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Some seem to believe mindfulness practice will invariably induce a sense of peace and calm. While this can be the experience for many, it is not the experience for all. At times, sitting quietly with oneself can be a difficult—even painful—experience.
Meditation is the practice of lightly holding your attention on an anchor, such as your breath, and gently bringing it back there when it wanders.
Meditation has proven benefits, but the style that works best depends on a person's habits and preferences. In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we explore walking meditation, a powerful practice for feeling more centered and grounded. Dan Harris, host of the award-winning 10% Happier podcast, shares how walking meditation helps him manage the residual stress and anxiety from years of war reporting and high-pressure TV anchoring.
“The type of meditation matters,” explain postdoctoral researcher Bethany Kok and professor Tania Singer. “Each practice appears to create a distinct mental environment, the long-term consequences of which are only beginning to be explored.” How much meditation is enough? That also depends. This isn’t the answer most people want to hear. Many of us are looking for a medically prescriptive response (e.g., three times a week for 45-60 minutes), but the best guide might be this old Zen saying: “You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” To date, empirical research has yet to arrive at a consensus about how much is “enough.
People tend to lose some of their cognitive flexibility and short-term memory as they age. But mindfulness may be able to slow cognitive decline, even in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
So what do I do? Instead of letting doubt talk us out of it, take it day by day and keep checking in. We can also remind ourselves that we’re not wasting time when we meditate. We’re taking care of our mind.
Once you finish this practice and get ready to start working, mindfulness can help increase your effectiveness. Two skills define a mindful mind: focus
, argues that there is still much we don’t understand about mindfulness and meditation. Worse, many scientists and practitioners don’t even agree on the definition of those words. They end the paper calling for “truth in advertising by contemplative neuroscience.”
While we may espouse compassionate attitudes, we can also suffer when we see others suffering, which can create a state of paralysis or tibetan healing sounds withdrawal. Many well-designed studies have shown that practicing loving-kindness meditation for others increases our willingness to take action to relieve suffering. It appears to do this by lessening amygdala activity in the presence of suffering, while also activating circuits in the brain that are connected to good feelings and love. For longtime meditators, activity in the “default network”—the part of our brains that, when not busy with focused activity, ruminates on thoughts, feelings, and experiences—quiets down, suggesting less rumination about ourselves and our place in the world.
Like Loving-Kindness Meditation, this technique involves invoking feelings of compassion and kindness toward yourself, and specifically for difficult situations or feelings.
JM: Here in the San Francisco Bay area, we’re seeing growing interest. Initially, that was among tech and social media companies. Google has been a pioneer in providing mindfulness practice training for its employees. In fact, an engineer at Google first instituted a mindfulness training program there, which has now become the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, offering mindfulness training for companies around the world.
It’s often said that meditation may be simple, but it isn’t easy. And this makes sense. It’s not part of our normal routine to sit quietly, without any distraction, and just… breathe.
It does this through various points of support based on experience level, how much time you may have, and with practices designed to meet you exactly where you are that day, in your particular life stage, and wherever you are along your meditation journey.
Tips for increasing focus and awareness and decreasing stress at work. By Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter