Meditation can change the brain. It can make you feel less anxious and more calm. It an be used to prevent anger from arising without warning and it can be used to reset yourself at the beginning or end of a day. Mindfulness meditation was first used in religious contexts but later became a subject of scientific study. It was discovered that doing mindfulness meditation for 20 minutes per day for 45-60 days will restructure your brain and leave you feeling less anxious and calmer more often. I recommend all my clients and all humans engage in a daily meditation practice starting with 5-10 minutes per day and slowing working up to 20 minutes or more. To start meditating you simply pick at object of focus like the inhale or exhale of the breath. You focus your attention on the breath and when a thought arises, like it quickly will, you simply notice that you are thinking, tell yourself "oh, here I go thinking again," and redirect your attention back to the breath. Then when you notice another thought come into your mind, you label it thinking and again redirect your attention back to the breath. So, the only thing you should be thinking about is your breath. This redirection retrains the mind to focus intensively on one object and improves your focus and attention and instead of attaching to a thought and becoming emotional about that thought, you focus on your breath, which is neutral. Following these steps will be difficult for everyone in the beginning if you are not used to meditation. However, do not attempt to do it perfectly, just do it and you will improve over time so that it is much easier to meditate and your mind seems less crazy. Again, start with 5-10 minutes and do this daily for a week or so until it seems rather easy and then increase the amount of time by 5 minutes until you get up to 20 minutes. It is not recommended to do mindfulness meditation for more than 45 minutes as the body needs to move and stretch at least once an hour. Be well.

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