The Benefits of Practice<\/h4>\n
Mindfulness is an approach.\u00a0 There are many different techniques and exercises.\u00a0 As with everything else, some of these will suit you and some will not.\u00a0 It is important for you to find which of these works best for you.\u00a0 Remember, that you are learning a new skill and, as with any new learning you may not find it easy at first.\u00a0 However, it will get easier and begin to feel more natural each time you do it.<\/p>\n
Practising Mindfulness is no different to practising anything else.\u00a0 The more you do it, the better you get at it!\u00a0 This is because as with all skills, the neural pathways become increasingly strengthened the more they are activated.\u00a0 We know from neuroscience that repeating an activity over and over again actually changes the shape of the brain.\u00a0 This can be seen in the brain scans of musicians whose brains look different from those who do not play instruments, in the brain scans of taxi drivers who are constantly and repetitively visualising routes, as well as in the brain scans of athletes whose bodies are finely tuned to the demands of their sport and whose brains are similarly trained in the relevant areas.<\/p>\n
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Imagine the creation of a path within an overgrown forest.\u00a0 The first time it is walked, you have to wade through the undergrowth and when you look behind you, your trail is barely visible.\u00a0 However, the more the same ground is walked through, the more flattened the undergrowth gets and the more established the path becomes.\u00a0 It is exactly the same with practising Mindfulness and the more it is practised the more automatic it becomes, developing into your natural way of ‘being’.\u00a0 It is never too late to start practising Mindfulness.\u00a0 Your brain can grow and adapt throughout your whole life!<\/p>\n
Mindfulness and Dealing with Difficult Times<\/h4>\n
Human beings have been dealing with difficult times throughout history.\u00a0 We are generally resilient and able to adapt to new and challenging situations and we all have strategies for coping.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the global pandemic is likely to be having an impact on all of us.\u00a0 The practice of Mindfulness is another tool to help us manage.\u00a0 Mindfulness gives us permission to acknowledge and, indeed, embrace, the difficulties in the present.\u00a0 A Mindfulness approach allows us to notice our responses – our physiological response, our emotional response – and by its very non-judgemental nature, frees us up to observe ourselves, without attaching these responses to the essence of who we are.<\/p>\n
In difficult times, it is important to acknowledge that there is not only one level to the challenge.\u00a0 In 2020, we are faced with COVID-19, a real threat to our health.\u00a0 Coming to terms with its existence and prevalence is a challenge in itself, as is processing the action which has been taken around the world to manage it.\u00a0 At another level, we have the challenge of managing our mind’s response to this situation and the impact it is having on our lives.\u00a0 Our first reaction may well have been to feel that this should not be happening to the world in this day and age, which has almost certainly led many of us into feeling anger, frustration and perhaps even fear.\u00a0 Within a Mindfulness approach, these emotions are to be acknowledged and noticed.\u00a0 There is no wish to dismiss or forget them and yet, Mindfulness can help us reduce their impact by both allowing us to accept these feelings and to let them go, keeping them in their own space, rather than them becoming a part of us.\u00a0 If we can do this, it saves our minds from tensing up around these emotions and thereby, almost inadvertently, hanging on to them.<\/p>\n
This can be likened to a physical experience of pain.\u00a0 When you have an opportunity, perhaps the next time you have a headache, or have been sitting too long and can feel pain in your shoulders, try using a mindful approach and think about how you are feeling.\u00a0 Try to notice the sensation of the pain and then notice what is going on round about it.\u00a0 Very often you will discover considerable tension in the muscles around where you can feel the pain.\u00a0 If you are able to relieve the tension, it is likely that the feeling of pain will subside, at least to some extent.\u00a0 In the same way, our minds can tense up around difficult emotions and learning to ease that tension can result in the strength of the emotion diminishing.<\/p>\n
I cant let go, no matter how hard I try<\/h4>\n
Sometimes it can be very hard to notice, but not react to, the thoughts that come into our heads when we are practising Mindfulness.\u00a0 This perhaps particularly happens when an unpleasant thought or memory which is tied up with strong emotions makes its way into our consciousness.\u00a0 If we engage with them, these thoughts or memories have the potential to trigger a re-experience of the event or create an image of what a future event may be like.\u00a0 For many people, COVID-19 will already hold strong memories which may\u00a0 continue to make their way into their consciousness in the future, perhaps out of the blue.\u00a0 Many people are already worrying about what the future is going to look like and what it might hold.\u00a0 If we wish to, how can we manage these thoughts away?<\/p>\n
Click here to discover one way that might work for you<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Below is a video with an exercise to help you deal with strong emotions.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cj3nS5y8TD4<\/p>\n A study in Wisconsin, USA, correlated electrical activity in particular areas of the brain with reported feelings of happiness.\u00a0 The study showed that positive feelings went along with extra electrical activity in the prefrontal cortex.\u00a0 Negative feelings were associated with extra electrical activity in the right prefrontal cortex.\u00a0 The ration between the two measurements became known as ‘the mood index’.\u00a0 Further work revealed that the reading moved to the left in people who had undertaken Mindfulness training.\u00a0 In other words, it could be considered that Mindfulness encourages the brain to be positive!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Next page<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mindfulness and Anxiety In the current world of COVID-19, many of us are experiencing feelings of anxiety, perhaps for the first time.\u00a0 One way of thinking about anxiety is to imagine that it sits in the gap between what we … Continue reading Did you know?<\/h4>\n