Learn Mindfulness Meditation

Here are a few of the different techniques of mindfulness meditation that will shift your perception allowing you to have richer experiences in life. Mindfulness helps you to sharpen your mind, discover the reality and reduces stress & anxiety from living in today’s world.

Whatever we do with concentration and complete awareness can become a Mindful Meditation. One of the Mindful Meditation benefits we receive gives us this elevated awareness of our being, in which we drop our self-image, let go of pride and the restless resistance that is hindering us from creating healing, becoming artistic, moving into stillness and as well as building a sacred bridge to our soul and our humanness.

Meditation enables us to merge with positive energy to touch our very real emotions. You will notice this when you spend more time with yourself sitting and giving complete attention to what you are really feeling, setting aside, at least for a few moments our judgment and other negative thoughts.

In order for you to properly achieve tranquility and calmness, you need to move your self to the outside world, it takes time to understand that we can feel much better in spite of the external triggers in our life.

What really stops us from being calm and possessing inner peace is the excessive reliving of mistakes and pressures that may occur in the past or that we are enduring in the present situation. You can always plan for the future but still live in the present moment.

Achieving this kind of serenity gives us the confidence and a clearer version of our thoughts, therefore, meditation allows us to prevent and put away anything that bounds our potential and possibilities in creating the life we desire.

By practicing techniques of mindfulness meditation, we create a uniquely defined state of psycho-physical conditioning, giving us physical relaxation and an increase in our mental alertness. Our mind decides and responds to certain situations that lead the body to feel stress and anxiety, if our mind is relaxed and calm, we can then think wisely, do things carefully and choose cautiously during those times in our life.

5-Minute Mindfulness Body Scan Meditation Script & Mp3

There are studies that show meditation as leading towards psychological increase compared to those individuals that don’t practice meditation. The study demonstrates the changes in the brain structure that have gained significant improvements since they started meditating on a regular basis. The cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration has thickened. Mindful Meditation has been defined to be a mental discipline focusing only on one kind of sensation of the body or a mental or verbal aspect of our being.

Primary Benefits Gained In A Mindful Meditation Practice

Through Mindful Meditation practice, our mind starts to think less and focus on a single detail creating calmness throughout the body and mind, therefore:

• Making our heart slow its rate of beating.
• Lowering our blood pressure in normal and even some moderately hypertensive individuals.
• Recovering faster from everyday stress.
• Increasing Alpha brain rhythms and function.
• Enhancing synchronization and balancing of the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
• Reduction in cholesterol levels.
• Decreasing the consumption of energy and the need for oxygen. Deepening and slowing our breathing rate.
• Relaxing of almost all of the muscles in the human body.
• Reducing the intensity of chronic pain and inflammation.
• Increases in exercise tolerance and the ability of the body to recover faster.
• Normalizing the ideal body weight to proper levels.
• Increasing the chance and prevention of asthmatic diseases and symptoms.
• Harmonizing and energizing the endocrine system.
• Producing lasting and beneficial changes in the brain’s electrical activity.
• There are many physiological benefits as verified by scientific studies

Mindfulness has been used to refer to an increased psychological state of awareness. The following are the psychological Mindful Meditation Benefits:

• Enhancing self-creativity and self-actualization leading to a much fuller life.
• Heightening the perceptual clarity and sensitivity in everyday life.
• Reducing both acute and chronic anxiety to external stimuli.
• Experiencing a marked increase in happiness and peace of mind.
• Decreasing of emotional reactivity and turmoil; fewer intense negative emotions and dramatic mood swings.
• Increases empathy toward our self and others.
• Develops intuition facilities and an increased perception of reality.
• Increased productivity at work and at home.
• Helps with focus and concentration on work tasks and personal relationships.
• Increases serotonin levels on a measurable scale.
• Increase brain wave coherence and brain function.
• Develops will power to accomplish one’s goals.
• Purifies character in the alignment of Universal power.
• It helps cure insomnia and many other sleep disorders.
• Less aggressiveness when unexpected things go wrong throughout the day.
• Reduce road rage by increasing compassion towards others.
• Develops emotional maturity and a higher contribution to life.
• Increased job satisfaction by being more receptive to job demands.
• React more quickly and more effectively to a stressful event in our lives and others.
• Greater tolerance for all things we may not understand at this time in our lives.
• Higher intelligence growth rate through a fuller use of our mind.
• Increase listening skills by compassionately listening to others.
• It helps make more accurate judgments to influence our decisions now and into future life events.
• Gives composure to act inconsiderate and constructive ways as our understanding of our true nature emerges.

10 Great Benefits Of A Regular Mindfulness Meditation Practice:

1. Awakening to the Present Moment

We all rush things so much that we forsake the beauty of the present moment which is unfolding right before our eyes. We always anticipate the next problem or another great event to happen in our lives. Mindful Meditation incorporates the lesson of living in the present moment and slowing our perception of life down considerably.

This reminds us to appreciate the sweetness of the present moment, although our past is important also, in meditation – the past is just a memory and the future is a fantasy, projected in the movie screen of the mind at that moment.

2. Knowing the Real You and Accepting Yourself

To accept yourself is just one of the lessons that Mindfulness Meditation is teaching, we forget how well we do in life and sometimes self-doubt and self-hatred invades us along the way. This is important in the way that these traits contribute to the overall improvement as well as knowing our true selves sometimes through difficult times. When we meditate, we try to reduce the negative energy brought by our bad decisions, and in the process, we begin to treat ourselves as a close friend.

We try to understand more, love more and most importantly – accept who we are much more with a renewed compassionate understanding. With this new understanding, we will produce more positive energy that will strengthen our optimistic point of view on life and bring about increased positive character traits.

3. To Interact With Others in a Compassionate Way

Upon realizing and accepting yourself and the true essence of your being, its time to open up your heart in terms of your relationships with your family and friends. Sometimes we find it cynical when we do things our own way, we try to bypass others just to accomplish desired goals, by that, it serves as a barricade towards the understanding and compassionate feelings of others.

By meditating, we open up the channels that link us to our close relatives and dearest companions. With this new information about ourselves, we can now accept them as to how they really are, wholeheartedly loving them, creating intimacy in our relationships, a deeper concern for them, and a deeper meaning of unconditional love.

4. Composing the Mind and loosening the Body

Based on scientific studies, our mind and our physical body are indivisible, thus, upon finding peace in our mind through relaxation and meditation, our body reacts much more positively. The way we think and compose our thoughts can produce a greater increase in negating health risks in the coming years.

5. Experiencing Happy thoughts and Joyous Moments

Who wouldn’t want to be happy and experience such a gift of joy in our lives? We tend to find happiness in material things and other objects that often will disappoint us after we receive them. A piece of advice to you – start meditating. Technology can now detect the increase of a certain individual experience towards happiness through meditation.

They say that during meditation, we can abruptly change our emotional state from depression to gladness with ease. Surveys show that the basic level of relative happiness will stay the same throughout our life, but can change dramatically when we are meditating regularly. So start learning how to meditate today and experience a completely different experience of happiness.

6. Getting into Details and the Flow of Positive Emotions

When we meditate, we decrease our focus on a large number of thoughts running constantly in our mind, converting it in a single object and converting those random thoughts into positive energy. This kind of focus provides us with the ultimate enjoyment and the definitive antidote to the fragmentation and alienation we all can experience in our post-modern life.

With Mindful Meditation, we learn to focus and discharge unnecessary things to think about, giving us to the ability to apprehend present situations and offer the best of what we have.

7. Being Balanced In a Fast-Paced Life

To keep pace with the fast growth and constant change in our life, Mindful Meditation offers an inner groundedness and balance. We can achieve such balance by embracing the dark and the light, the weak and the strong that exists in all of us. We can no longer be afraid when life sometimes pulls us back, with the knowledge we have within ourselves and the balance we learned through meditation, we can easily cope with the challenges that life gives us.

8. Increase in Performance at Work and Play

Practicing Mindful Meditation gives us the ability to think fast, accurate thoughts and understand a lot of what is given to us at work. Our creativity is increased as well as our self-actualization and many others that contribute to superior performance. With these new traits, we can perceive well, comprehend well, and perform well in all sorts of events and activities.

9. Increased Appreciation, Love and Gratitude

When we practice meditation on a regular basis, we look at things freshly and organized which leads us to the opening of our emotional state of being. Through meditation, we discharge judgments and aversions, we tend to appreciate others with the sincerity and compassion they deserve.

10. Getting Aligned with our True Calling

When we close our eyes and begin relaxing into the present moment, we can find our source of purpose in life. We can get in touch with our conscious awareness finding the answers to all of our questions. As we begin to enjoy our many and increasing Mindful Meditation Benefits.

We start to navigate our life to our true north course, using our new mindful thoughts we search for things that will begin to aid us in accomplishing the most sacred yearning goals that lead to true happiness and a real, loving contribution to our world and those around us.

Practicing Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation is a form of meditation in which you learn to be mindful, both about the thoughts that occur in your head due to the outside forces that exert themselves upon the mind, as well as mindful of the actions that affect the surrounding environment.

This type of meditation was developed from the Buddhist Vipassana meditation in which the Buddhists would meditate for hours on end, focusing only on the mindful side of their own minds.

This meditation also relieves stress in a secondary fashion, making it perfect for improving your mindfulness towards the outside world, as well as unwinding from the stress that you endure on a daily basis.

Mindfulness meditation is best practiced in a quiet area in which you can relax and focus. To begin practicing mindfulness meditation, begin by sitting with crossed legs on a soft cushion, or sitting on a chair with your back completely straight.

Close your eyes and begin to focus on the movement of your stomach or abdomen while you are breathing in and exhaling. In addition, you may focus on the breath as it is exhaled through your nose, which works better for many people than the other method of concentration.

Do not push thoughts out of your mind, but when thoughts do rise up in your head, simply let them go and return your focus to the movement of your abdomen or the feeling of your exhaled breath through your nose.

When you do realize that your mind is beginning to wander on to other thoughts, do not beat yourself up. Rather, simply accept that the thought has entered your mind, and let it go so that you may continue meditation.

5 Minute Guided Mindfulness Meditation For Stress and Anxiety

Many people begin by practicing this form of meditation for simply 5-10 minutes a day in order to create a starting point.

It may be difficult to keep your mind clear for 10 minutes, but once you are able to focus your mind completely and meditate easily for this length of time, you will be able to begin raising the amount of time that you are able to meditate.

With practice, this form of meditation will become easier and easier but do remember that you will not become a monk in a single day. It may take some time to build up to meditation for longer periods of time, and this is completely okay.

Everyone is different, so go into this with an open mind and keep pushing forward in order to improve both your meditation techniques and yourself.

Techniques Of Mindfulness Meditation For Beginners

Understanding how mindfulness meditation for beginners and others will be a journey into the very spiritual fabric of your life.

Everyone has been or will be on the journey into the stark reality of living in the physical world. You are no doubt aware that in our daily lives we often face complexity, difficulty, pressure and other forms of stress, creating a wide array of anxiety. This has been a part of our routine each day as we wake up in the morning. We are so busy doing things that we forget how to find peace of mind to help us get relaxed and be calm as we indulge in the facets of our daily living.

Looking for peace of mind is very hard because our mind is bombarded with negative thoughts, restless disturbing worries, this becomes difficult to find the calmness we need that gives us freedom from stress that eventually leads to a state of happiness, contentment, and pleasure. I would like to take you to a journey on how to find the tranquility you’ve always wanted using a great and effective power called Mindfulness Meditation.

Mindfulness meditation for beginners is defined as a state of mind in which you focus on a certain object that enables you to practice your attention in a single thing – something like a word or a phrase, a geometrical figure, a candle flame, or simple actions such as an inhale and exhale of your breath.

We all experience a stressed environment; the source could most likely come from work, family issues or social interactions with individuals you meet. This technique of mindfulness meditation allows you to find different methods and practices to assist you in finding your inner peace within yourself.

There are many methods available to aid you in finding such harmony and serenity, but with Mindfulness Meditation, you will journey into the physical world with your cognitive perception. It’s a cognitive condition per se because it has been proven scientifically that the stress you encounter within the torments and agony of life has nothing to do with you but how your mind responds to these phenomenal events.

Have you heard of the Mountain of Meditation?

It’s a metaphor used in depicting the journey to tranquility, the summit serves as the goal towards peace and calmness. Are you ready to climb the mountain? Well, you need to consider the different factors in reaching the top – one of these is the path to the top and how you will manage it.

You will choose your own path up the mountain of meditation, right?

Climbing the mountain has many trails, paths that may gradually lead you to the forest and meadows, paths that may include a steeply uphill over dry, rocky terrain, others may have flowers and a vast garden, and other paths you may see farmlands or a desert landscape.

All these different terrains may help you realize certain things along your path and could hinder you from going up to the top and pursuing your journey’s goal. Embarking on this kind of journey moves you into your limitations as well as your choices, who knows, you may find your tranquility in the low peaks of the mountain and decide not to continue anymore, whatever your destination, you can have fun and reap the benefits of inner peace as you move along the voyage called mindfulness meditation.

The Mountain of Meditation has been climbed by many people over thousands of decades in all parts of the world. With this, great books have been published, each suggesting what to bring and how to hike up the great mountain. Most of the books will entice you with a description of a spiritual path engaging in a set of beliefs that have been passed on for generations and even thousands of years. Others will convey the feelings which are experienced as you go along your journey and even upon reaching the summit.

The following are techniques of mindfulness meditation developed over thousands of years (or metaphorically defined as the mountains path and terrain):

• Repeating 3 meaningful words or phrases.
• Mindful awareness of the present moment.
• Counting your breath as an inhale and exhale for one breath.
• Paying attention to the flow of sensations and thoughts in your body and mind.
• Cultivation of love, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and other healing emotions.
• Concentration on geometric shapes or other visual objects.
• Visualizations of a peaceful place of healing energy or entity.
• Reading and reflecting upon inspirational or sacred writings.
• Gazing at a picture of a holy being or a saint.
• Chanting praises to the Divine or your inherent universal power.

If you are able to reach the summit of the meditation mountain, you can garner beautiful feelings of emotional bliss involving Love, Harmony, Wisdom, and Joy. Others call it the source of Divinity, giving a whole new meaning to Holiness. Some say it’s the ultimate truth, and some individuals define this as a spiritual tradition that is considered to be sacred and powerful enough that they hesitate to even give it a name.

Great entities having reached the summit make use of the words Enlightenment – from ignorance, Awakening – from a dream, Liberation – from bondage, Freedom – from limitation, and Union – with God.

You may say that its a very hard to climb the Mountain of Meditation but still know deep in your heart, you and you alone will try to ascend to the summit, and no matter how and what path you take, the truth is that you can reach the top with the same basic ageless instruction, although you will need to choose your destination and path.

To help you find the strength and courage to reach the summit, these are the following stop over’s or benefits en route to the summit of the Mountain of Meditation:

• Stronger focus and Concentration.
• Reduced tension, anxiety, and stress.
• Clear thinking and less emotional turmoil.
• Lower blood pressure and cholesterol.
• Support in concurring self-defeating behaviors.
• Greater creativity and enhanced performance in work and play.
• Increased self-understanding and self-acceptance.
• More peace, joy, love, and spontaneity.
• Greater intimacy with friends and family members.
• A deeper sense of meaning and purpose in your life.
• Glimpses of a spiritual dimension of being.

Looking at these great destinations, you may think that these Mindfulness Meditation Benefits are worth reaching for. You can also experience powerful contentment with life during your journey after you have learned and practiced this meditation with a reduction in stress, improved health and feel greater well – being in all things. Or, you may feel more inspired and you decide to move forward to higher heights as the great entities have told us about.

Imagine that there’s a spring of water flowing from the summit of the mountain and never runs dry, you may think of this as the water of purity from a Divine source. Those who get to the top of the mountain earn the right to indulge in the purity of the water and immerse themselves completely in the water.

Imagine that this bountiful spring rushes from the mountain downwards from the hills and into the forest below the summit, meaning, you don’t have to reach the summit to experience this kind of purity since you can taste your refreshed and powerful self everywhere and in everything, since pure being is the essence that keeps life going in all forms and at every level.

Until you begin the journey of mindfulness meditation as a beginner, then you may not know what this water tastes like. When you meditate using mindfulness meditation techniques, you may not be able to taste the water just yet, your very being feels closer to the water’s Divine energy, then suddenly you will recognize and start to understand the taste of the purity that already resides within.

Mindfulness Meditation Techniques

In breath-focused mindfulness meditation techniques, you are falling in love with the breath. You are learning unconditional love of self.

Mindfulness is when you are aware of the moment you are in and not the past moments or the future. Mindfulness meditation is used to help relieve stress. Through using mindfulness meditation techniques you will be freed from the thoughts of your past and you will not have to worry about your future. There is peace found in the fact that you are only thinking about what is in the here and the now and that will make you feel a lot better.

Mindfulness meditation techniques are not that hard but they are the most important thing you will need to learn about meditating and getting the peace you want.

One of the exercises you can do to help you to lower your stress is to teach your self to focus your attention on your breathing with real-life cues.

For example, every time the phone rings you will simply stop and focus on your breathing. This will immediately bring your focus on to the current situation of the here and the now, and not anything in the past or the future.

You will have to choose a cue that works for you because not all the time when the phone rings will you remember to stop what you are doing and take a moment to just breathe.

Using real-life cues to help with your mindfulness meditation will be very helpful to snap you back to reality and get you out of the autopilot way of thinking.

Another exercise you can do is to conscious observation.

During this exercise of mindfulness meditation, you will pick up an everyday object and only focus on this one object. Let your mind be one hundred percent taken away by this object and nothing else. This does mean think about what kind of object it is or what it looks like, you simply just look at it for what it is.

During this exercise, you will feel a sense of heightened “nowness”. Observing something to the point you are simply staring at it for what it is will really give you the feeling of being awake.

Mindfulness exercises are designed to help you stay in the present moment instead of being stuck in thinking of everything you have done and everything you have to do. They are there to help you stay less stressed and keep you focused on what you need to get done.

Use these techniques of mindfulness meditation exercises to help you get through the day and keep you from worrying about everything you have to do.

Whatever we do with concentration and complete awareness can become a Mindful Meditation. One of the Mindful Meditation Benefits we receive gives us this elevated awareness of our being, in which we drop our self-image.

What is the practice of Mindful Meditation? Mediation is the practice of mindfulness. The most important part of being mindful, i.e being present in the here and now is breathing.

As a beginner, you may find it alarming as we are indeed breathing to live, but what to do differently in meditation is that you learn how to breathe mindfully.

We can learn to let go of pride and the restless resistance that is hindering us from creating healing, becoming artistic, moving into stillness and as well as building a sacred bridge to our soul and our humanness.

Mindful Meditation enables us to merge with positive energy to touch our very real emotions. You will notice this when you spend more time with yourself sitting and giving complete attention to what you are really feeling, setting aside, at least for a few moments our judgment’s and other negative thoughts.

In order for you to properly achieve tranquility and calmness, you need to move your self to the outside world, it takes time to understand that we can feel much better in spite of the external triggers in our life.

What really stops us from being calm and possessing inner peace is the excessive reliving of mistakes and pressures that may occur in the past or that we are enduring in the present situation. You can always plan for the future but still live the present moment.

Achieving this kind of serenity gives us the confidence and a clearer version of our thoughts, therefore, meditation allows us to prevent and put away anything that bounds our potential and possibilities in creating the life we desire.

By practicing mindful meditation, we create a uniquely defined state of psycho-physical conditioning, giving us physical relaxation and an increase in our mental alertness. Our mind decides and responds to certain situations that lead the body to feel stress and anxiety, if our mind is relaxed and calm, we can then think wisely, do things carefully and choose cautiously during those times in our life.

Mindfulness vs Meditation: Accept and Empower Yourself and Mind

Getting Aligned With Our True Calling

When we close our eyes and begin relaxing into the present moment, we can find our source of purpose in life. We can get in touch with our conscious awareness finding the answers to all of our questions. As we begin to enjoy our many and increasing Mindful Meditation Benefits.

We start to navigate our life to our true north course, using our new mindful thoughts we search for things that will begin to aid us in accomplishing the most sacred yearning goals that lead to true happiness and a real, loving contribution to our world and those around us.

Let me take you through the process of doing that.

What does being mindful mean?

Breathing is essential to living, but as human beings trying to cope with a multitude of tasks that we are tackling every day, it is easy to lose touch with the very act of living and being grateful for it, if you will. During meditation thus it is imperative to pay close attention to the process of respiration. That is the first step of being present here and now.

The idea is to train your mind to focus on the breathing process, as it tends to wander here and there. This is bound to happen especially at the beginning. Once it starts wandering you gently guide it back to focus on the meditation.

How To Breathe Mindfully

Before you begin to meditate, find a quiet corner that you think you can remain undisturbed for a few minutes. Once you feel settled in the spot you have chosen, begin with your meditation. Initially, when you are learning to meditate, you can choose a meditation breathing exercise. Breathe in deeply through your nose for a few seconds, hold in for a couple of seconds. Next, exhale and release the breath you have been holding in through the mouth. Repeat this process a few times till you think you can gradually transition into the process of natural breathing.

To ensure that this can happen, make sure that your nasal passages are clear. Once your natural breathing resumes, simply flow on the ebb and flow of air, right up to your belly. As long as you are breathing naturally, you do not have to worry about what is right or wrong when you are learning how to meditate. Just enjoy the process and celebrate the ability to feel your physical presence.

5-Minute Mindfulness Body Scan Meditation Script & Mp3

Being Here and Now

As you breathe, you are likely to notice how the different parts of your body feel. You will notice how your muscles expand and your body moves gently as you breathe in and out. There may be wandering thoughts at this stage. By focusing on your breathing, you can gently bring these thoughts back on the track that you have set out to be on.

Learning Mindfulness Meditation Step by Step

Here’s what you can expect from learning Mindfulness Meditation to help you find a meditation technique for personal happiness and a true inner peacefulness that perhaps you’ve been searching for all your life.

Scientific research has discovered many benefits of mindfulness meditation, and they continue to make amazing breakthroughs every day. Mindfulness Meditation is one of the most studied meditation techniques of all time. Here’s just a sample of the many benefits you can expect:

• Overcome the daily stress of modern life
• Improve your overall health increase your ability to live longer
• Improve your relationships at home and in the workplace
• Improve your memory retention and more effectively balance both sides of your brain
• Overcome your natural tenacity to any shyness you may have

If you want to attain the desired peace and calmness with mindful meditation, you will need to have a regular meditation process. Meditation is a mental process but it doesn’t happen automatically without some effort on your behalf. There are many aspects you will need to consider in order to accomplish what your expectations are in learning mindfulness meditation.

