Mindfulness

Mindfulness is

• Awareness
• Balance
• Equanimity
• Discernment
• Clarity
• Non-attachment
• Paying attention
• Focus
• Direct experence
• A non-judgmental approach
• Being in the present moment
• Observation without judgment
• Full engagement with the moment
• Staying in the here and now
• Curiosity and interest

Mindfulness is an approach to living that combines focus and relaxation. It is a way to calm the mind by paying attention to your moment to moment experiencing in a nonjudgmental way. Through a simple awareness process, Mindfulness Training, the complexities of life can be reduced to their more manageable components. Applying this type of non judgmental awareness to how you are functioning in everyday life has a major impact.

This type of engagement helps to restore a sense of personal balance. This single-minded attention to what happens in us and around us cultivates self and other acceptance. A more compassionate approach to oneself and to others can result from this understanding. A sense of tranquility, even in the face of stress, ensues from a regular practice of these skills. Research shows a drop in contempt, hostility and critical self rumination when mindfulness is practiced.

The breath changes and you change. Nothing stays the same, yet there is constancy. The breath reminds us that we are here and alive: let it be your anchor to the present moment.

—Elana Rosenbaum , Guided Meditation: Awareness of Breathing

Mindfulness provides a context for the processing and understanding of many psychological and physical symptoms.  Research shows improvement in everything from stress to anxiety and depression. With this non judgmental awareness practice, positive emotions and happiness levels increase, as do levels of well being. The ability to regulate emotions has been shown to increase in research projects where individuals mediated for as little as 15 minutes a day.

Many daily aspects of life can benefit from Mindfulness.  Research in  a variety of areas has confirmed the positive influence of it. Cultivating calmness and the handling of stress with greater confidence through the regular practice of Mindfulness can positively impact the experiences of parenting, birthing, personal relationships, teaching, socio-emotional learning in schools, working as a health care professional, navigating the prison experience, and handling the pervasive stress that the military experience.

The Path

If anybody asks you what the Path is about, it’s about generosity.  It’s about morality.  It’s about concentration.  It’s about gaining insight through focused self-observation.  It’s about the cultivation of subjective states of compassion and love based on insight.  And it’s about translating that compassion and love into actions in the real world.

-Shinzen Young

The practice of mindfulness transforms. Thousands of research studies back up the use of mindfulness to reduce stress, anxiety and depression. There are many types of mindfulness and meditation practices.

I assist you in both learning and developing this skill and in the practice of utilizing it in daily life. With clarity, compassion, and creativity, I will guide you in this gentle and effective way of calming the body and mind and rejuvenating the spirit .

Mindfulness can:

• create internal space between stimulus and response so that you can choose rather than rely on habitual behavior patterns
• increase the skill of focusing attention
• reduce the habits of worry and rumination
• increase positive feelings and decrease negative feelings
• reduce the experience of stress in response to external and internal circumstances
• increase the ability to respond to events with less emotional reactivity and respond with more equanimity and clarity
• improve healthy communication in relationships
• lower anxiety
• lessen burnout
• reduce PTSD symptoms
• improve the ability to empathize and to be compassionate
• improves the ability to regain from triggered reactions to events at a faster pace.
• increase equanimity and balance in daily life

This is why we practice meditation—so that we can treat ourselves more compassionately; improve our relationships with friends, family, and community; live lives of greater connection; and, even in the face of challenges, stay in touch with what we really care about so we can act in ways that are consistent with our values.

– Sharon Salzberg

Request an appointment for meditation and mindfulness training HERE

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. “-George Washington Carver, scientist (1864-1943)