends, family, and more demand attention. Errands, deadlines, headlines, and the struggle for personal time all demand focus. Fortunately, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) can change how a person deals with external and internal conflicts through developing self-awareness. Its founder, Jon Kabat-Zinn, explained: “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
Unfortunately, a person’s mind wanders 47% of the time; they are lost in thought, focusing on things not happening now or worried about things that may never happen. These behaviors can increase stress levels and alienate others.
During a lecture by an associate course director at Full Sail University, Dr. Ryan Moyer discussed bad and good stress, mindfulness, and how to benefit from meditation.
Typically, mindfulness is described as the practice of purposefully bringing one’s attention to the present moment or being aware of the present moment. However, Dr. Moyer suggested a different, perhaps more straightforward way to understand “being present without judgment.” He said, “Mindfulness is the ability to be aware of what is happening in your brain at any given moment.”
When people practice being mindful, they become conscious of environmental stimuli, physical sensations, feelings, and thoughts. Using several techniques, they live in the present and leave the past and negative thoughts behind.
One of the most common mindfulness practices is meditation, which offers several benefits. These include coping with anxiety, deepening relationships, and better self-control. According to the Mayo Clinic, mediation helps a person recenter themselves by giving them “a sense of calm, peace, and balance that can benefit both…emotional well-being and overall health.”
Ways to build mindfulness habits include:
- Learning more about how stress affects lives negatively and positively.
- Developing stress management strategies.
- Taking time to pay attention to surroundings and appreciate “little things” like smells and sounds.
- Creating “open awareness” to help stay in the moment and fully participate in everyday activities.
- Learning to redirect a wandering mind: Gently refocusing attention to what is happening now.
- Practicing genuine gratitude.
- Developing “body awareness” by paying attention to subtle bodily sensations, sights and sounds, emotions, and urges such as unwanted behavior or craving chocolate, alcohol, food, etc.
Meditation Explainer
According to Medical-News.Net, people have practiced meditation for thousands of years. The earliest documented record of the art is dated around 1500 BCE. It involved an Indian Hindu tradition, Vendantism. However, historians believe the practice started as early as 3000 BCE.
The word “meditate” was first introduced in the 12th century AD by a Carthusian monk Guigo II. It comes from the Latin “meditatum,” which means “to ponder.”
Finally, Kabat-Zinn introduced it to the United States in 1979 as part of his MBSR program. Since then, using meditative techniques has become more common. A 2007 survey found that a tenth of all Americans have meditated. In addition to helping practitioners manage stress and improve overall well-being, it plays a central role in many religious traditions and rituals.
Individuals who practice mindfulness through meditation do so regularly, preferably once or twice a day. Most practitioners start their day meditating, which enables them to eliminate jumbled thoughts and other stressors and focus on the calmness that stays with them throughout the day. Nighttime meditation readies the brain for sleep: It promotes peacefulness and prevents insomnia by wiping away the day’s stress.
YouTube offers many guided meditation videos. Here is one from the app Calm.
History of Mindfulness In America
Kabat-Zinn first developed MBSR to help with pain management. He told Thrive Global that society accepted mindfulness due to its clinical success and impact on mainstream medicine, neuroscience, and healthcare.
He said: “The whole idea was to transform and heal the world, and I know that sounds arrogant, but that was, in fact, the sense of it. But mindfulness is something at the heart of Buddhist practice — it’s not like I made up mindfulness in 1979.”
Furthermore, Kabat-Zinn says mindfulness is not about breathing. “We are so seduced by thinking and emotion [that] we don’t realize that awareness is at least as powerful a function. It can hold any emotion, no matter how destructive, any thought, no matter how gigantic. That’s where the transformative power lies, that you’re adding introspection and perception to ordinary experience. And then realizing: There is no such thing as an ‘ordinary experience.’ Everything is extraordinary.”
Read the rest of Drake Baer’s interview with “The Father of Mindfulness,” Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Written by Cathy Milne-Ware
Sources:
Pearson Education Limited: Working with Mindfulness by Dr. Michael Sinclair and Dr. Josie Seyder (May 2016)
Full Sail University: Zoom Meeting: Psychology of Play with Ryan Moyer, Ph.D. (August 22, 2023)
TED Talks: How Meditation Changed My Life by Mamata Venkat
Thrive Global: The Father Of Mindfulness on What Mindfulness Has Become by Drake Baer
Harvard Health: Evoking Calm: Practicing mindfulness in daily life helps; By Matthew Solan
Mayo Clinic: Meditation: A simple, fast way to reduce stress
Medical-News.Net: Meditation History by Susan Chow, Ph.D., Reviewed by Benedette Cuffari, M.Sc.
Featured and Top Image by Motoki Tonn Courtesy of Unsplash
First Inset Image by Cathy Milne-Ware Courtesy of Flickr – Creative Commons License
Second Inset Image by Madison Lavern Courtesy of Unsplash
Third Inset Image by Brad Neathery Courtesy of Unsplash