Walking Meditation Instructions For Mindfulness And Awareness

Step 1 – Choosing The Right Spot For Your Meditation

Choosing where you meditate is one of the most important aspects of meditation. It should be a location where you are able to concentrate and focus your thoughts. You want a place that is peaceful, serene and as quiet as possible.

Keep in mind that meditation is a place where you creating an awareness of being and a mental state where you are not resisting, a place of openness and calm. In your regular meditation practice, you will learn to focus your positive energy and let go of all the restless pressures and problems you may have for just a short period of time. Don’t worry they will be waiting for you when you are done, but you will be armed with new mental tools to take forward with you in peace.

Take a look around your home to find a place that is not too dark or too light. Try to find a lighting source that you can adjust the light intensity up or down to suit your personal preference. You want a location that you will feel safe and warm to let go and will let you relax into a peaceful and calm state of mind without distractions.

3 Easy Steps To Start Your Own Meditation Practice At Home

Step 2 – Deciding The Right Meditation Posture For You

There are many different techniques and postures you can use to meditate. They’re all very good and you can use anyone that feels right to you, the key here is that you find a position that you can use and maintain that posture throughout your meditation time and not be detracted. This is very important so that you can maintain your focus and keep your concentration on your meditation process.

You don’t want to try all the different positions early on in your meditations, if you are a beginner, try to find one posture that you feel will work and stay with that for a while before moving on to the next position. There’s plenty of time to experiment, once you have the basics down and are comfortable with your routine.

These are the most common positions for meditating. Find what works for your personality and then develop a routine using that posture.

(VIDEO) Meditation Posture: Take A Comfortable Seat – for many people who are practicing and learning mindfulness meditation, the seated posture (VIDEO) has been the basic position and most efficient way of calming the mind and relaxing the body. This position enables the flow of positive energy to be most concentrated and easily managed.

(VIDEO) How to Practice Buddhist Walking Meditation – of all the postures, this has the greatest advantage over the others. The walking posture focuses on your intention to walk at a slower pace (VIDEO), allowing you to concentrate on various parts of the body. This also can be incorporated in your day to day experiences at home or at work. When walking your hands are by your side and your thoughts are clear making you focus on the movement and your attention to every detail. This is a great practice if it’s difficult to sit or you have back problems where walking helps.

You can decide if you want to close your eyes or leave them open. The only consideration is that with your eyes closed, you may become sleepy and fall asleep, however, if you are comfortable with your eyes closed then, by all means, close your eyes to get the full effect of your meditation.

With your eyes open there is a greater chance that you will be easily distracted by light moving around the room or other distractions. This can cause you to lose your concentration so that attaining a good level of relaxation while you meditate.

As far your hands are concerned, feel free to place them anywhere they can be relaxed during your meditation. You want to remove as much tension that could disrupt you. You can place your hands on your thighs if that feels natural. The idea is to place your hands in a natural position that you can maintain for the entire meditation period.

Your mouth should be closed but not tightly, so that you can allow yourself to breathe through your nose, with your tongue lightly touching the roof of your mouth.

Step 3 – Getting Relaxed Into The Position You Chose For Meditation

When you have decided what posture to use, you can start meditating by making yourself relaxed in that position. Breathing is the most important aspect of meditating. You should not breathe to deeply or too lightly, just as long you can maintain your breathing in a very genital and relaxed manner that is required for you to reach a calm and peaceful state.

Once you’re in a comfortable position and feeling the relaxation take over your mind and body, you will start to feel the serenity of the environment that you have created in your room for meditation.

During your meditation, you may feel different moods or feelings of happiness. You can also experience pain, sorrow or discomfort in your body. This is ok, you are safe and will work through these experiences in a very short time, what this is telling you is that your focus is very concentrated as you move through the different aspects of meditation. This is a very good experience to have to happen to you.

If you are having trouble meditating with these emotions and feelings, stop your practice and find a meditation teacher in your local area to help you.

Getting relaxed is the key ingredient of this meditation. The challenge is how you maintain that inner peace you are experiencing and what other sensations will arise as you go deeper into your consciousness and mental awareness. This concentration covers the dreams, fantasies, ideas, and other images that may visually occur in your mind. The idea of this meditation is not only to gain tolerance of the body and understanding but mainly to train yourself in being calm and still. You are releasing the stress which is causing you pain and pressure in your life.

The goal of learning mindfulness meditation is also to observe yourself. To be able to understand how the body and the mind interact with each other. Keep practicing these types of meditation techniques until you reach to the point that you can easily release fear, stress and restless energies hindering your potential to live a peaceful and productive life.

Soon you will notice a lightness in your everyday activities, a feeling of peace and control at work and at home. You will find a place of joy and love that will allow you to understand why things happen the way that they do. A new understanding of who you really are.

Can Mindfulness Meditation Help With Stress?

With a million things that you have to handle on the home and work front, it is likely that there are little situations that trigger you. With our fast-paced lives today, stress and anxiety have become our daily companions and more often than not it perhaps feels like you are fighting a losing battle or constantly falling down a bottomless pit.

And this is just the stress of everyday home or work situations. There may be other life-altering events and high-stress situations like the loss of a loved one, losing a job or getting a divorce that can make you feel like you are no longer in control of your own emotions.

Learn to recognize your own emotions

If any of the above situations ring true for you, and you are desperately seeking a solution, you have indeed arrived at the right place! Meditation can indeed help you reduce stress, by giving you the tools to get a better grasp on dealing with situations, a heightened sense of your own emotions that helps you respond better to any stressful situation that you come across.

Meditation helps you to cultivate “mindfulness” that is in fact awareness of your mind, body, and soul. By practicing meditation daily you learn to recognize little by little all that your mind and responds to and the emotions they evoke as a result. When you become aware of these patterns so to speak, you are able to identify the responses that induce stress.

5 Minute Guided Meditation For Stress and Anxiety

The Meditation Mind Gym

With this new-found knowledge, you feel empowered and can then take responsibility for the responses. Mediation can thus be compared to the training process that helps you respond better to experiences (especially the stress-inducing ones), in a manner that it does not jeopardize your health, happiness, and well-being.

Awareness or mindfulness thus essentially gives you a choice to respond in a manner that does not lead to disturbances within. You learn to listen to your body and relax and take your mind into a state of relaxation and clam, where little events can no longer perturb you. Thus if you are feeling like you are in a state of mind where everything around you seems to irk and cause you to stress, we strongly recommend that you give meditation a fair chance.

Mediation may not only help you reduce stress, but it will also help you develop your self-esteem and confidence and help you improve your quality of life.

5 Meditation Techniques For Stress

Since the beginning of time, humans have experienced stress. Below are 5 meditation techniques for stress to help you reduce your stress levels using meditation as a method of stress reduction in your everyday life.

Beginners are often troubled by fears and uncertainty on how to start developing an effective meditation practice. In addition, they are uncertain about the methods and preparations they need to ensure their success in making meditation a daily habit. Let’s take a look at the 5 most essential meditation techniques for stress.

What Has Mindfulness Studies and Brain Research Shown Us?

First, select a place to meditate where you can be at peace and undisturbed

Make sure that you select a comfortable place that is peaceful and relaxing, where you can easily organize your thoughts and not be disturbed if possible. Do not attempt to meditate in public places as a beginner, this will only distract you to the point of giving up on your practice. You should also avoid meditating in places that remind you of stressful events that took place in your past.

Second, practice meditation at least once per day

Have the drive and commitment to continue your meditation contemplation, as you continue meditating each day you will soon begin to experience a feeling of your inner soul being nurtured on a very deep level. This means that you schedule and plan for sufficient time in your personal reflection of your day and the life you want to create. It helps whenever you remind yourself of the benefits of meditation and that maintaining this habit has numerous mental and emotional benefits lasting over your entire lifetime.

Third, among the meditation techniques for stress, practice the perfect breathing pattern for your meditation

During this meditation process, you have to focus your whole attention on your breath. This will help block out unwanted ideas from random thoughts in your mind. This may be difficult for beginners because some ideas tend to suddenly pop in your head out of nowhere and can become quite a distraction. However, constant practice will help you develop the skill of complete focus, and as soon as you master the appropriate breathing intervals, it will be easier for you to focus your mind during meditation.

Fourth, try your best to not sleep while meditating

It would be very difficult for you to appreciate the art of meditating if you fall asleep in the middle of your contemplation. As comfortable and quiet as your meditation space maybe, you have to keep yourself awake in order to fully grasp the peacefulness and healing that arise during your meditation.

Fifth, learn to be patient with yourself

You can’t expect yourself to create a masterful meditation practice right away. It’s very normal to experience challenges at the beginning. Meditation is a very personal experience and you will have to experiment with different methods and techniques to find out what will work for you.

Conclusion

If you will show yourself kindness and patience, you can easily learn and apply these 5 meditation techniques for stress that will move you into a peaceful and enjoyable lifestyle. This new lifestyle will serve you in ways you can’t even imagine right now. Meditation is the best skill you can learn to reduce stress and regain the balance in your life that you so truly desire.

How Practicing Mindfulness Promotes Brain Health and Cognition

When it comes to aging, there are plenty of “secret recipes,” serums, diets, and trends that claim to keep you young and healthy. However, one technique has actually been found to slow the progression of many age-related conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. 

Mindfulness is the practice of being fully aware of the present moment –– from what’s happening around you to what you’re doing, down to the tiniest detail. 

While it may sound unsubstantial to those who haven’t tried it, the correct practice of mindfulness exercises has been found to have incredible benefits when it comes to the health of the brain and mind. 

How Mindfulness Boosts Your Brain

Sure, mindfulness is a great way to calm yourself during times of stress, relax after a long day of work, or just spend a few minutes enjoying life. But there are more concrete benefits researchers believe have lasting impacts on physical and mental health. 

For starters, mindfulness does reduce stress. We’re all stressed from time to time, but chronic stress actually has a big impact on things like mental health, digestion, heart disease, and obesity. In fact, the American Psychological Association reported that in 2014, almost 80% of Americans regularly experienced physical symptoms caused by stress and over 70% of Americans regularly experienced psychological symptoms caused by stress. However, a practice called mindful meditation has been found to ease psychological stress like anxiety, depression, and pain with the same effectiveness as antidepressant medication. 

Mindfulness changes the physical structure of the brain. Here’s where things get science-y. Research has found that practicing mindfulness regularly actually leads to an increase in the volume of grey matter in your brain. This grey matter lives in an area of the brain responsible for learning, memory, emotional regulation, and perspective. Additionally, that grey matter tends to stick around longer in those who meditate than those who don’t, even though the normal aging process causes brain volume to decrease over time. 

How Mindfulness Makes You Healthier

There are other reasons why mindfulness is a great way to keep yourself healthy. 

Practicing mindfulness keeps you sharp. Mindfulness has been linked to a slower progression of memory-related diseases. While conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are life-changing and challenging to cope with, mindfulness could help to stall the progression of symptoms if started early enough. A specific type of meditation called Kirtan Kriya (KK) is believed to affect the brain by increasing neurotransmitters. In turn, this slows the process of memory loss, as a loss of neurotransmitters is directly associated with Alzheimer’s. 

Mindfulness keeps you cool. Agitation and stress are common symptoms of memory loss in older adults. In addition, these symptoms often affect anyone feeling stressed or unhappy. However, mindfulness meditation helps to increase your awareness of emotions and can help teach you to recognize, accept, and dismiss negative emotions with ease. 

Mindful breathing regulates digestion and circulation. Our bodies need oxygen to breathe, but also to fuel our circulatory system. Blood carries oxygen throughout the body, helping our muscles work normally and perform their jobs. Deep breathing, a type of mindfulness exercise, can dramatically increase the intake of oxygen into the bloodstream. As a result, blood carries extra oxygen throughout the body and promotes better function in the digestive system. 

How to Practice Mindfulness 

While mindfulness can be done anywhere, anytime, it’s best to find a quiet spot where you can be alone with your thoughts. Once you’ve found the perfect zen space, you can begin the process of mindfulness. Here are a few exercises to try. 

Diaphragmatic breathing

Would you be surprised to hear that as you’re sitting here, you’re breathing incorrectly? It’s true. Subconscious breathing often becomes inefficient due to the incorrect use of the diaphragm, a large, dome-shaped muscle at the base of the lungs. By intentionally using this muscle during a deep breathing exercise, you can improve lung function, oxygen intake, and decrease heart rate. 

Here’s how to do it: 

1. Lie on your back on a flat, comfortable surface with your knees slightly bent and your head supported by a pillow. 
2. Place one hand on your upper chest and the other hand on your stomach, just below your rib cage. 
3. Slowly begin to inhale through your nose. The goal is to feel your stomach expand with one hand while keeping the hand on your chest as still as possible. 
4. To exhale, tighten your stomach muscles and release the air through pursed lips. The hand on your stomach should fall inwards while the hand on your chest remains still. 

Beginners should practice this for no more than 10 minutes 3–4 times per day. As you grow accustomed to the exercise, you can begin to increase the effort and frequency of diaphragmatic breathing. 

Body Scan 

Mindfulness doesn’t just involve our thoughts. The whole body should be used during a mindfulness exercise to get the most out of the session.

A mindful body scan is an exercise that incorporates the full body. It trains you to heighten your focus on the present moment and be objective about feelings, rather than judging or trying to fix something. 

Here’s how to do a body scan: 

1. Like diaphragmatic breathing, a body scan is best performed while lying on your back. 
2. Close your eyes and keep them closed throughout the exercise. 
3. Bring your attention to your breathing, noticing any patterns and feeling where your back makes contact with the floor as your lungs expand. Take time to focus on the breath and let any other thoughts leave your mind. 
4. As you inhale slowly, bring your attention to the tips of your toes. Begin to notice any sensations you may feel there. Feelings to notice may include buzzing, tingling, pressure from shoes or socks, temperature, or any other stimulus. If you don’t notice a particular sensation, that’s okay too. Avoid judging your thoughts or feelings and focus solely on the tips of your toes. 
5. Choose a spot slightly higher on your body, like your heels, calves or knees, and repeat the process of bringing attention to that area and noticing sensations. Continue this process, slowly moving up the body, until you’ve reached your head. 
6. Throughout the exercise, your mind will undoubtedly wander and lose focus. When this happens, there is no need to judge or scold yourself. Simply notice that your thoughts wandered, acknowledge it, and bring your attention back to the body. 
7. Once you’ve finished the process of focusing on areas of your body, return your focus to the breath. Spend a few moments in this focus, taking time to notice how your breathing may have changed. 
8. When you’re ready, open your eyes. Notice how your body feels. Does it feel more relaxed? Do you feel heavy or tired? Acknowledge these feelings and praise yourself for a successful mindful body scan.
   

While this may sound a bit out there for the more Type-A among us, body scans are a great way to train your brain to process negative emotions in a healthier way and at the same time, be more in tune with the way our body is feeling. 

