Article Found on ScienceDaily
Mindfulness meditation programs have shown promise for the treatment of anxiety, one of the most common mental health disorders in the U.S. New research suggests people can begin to derive psychological and physiological benefits from the practice after a single introductory session. Read more
Article by Michelle Gale | Found on Mindful.org
It seems everywhere you look these days someone is touting the benefits of mindfulness — a practice that Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, describes simply as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” Research shows that people who practice mindfulness are less stressed, more focused and better able to regulate their emotions.
But, if you’re a busy working parent, how do you build mindfulness into an already-packed day? Those of us with kids and jobs often feel tired and rushed. We’re constantly multi-tasking, juggling personal and professional responsibilities, and feeling stressed about all we can’t get done. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, 56 percent of working parents say they find it difficult to balance their time between work and family. Though I now counsel others on how to break this cycle, I can certainly relate to it.
Years ago, I worked as Twitter’s head of learning and development when the company was growing 350% year after year. It was like being on a rocket ship, and I loved the work. But I found myself struggling to stay connected to my family. I can remember the afternoon my son’s school called to make me aware that no one had come to pick him up. He was in first grade at the time, and I burst into tears.
Although I was already committed to a mindfulness practice (I would sometimes sneak away to the meditation and yoga room we had in the office), I was still having trouble figuring out a way to weave presence and awareness into my day. Here’s the solution that I came up with and now recommend to others:
Start by spending a few minutes writing down what you do each day. It might look something like this: wake, coffee, family breakfast, pack lunches, prep for school day, walk dog, shower for work, drive car, train ride, walk to office, work all day, walk to train, car ride home, dinner, bath time, family reading or games, bedtime.
Now consider where mindfulness practice can fit in. For example:
Coffee: Make sure to pause before the first sip. Smell the aroma, feel the heat of the mug on your hand, and take three intentional breaths. Now enjoy.
Train ride: Once you’re settled into your seat, set a timer for five to ten minutes and practice mediation. