Sobre meditation music
Sobre meditation music
Blog Article
Some seem to believe mindfulness practice will invariably induce a sense of peace and calm. While this can be the experience for many, it is not the experience for all. At times, sitting quietly with oneself can be a difficult—even painful—experience.
Studies suggest that long-time meditators may have greater telomere lengths. In one experimental study, researchers found that breast cancer survivors who went through MBSR preserved the length of their telomeres better than those who were on a waitlist. However, this study also found that general supportive therapies impacted telomere length; so, there may not be something special about MBSR that impacts cell aging.
In many organizations, there are bigger, systemic changes that need to be made, but I don’t think that instituting a mindfulness program will prevent those changes from happening. At the least, a mindfulness program provides workers with some relief from stress and anxiety while they campaign for systemic changes; at best, it helps to catalyze those bigger systemic changes.
A Q&A with Jack Kornfield about giving feedback at work, using social media wisely, and the poetry in his teachings.
JM: They’re practically synonymous but they’re not exactly the same. Mindfulness meditation is one form of meditation, but it’s not the only form. And formal meditation is one way to practice mindfulness, but it’s not the only way. Once you learn mindfulness skills, you can practice them at almost any moment of the day—sitting at your computer, stuck in traffic, even eating.
Meditation does seem to improve mental health—but it’s not necessarily more effective than other steps you can take. Early research suggested that mindfulness meditation had a dramatic impact on our mental health. But as the number of studies has grown, so has scientific skepticism about these initial claims. For example, a 2014 meta-analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine
Soften your gaze and lower your eyes, not focused on anything in particular. You may also close your eyes, if that’s more comfortable.
Like many other aspects of meditation, whether to practice before or after exercise is mostly a personal preference. It may also feel different for you from day to day.
Getting through difficulties with significant others through mindful communication helped them feel closer, and having the energy and emotional stamina to spend more time with family members helped them grow together. Many participants said that as time went on, the benefits of MBCT permeated their whole life. “Through relating mindfully to their own experiences and to others, they were feeling more confident and were engaging with an increased range of social activity and involvement,” write the authors.
Meditation does have an impact on physical health—but it’s modest. Many claims have been made about mindfulness and physical health, but sometimes these claims are hard to substantiate or may be mixed up with other effects. That said, there is some good evidence that meditation affects physiological indices of health. We’ve already mentioned that long-term meditation seems to buffer people from the inflammatory response to stress. In addition, meditators seem to have increased activity of telomerase, an enzyme implicated in longer cell life and, therefore, longevity. But there’s a catch. “The differences found [between meditators and non-meditators] could be due to factors like education or exercise, each of which has its own buffering effect on brains,” write Goleman and Davidson in
To start, aim for three meditation sessions per week, and increase that number over time. As you begin to notice its effects in your life, you’ll look for any opportunity to meditate!
Loving-kindness meditation, which the GGSC’s Christine Carter explains in this post, involves extending feelings of compassion toward people, starting with yourself then branching out mindfulness to someone close to you, then to an acquaintance, then to someone giving you a hard time, then finally to all beings everywhere.
JM: There are many different approaches, from apps that provide audio of guided meditations to on-sitio workplace training programs run by outside facilitators. A growing number of companies are offering mindfulness workshops. The earliest model, developed by Kabat-Zinn, is an eight-week course run by a trained facilitator, with mindfulness exercises that participants practice on their own.
It’s not surprising that meditation would affect attention, since many practices focus on this very skill. And, in fact, researchers have found that meditation helps to counter habituation—the tendency to stop paying attention to new information in our environment. Other studies have found that mindfulness meditation can reduce mind-wandering and improve our ability to solve problems. There’s more good news: Studies have shown that improved attention seems to last up to five years after mindfulness training, again suggesting trait-like changes are possible.