Want to get inspiration for more great mindfulness exercises and activities? A Place for Mom has compiled a list of 25 mindfulness activities that will leave you feeling very zen. Check it out here!

Looking around, you can see that people live in many different types of lives. But so many of them aren’t really present in the lives that they’re living. Plus, they’re not taking the steps that they could to create the best life possible.

By using mindful motivation, you can create a life that brings you great relationships, enables you to meet your life goals and sets you free from negative emotions.

How To Be Present: What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness means that you’re specifically in the present. When someone is mindful, they’re aware of and paying attention to the moment that they’re in, not mired down in the past or future.

When you practice mindfulness, you focus your mind purposefully. Have you ever driven from one place to another and at the end of your destination, you weren’t aware of the sights you saw or how you arrived there?

VIDEO: 10 Minute Meditation for Motivation
and Building a Positive Mindset

This is a guided meditation with motivating, positive affirmations. This is a great way to start your day. This meditation will help you make stay motivated and confident. Affirmations are most effective when practiced on a daily bases. Headphones recommended for the optimal experience.

If so, you weren’t practicing mindfulness. It’s the same concept with every area of your life. You can go through life on autopilot. This means that you can sit down and have a meal, but because you’re not practicing mindfulness, you won’t even be aware of what you had to eat in terms of a portion or even the pleasure of tasting it.

This is why you can eat something and then wonder later on what it was that you had for dinner. You have to stop and think to remind yourself. The reason that you can go through life and miss things is that the mind has a tendency to blank or go through the motions when you’re doing something you’ve done numerous times before.

Mindfulness is putting a stop to allowing the mind to simply wander unchecked. It means that you direct your mind back to focus on whatever it needs to focus on. When you don’t practice an awareness of your thoughts, you can go through life and miss out on having the best life you could have.

The art of using mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism and the practice has been around for thousands of years. Not only was it practiced to enhance spiritual connectivity, but also to bring calmness, focus, and improve the brain’s ability to think.

Today, many studies have shown that there are multiple reasons why practicing mindfulness can help you create your best life. There are physical health and emotional well-being boosts that can be had when you practice mindfulness.

6 Incredible Health Benefits Of Mindfulness

When you become aware in the present moment, it can soothe your emotions and help strengthen your immune system. The use of mindfulness is tied in with many forms of meditation that are designed to bring self-awareness and rid the body of negative thought patterns.

Mindfulness helps center the user and cause him to choose to live fully active in today rather than focus on the past or get caught up in what might happen in their future.

Practicing Mindfulness To Make Better Life Choices

You might be surprised to learn that some of the choices that you make in life, you’re making without being fully aware of the present. When this happens, the choices that you make aren’t really the ones that can give you the best outcome.

This can impact your entire life. But when you practice mindfulness, you can make better choices and change your life to let it become the one that you’ve dreamed of living.

One of the areas where mindfulness can help you make better choices is in the area of eating. Plenty of people eat countless times a day without ever giving a second thought to what it is that they’re doing.

This is because it’s easy to eat while you’re busy with things unrelated to eating. You don’t have to focus on putting fork to mouth in order to accomplish this task. You learned how to do it at a young age, so you can multitask easily.

It’s easy to eat while you’re reading, while you’re talking on the phone or while you’re watching a movie. What happens then is that you miss being in the present while you’re eating.

Simple Mindfulness Techniques: How Can You Be More Mindful?

It means that you miss out on the taste of the food, the pleasure that you could derive from it – and this can also lead you to make poorer food choices in terms of the types and quantities of food that you’re consuming.

Plus, when you eat without practicing mindfulness, it can be easier for you to not connect the emotions to what you’re eating. That means if you’re an emotional eater, lacking mindfulness can cause you to eat more and not be aware of what it is that you’re eating that could be sabotaging the health or the body that you want.

But if you practice mindfulness, this practice can help you learn not to link your emotions to food.

Another area where mindfulness can help you is in your relationships. When your relationships are good, it can help make you feel better physically, lessen stress and contribute to your happiness. Mindfulness can help you have harmony in your relationships.

This is because you won’t feel as stressed, so whenever there’s an issue, you won’t immediately react to what you perceive is going on. By being mindful, you’ll be focused on being present during the interaction with the people in your life.

What this will do is help you better understand what someone else is saying and feeling. It helps eliminate the defensiveness that can be at the root of many relationship problems.

Mindfulness can help you respond to relationship interaction in an appropriate way. You’ll be able to be in the moment with the other person, not throwing out the past, or burdening the two of you with what might happen in the coming days, weeks, months or years.

You’ll be focused on that one moment, giving them all your attention, rather than having your mind be a thousand miles away. Mindfulness helps you tune in to the people in your life.

Being mindful helps you be more empathetic, which makes you more in tune with how the people in your life are acting by seeing the emotion behind the action and behind the words they speak.

It helps you not be as defensive and not react with ingrained thought patterns that can be so damaging to relationships. You’ll be able to leave your personal baggage at the door and interact with the other person based on truth, not personal perceptions.

When you practice mindfulness techniques, it can also help you make better choices that impact your productivity. By using mindfulness, you can stay aware of the present rather than focusing on what’s coming later. Being aware of where you are right now and working to increase your focus. When you’re unfocused, it’s too easy to let your mind start to think about what else is coming your way that you have to get done.

Can Mindfulness At Work Improve Your Career and Your life?

Mindfulness helps you accomplish tasks by keeping you on track. It can be easy to start working on something, only to start thinking that maybe you forgot to respond to a phone call, or you forgot to write an appointment down on the calendar.

So off you go to deal with these other tasks and before you know it, you’ve lost productivity. When your mind jumps from one thought to another, you can end up not being as effective and causing a rise in your stress level because you haven’t been able to get things done.

Staying in the here and now is what mindfulness can help you with. When you can focus, you’ll make much better productive choices and you can create the best life for yourself.

How To Be Mindful: Natural Therapy for Improved Mental Health

For the brain, mindfulness can be an action that can help keep the mind focused on the good rather than letting it dwell on all of the negatives.

Do you know how an untrained puppy will run around when you take it outside?

It doesn’t want to listen because it’s not focused on you. There are too many exciting things outside – like the wind pushing a leaf across the grass, the neighbor’s dog, a car passing on the street or kids out playing.

In a flash, the puppy takes off after the leaf or the neighbor’s dog or heads toward the street. Because the puppy hasn’t been trained to focus, anything goes, and he could very well end up with some negative consequences.

Just like something detrimental can happen with an untrained puppy, a mind that doesn’t practice mindfulness can also experience negative consequences. When you allow your mind to go off on any thought process, you can bet those thoughts won’t always bring you a positive return.

What Has Mindfulness Studies and Brain Research Shown Us?

Your mind will start to think about situations that caused your anger in life. You’ll start thinking about wanting to get even. You’ll feel sorry for yourself that your life isn’t like someone else’s, who seems to have everything.

Before you know it, you’re on a cycle of negativity because your mind was allowed to go there, to dwell on thoughts that produce negative feelings. Whatever the mind dwells on can either help you have good feelings about your life or it can introduce bad ones.

When your mind isn’t practicing mindfulness, it can wander off into thinking about things that cause you to feel stressed out. It can cause you to feel anxiety. You might experience a rise in anger and become bitter.

Left alone, the mind that’s not focused with mindfulness can lead you to bouts of depression. Practicing mindfulness is something that can help you focus on being present and can alter how the past affects you.

Mindfulness keeps you centered on today, not yesterday and not tomorrow. There are various techniques using mindfulness that can help improve mental health. Among these are mindfulness stress reduction and mindfulness cognitive therapy.

