Mindfulness Meditation: Benefits, Principles and How-To
Mindfulness meditation helps us shift the way our minds relate to the world, and it can exert a powerful influence on our health, well-being and happiness.
By Mark Williams and Danny Penman
December 27, 2011
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Deep wellsprings of peace and contentment live inside all of us — they’re just waiting to be liberated from the cage that our frantic and relentless way of life has created for them. “Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World” presents simple yet powerful exercises and meditations to help you break out of the cycle of anxiety, stress and exhaustion and instead face each day with renewed vigor and courage — off of autopilot, free from bad habits and energized by self-compassion. The best part? You can achieve this new mental vantage point in just minutes a day.
COVER: RODALE
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The following is an excerpt from Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (Rodale, 2011). Toss out any notions you may have about meditation: It’s neither complicated nor time-consuming, and you needn’t sit cross-legged on the floor to reap its benefits. In this practical, down-to-earth guide, Mark Williams, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford, and award-winning journalist Danny Penman instruct readers on the art of mindfulness meditation, which focuses on being aware of your actions, thoughts and feelings in the present moment (without judging yourself) as a means of achieving inner peace and improving your health. This excerpt is from Chapter 1, “Chasing Your Tail,” and Chapter 3, “Waking Up to the Life You Have.”
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Numerous psychological studies have shown that regular meditators are happier and more contented than average. These are not just important results in themselves, but they have huge medical significance, as such positive emotions are linked to a longer and healthier life.
- Anxiety, depression and irritability all decrease with regular sessions of meditation. Memory also improves, reaction times become faster, and mental and physical stamina increase.
- Regular meditators enjoy better and more fulfilling relationships.
- Studies worldwide have found that meditation reduces the key indicators of chronic stress, including hypertension.
- Meditation has also been found to be effective in reducing the impact of serious conditions, such as chronic pain and cancer, and can even help relieve drug and alcohol dependence.
- Studies have now shown that meditation bolsters the immune system and thus helps to fight off colds, flu and other diseases.
Doing vs. Being
“Doing” mode needs to think. It analyzes, recalls, plans and compares. That’s its role, and many of us find we’re very good at it. We spend a great deal of time “inside our heads,” without noticing what’s going on around us. The headlong rush of the world can absorb us so much that it erodes our sense of presence in the body, forcing us to live inside our thoughts rather than experiencing the world directly. And those thoughts can easily be shunted off in a toxic direction. It does not always happen — it’s not inevitable — but it’s an ever-present danger.
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