What is mindfulness?

There is a lot of talk about mindfulness, an oriental technique, inspired by the Buddhist tradition, which brings interesting benefits for physical and emotional health. But do you know what mindfulness is and what it is for? Today, we tell you all about this practice.

Definition

Mindfulness is the intentional effort to be aware of present experience. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition: "Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way, intentionally, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally." The foundations of mindfulness are:

• Pay attention with intention
• Pay attention to the present moment
• Pay attention without judging.

Origins

The root of the word mindfulness is found in the teachings of the Buddha and in the Maha Satipattha Sutta, one of the fundamental texts on mindfulness. Buddhist meditation. His modern founder is Jon Kabat-Zinn, who founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts in the late 1970s. Since then, some 18000 people have completed the MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) program, which helps overcome conditions such as chronic pain , cardiovascular diseases, anxiety, psoriasis, depression or sleep disorders. The neuroscience also echoed the potential of this meditation technique in the early 70s. Richard J. Davidson and his team at the University of Wisconsin, using electroencephalograms and neuroimaging techniques, such as brain scanning, studied the effects of meditation on Tibetan monks and used these techniques to be able to measure the possible brain transformations.

Benefits or why practice mindfulness?

1- Helps to control stress and anxiety 2- Helps to avoid distractions, improves memory and concentration capacity 3- Develops emotional intelligence 4- Promotes compassion, altruism and improves personal relationships 5- Allows us to recognize and stop automatic and habitual reactions 6- Promotes creativity 7- Helps us to respond more effectively to difficult and complex situations and to see situations more clearly. The fundamental objective of mindfulness is aimed at providing us with a method to learn to manage emotions, reactions, attitudes and thoughts to be able to face the situations that life presents us, through the practice and improvement of full consciousness. Thus, we may be able to discover that through the development of mindfulness in the present moment we develop certain positive attitudes in relation to our mental state and emotions, coming to control them from the Liberty, self-knowledge and acceptance.

Mindfulness exercises you can do at home

To develop these skills in daily life, you can try these exercises used in the Kabat-Zinn program:

Exercise 1: a minute of mindfulness

It is an easy exercise that you can do at any time of the day. The goal is to focus your full attention on your breath for one minute. Keep your eyes open, breathe with your belly instead of your chest, and try to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Focus on the sound and rhythm of your breath. Be prepared for mind wandering and you will have to work to bring your attention back to the target each time this happens. This exercise is the basis of the mindfulness meditation technique.

Exercise 2: body scan

Focus your attention on your body, from your feet to your head, trying to be aware and accepting of any sensations, without controlling or changing those feelings.

Exercise 3: Raisin Exercise

It's about slowly using all of your senses, one after the other, to observe a raisin in great detail, from the way it feels in the palm of your hand to the way it tastes on your tongue. This exercise is done to focus on the present and can be done with different meals.

Exercise 4: meditative walk

Focus your attention on the movement of your body as you walk. You feel your feet touching the ground, the sensation of the legs, the wind.

Exercise 5: sound meditation

Focus your attention on the sense of hearing by focusing on detecting the sounds that are farthest and closest to you. Listen to the sounds but also the impact they have on you. Do you automatically associate any word, sensation or emotion? Try to observe these sounds as "pure sounds" and observe our tendency to search for their origin. embrace these notes No judgment.

Exercise 6: house cleaning

And why not make housekeeping an exercise in mindfulness? Focus on what you do, how you are doing it and observe. If you are interested in learning more about this practice, we recommend that you follow our page, where we share information about Yoga, Pilates and meditation. In addition, we invite you to try some of our materials designed to facilitate your practice. Today we started!