Practicing Mindfulness With Common Meditation Techniques

There are several techniques that you can use to harness mindfulness. The first one is meditation. Most people are familiar with the basics of meditation. To practice mindful meditation, you need a comfortable place to sit down.

Be aware of how you’re breathing and center your focus on the moment that you’re in. Concentrate on your breath, paying attention to your inhaling and exhaling.

5-Minute Mindfulness Body Scan Meditation Script & Mp3

Mindful meditation is different because when thoughts pull you away from the moment, you concentrate on your breathing, stop and refocus. During this time, you should have a non-judgmental attitude toward whatever it is that runs through your mind.

It might be hard to keep your mind focused if you’ve had a habit in the past of allowing your mind to wander when you’re trying to concentrate.

Besides meditation, you can choose to practice the mindfulness technique of deep breathing. Taking breaths isn’t something that a lot of people are aware of. We do it without thinking about it. But when you practice deep breathing involving mindful techniques, this can relieve stress, boost your energy levels and help you achieve calmness.

One technique is achieved by breathing through the nose in short breaths for a few seconds. This practice can help to give you a mindful awareness that returns your focus to the present.

Another technique is to count the deep breaths that you take for a few seconds. You would focus on breathing in through the nose and exhaling slowly through the mouth.

COMPLETE GUIDE: Deep Breathing Exercises To Alleviate Stress

The object technique is used in mindfulness to help raise the level of focus that you have. To do this practice, you pick out an item near you and focus on that item.

Your awareness should only be about that item such as a vase or a chair or whatever other objects you choose. You keep the focus until that item is all that your mind centers on.

When your thoughts start to drift away, you consciously pull them back to the item that you’re looking at.

Walking is another technique used in mindful practices. Make sure that you’re in an area where you can walk unimpeded. Place your focus on what’s around you. Take in the five senses that are present in your surroundings – such as what you can hear or smell or see.

Breathe normally and be aware of how you pick up your foot and put it down as you take a step. Focus your thoughts on how your feet feel as they connect with the walking surface.

Pay attention to how your body is working as you walk. Keep your focus on the movements that you make as you walk, including swinging your arms, the speed you walk, and more.

How To Live In The Present: Snapping Yourself Out Of The Past or Future Focus

What’s already happened is long gone. No one can change the events or emotions that have already passed. It’s human nature to look at the past and feel nostalgic, or even fearful or angry – but the trouble comes in when we focus on the past and let it guide our present actions, rather than living in the present moment.

When that happens, you miss the chance to create your best life and you’re settling either for the pain or the glory of what used to be. A life of potential fullness can easily be lost by looking at life in the past.

In the same way that focusing on the past can limit your ability to have your best life, so can focusing on the future. The future isn’t here yet. You don’t want to waste the quality of the present on what might happen in the future. Usually, what you focus on for the future, when it arrives, is different from what you thought it would be. To have the best life possible, you need to aim for keeping your focus solely on the present.

It’s true that everyone can have times where the past or the future seems to be all they can focus on. But you can change that. You change it by living in the now.

Top 9 Mindfulness Life Lessons From 100-Year-Olds

When you’re working on something, don’t work on several things at once. When you’re eating, don’t do anything else besides eat. When you’re spending time with someone, don’t split your thoughts by trying to pay attention to the other person while at the same time opening mail or answering an email.

Don’t always be thinking about what’s coming next. Be in the present fully aware of your actions. Slow down. Don’t try to zip through life at full speed to get stuff over with.

Stop overcrowding your day by multitasking your way through everything. You’re not really getting more accomplished because you’re not able to give one single thing your complete attention.

Stop packing so much into your life – because too many things will cause you to suffer from a mental frenzy. This happens when you take on so much that you feel as if you don’t have time to think.

Take a break on purpose. It’s rare that people simply be instead of doing. For a set amount of time every day, stop. You might have heard the phrase “take the time to stop and smell the roses” and this is the same principle.

Take the time to stop and be present. Don’t do anything during your time of stopping but drink in your surroundings. Notice the day. The scents on the air. The beauty around you.

When you take the time to practice mindfulness, it allows you to not only create the best life you could ever dream of, but you get to savor it, too.

When you begin practicing this process, you’ll notice how many others are not living in the present, and you’ll be grateful that you’re no longer chained to the old way of living.

The way that you conduct yourself in your personal and professional life begins with how you use your mind. You can teach your mind to accept yourself and gain empowerment – or you can stay stuck in self-defeating behaviors.

You are what you think. When you want to introduce change into your life, you need to first accept and empower yourself before you begin altering anything. Your mind is the greatest tool that you have for living the best possible life that you can live in.

Countless studies have shown that the brain is constantly working. Your brain can be wired to think or cause you to act in a certain way based on how you handle your mind’s ability to tap into your subconscious mind.

What Has Mindfulness Studies and Brain Research Shown Us?

You will find a “Short Guided Meditation Script” to release the need for control at the bottom of this article. This Mindfulness Meditation will teach you to live in the moment without expectations or judgments.

When you practice mindfulness, you can empower yourself and fine tune the subconscious abilities that you have. Using mindful strategies, you’ll be able to focus better, lower your stress and boost your confidence and self-esteem.

Once you learn to accept yourself, you’ll be able to have compassion for yourself, too. This will defeat any negative internal talk that you may have been practicing. Meditation is a strategy that you can use to achieve mindfulness in order to accept and empower yourself.

How Can These Mindfulness Strategies Create A Better Life?

It helps users quiet the mind so that they can be fully in the present and accepting of the emotions and thoughts that they have. Choose a place where you’ll be comfortable so that you’ll be able to feel relaxed.

Some people choose to sit while meditating and others prefer to lie down. You can also practice mindful meditation while you’re walking outside or in your home. Relax and focus on what’s around you and how you’re inhaling and exhaling.

Be aware of the sensations you feel and the emotions that you’re experiencing. Another strategy that’s often used is deep breathing. You can start this the same way that you would with mindful meditation where you find a comfortable place and begin.

But you can also practice deep breathing while you’re active at home or at work. You focus on drawing in deep breaths and slowly releasing them. You can also use mindful replacement techniques.

These are strategies that call for you to be aware of the thoughts that you think about yourself rather than simply letting them pass through your mind. Whenever any negative self-talk pops into your mind, you make a conscious choice to stop and correct the thought.

You correct it by replacing it with affirming words that help you accept yourself as you are. This helps you reprogram your thoughts to enable you to feel empowered rather than listening to words that hinder you and create self-doubt.

Mindfulness In The Workplace – Increase Productivity Through Mindfulness

If you want to increase your productivity, you can do that through mindfulness. Studies have shown that people who practice mindfulness have a greater output than those who don’t.

Plus, using techniques involved in mindfulness can help you maintain a clear focus and lead to the ability to make better choices for productivity.

When you practice mindfulness, it helps to unleash the intuition that can influence your choices for the better.

That means that you’ll focus on thoughts, ideas and take action that allows you to accomplish the goals that you set for yourself. Mindfulness prevents you from having to overthink situations.

This frees you up from the chains of inactivity. You’ll be able to bring your thoughts back to the task at hand. When you’re working on something and it causes you to feel frustrated and to think negatively about the task, mindfulness can center your thoughts and give you calmness.

This then helps you to be able to give whatever you’re doing your full concentration. You’ll also be able to see what needs to be done more clearly. When you practice mindfulness, it keeps you from spacing out and losing focus on what it is you’d like to accomplish.

Plus, this focus lessens anxiety which can derail productivity. It allows you to keep moving forward. Mindfulness enables you to find an inner satisfaction with whatever it is that you’re doing which lets you be fully engaged in the task.

