Mindfulness Meditation

I went to a terrific lecture on Mindfulness Meditation, a powerful tool for changing thoughts and feelings, de-stressing, and becoming emotionally and physically healthy. For those of you who want a research-driven, evidence-based approach to stress reduction, reducing disregulated eating, and achieving greater happiness, this is it. Mindfulness meditation is no “woo-woo” method of improving your life. It has a proven track record which you can check out at Massachusetts General Hospital: Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure. Quoting from a handout on the subject, mindfulness is the “dispassionate observation of and discerning the difference between sense faculty activity and thinking-fabrication.” It is a type of meta-cognition (rising above thoughts) by not getting involved in them. In this approach you know you have thoughts and recognize them as simply that. Just as, while waiting for a train, you don’t hop on every one that stops at the station, you don’t engage with every thought that arises. Some you choose (yes, choose) to let go by.  Mindfulness teaches that you are not your thoughts or your feelings, but that these are “fabrications” which are experienced as reality, interpretations of data received from our senses which “ultimately lack any inherent or true reality.” Mindfulness tells us that thoughts are our perceptions based on a whole host of factors, including our experience, but that they are ...
Source: Normal Eating - Category: Eating Disorders Authors: Source Type: blogs