Mindfulness Meditation

“ Good or bad, happy or sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness, like the imprint of a bird in the sky.”
– Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Mindfulness Meditation has exploded onto the scene of contemporary living over the last few years.  Executives in large corporations are encouraging their employees to take time for meditation during the day, for the improvement of both productivity and morale.  Meditation classes in various venues tout the benefits of this practice as the answer to the fast-paced, multitasking, stressful life experienced by most people in the industrialized world.  Research studies on Mindfulness Meditation are now being funded by grants through major medical centers and governmental departments, and are producing measurable empirical evidence that meditation is beneficial for the brain – both immediately and as we age.

Benefits of meditation

People from all walks of life are beginning to notice the benefits of meditation, which has been quietly taught in Eastern traditions for centuries, as a spiritual practice.  Many present day spiritual leaders and teachers of transformational living are incorporating the practice of meditation, as a foundational component of a richer, more abundant life experience.  Their focus is not on meditation as a stress reduction technique, but as a practice that heightens our moment by moment awareness to see ourselves and all things more clearly.

Thoughts influence our moods and emotions

Whether Mindfulness Meditation is practiced primarily to improve one’s health, to cope more effectively with daily stress, or as a deep spiritual practice (regardless of religion or lack thereof) – it can also provide immense benefits to people who feel overwhelmed, afraid, hopeless, unmotivated, angry, or agitated.  These painful psychological experiences, and the physical symptoms that accompany them, are generally entwined with thought processes.  Regardless of our genetic predispositions, our thoughts and beliefs (sometimes so deep we are unaware of them) are major determinants of how we feel and act.  Our beliefs about the circumstances of our life trigger biochemical changes in our body that strongly impact our moods and emotions.

Meditation can be a transforming experience

Mindfulness Meditation offers us an experience of focused awareness, devoid of our previous absorption in thoughts that interpret, judge, obsess, remember, analyze or fear life experiences – past, present or future.  At the beginning of therapy, most of my clients are either stuck in debilitating thought processes that contribute to their emotion pain, or they are dependent upon a swirl of distracting activities that allow them to avoid the thoughts that enter their awareness, whenever they are still.  Numerous clients have been literally transformed by using the power they never knew they had, to deal directly with the deep-seated thoughts and beliefs that were causing so much of their distress.  For many of them, the practice of Mindfulness Meditation has become an important part of that transformation.