Can Mindfulness At Work Improve Your Career and Your life?

This will make a difference not only in what you get done but in how you get it done because your interactions with others and with yourself will change for the better.

You’ll gain a greater sense of commitment for the follow through. Mindfulness is a technique that can be used to improve your cognitive skills. This unleashes your thought processes to free your creativity.

This enables you to see other ways that you can get something done other than the way that you’ve always done it. Sometimes when you’re working on something at home or at the office and you need to be productive, you can feel pressured to perform and to get it done.

Mindfulness can eliminate the pressure and give you the freedom to calmly think through the steps that you need to take. The reason that this works is that mindfulness allows you to recognize the emotions that you feel, but to focus on what needs to be done in a non-judgmental way.

So you learn to act rather than to react. With mindfulness comes a greater sense of confidence in your abilities and in your skills. Rather than think negatively and have a can’t-do attitude, you’ll learn to foster a can-do attitude toward whatever you’re doing.

Overcoming Low Self-esteem – A Mindful Method to Boost Confidence

Having confidence means that you view yourself favorably. You know that you can do what you need to do, that you have the skills and talents to be able to handle yourself.

You trust that your instincts, thinking, and abilities are sufficient. When you don’t have confidence it means that you struggle to accept who you are. You’ll lack the confidence to do things because you simply don’t trust that you can.

You go through life feeling as if you’re not educated enough, skilled enough, smart enough, talented enough, pretty enough, or handsome enough. You judge yourself, often thinking of what you could have, should have said or done, and you always fall short.

What mindfulness does to help you change this and build your confidence is to replace the feelings that you’re not enough with the trust that you are. Using mindfulness calls for you to not dwell on your past or on any negative experiences where you feel that you failed or fell short.

It helps you to not focus on the future or on what you hope to be and it helps train you to focus on who you are right now and see that who you are is good enough. You learn to accept yourself – and with that, strong confidence in yourself is built.

6 Incredible Health Benefits Of Mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness can also boost your self-esteem. Mindfulness can lead you to a life settled in the present. With living in the present comes a non-judgmental acceptance of who you are.

So many people have an internal voice that’s extremely ugly. This internal voice has been conditioned to speak this way by us. The disturbing results are that when we allow this internal voice to have a negative say, we can trigger stress, anxiety and even depression.

This self-talk has a direct impact on how you feel about yourself. Learn to be aware of this negative self-talk. If you call yourself names, that’s a sign that you’ve been engaging in the negative self-talk that can lower your self-esteem.

Some people call themselves stupid or an idiot. When they consider doing something, this internal self-talk always tells them why they can’t. You’ll tell yourself things like “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m too dumb to do it.”

When you allow these thoughts to run rampant, you can get into the mindset that you can’t do something – that you’re unworthy – and then your feelings follow that internal self-talk until it becomes a belief.

This habit can be so ingrained within you that the negative self-talk plays constantly in your mind, so much so that it becomes like white noise. What mindfulness does is bring your attention to the inner dialogue that’s eroding your self-esteem.

You learn what this internal conversation is doing to you and how it’s impacting your emotions. Mindfulness helps you learn to accept who you are without expectations or blaming. You’ll gain skills that you can use to learn how to raise your confidence and acceptance of yourself.

4 Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Techniques

Recent studies have revealed that mindfulness is a useful anti-depressant medication, relieving mounds of anxiety, stress, and depression.

In one study, Lancet researchers sampled a group of 424 UK adults who were at high risk of experiencing further depression for study.

Half of the adults were put in a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy where they were guided through meditation and mindfulness methods while the other half was placed on medication for two years. Later, the researchers compared the progress of the two groups.

Then, the progress of each cluster was assessed. The study found that a similar number of individuals from both groups had relapsed. Experts explained that mindfulness provides long term useful skills hence putting you in control of your life unlike relying on anti-depressants.

Mindfulness is the cognitive ability to pay close attention to your feelings at the moment without judgment, fostering emotional resilience. It also helps you to develop positivity in life by helping concentration in class, work, and even home.

With the benefits of mindfulness now known in medical settings, perhaps you might want to learn how to practice this technique to relieve anxiety and stress. The techniques are easy to follow, and you do not need any special equipment; you just need to a few minutes.

5-Minute Mindfulness Body Scan Meditation Script & Mp3

The following are ways to practice mindfulness to reduce stress and improve concentration.

1. Mindful Yoga

Spend at least fifteen minutes of your time in a quiet and open environment for meditation and yoga. Meditation helps you to bring your full awareness to both your emotional and physical sensations as you try various poses. These feelings will bring about relieving tension and even reduced pain in your body, helping you to relax.

2. Body Scan Meditation

Like yoga, this technique involves spending your time in a secluded place, sitting in a comfortable position without feeling disturbed. During the exercise, you close your eyes and focus your concentration to your toes. Try to bring close attention to every part of your body starting from your toes, feet, ankles, calves, knees, hands and even up to your head.

3. Mindful Eating

During your mealtime, find a serene place where you will not be distracted. As you take your meals, try to eat slowly while you also engage your senses of taste, smell, sight, touch, and sound. Try to finish all your meal by chewing and swallowing slowly.

4. Mindful Breathing

Mindful or conscious breathing is another great way to eliminate stress and tension. Take at least five minutes in a convenient location, like the shower or subway and shift your concentration to breathing in and out. To concentrate during the exercise, you can pick one aspect to focus on.

Nothing else has the potential to boost your relaxation the way mindfulness can. Give it a try; you might be astonished what it can do for you.

Short Guided Meditation Script To Release the Need for Control

This Mindfulness Meditation will teach you to live in the moment without expectations or judgments.

(Beginning Of Script)

This guided meditation on the breath will help you to simply be…

I invite you to join me to enter a state of simply being…

release the desire or need to control or do and simply be…

Allow your body to become still and relax and bring your attention to your breath…

Become aware of the movement of your breath as it enters through your nose and leaves through your nose or mouth…

Simply allow and observe your breath…

Do not try to manipulate or change your breath in any way simply be aware of it…

And be aware of the feelings that connect with your breathing…

And now observe the depth of your breath…

Notice how your chest or stomach expands on the in breath…

And notice the fall of the stomach or chest on the out breath…

Staying in the moment with each breath…

Simply being with your breath

Not trying to do anything or go anywhere

Give all attention to each breath… as they follow one after another…

Simply observe and allow

You may notice that your mind may wander to thoughts… simply allow them to pass and return your focus to your breath…

Anytime you notice your mind wander simply bring your focus back to your breath at the tip of your nose and observe your breathing…

Every time you find your mind wandering off the breath gently bring it back to the present moment and continue to observe the flow of your breathing…

It is perfectly natural to have thoughts and even self-talk passing through your mind… do not allow yourself to interact or become distracted

Simply observe these thoughts…allow them to pas and gently bring your awareness back to your breath…

Notice the rise and fall of your chest as the air goes in and releases out…

Simply stay with the breath

You may find yourself becoming aware of sensations in your body…

As you stay with the present moment you may want to observe some of these sensations…

You are free to experience and notice these…expand the field of your awareness to include the sense of your body as you stay with your breath…

Feeling your body from head to toe and becoming aware of all the sensations of your body…

Now you are observing the sense of your body as a whole along with your breathing

And again whenever you notice your mind is wandering off bring your awareness back to your body and your breath as you sit here just simply being…

Not going anywhere or doing anything just being…

Allowing your awareness to return to your breath… allowing your awareness to stay with the breath… the fullness of the in breath and the out breath…

Just being with your breath and sitting still and remaining present just as it is simply allowing and being right here in the moment.

(End Of Script)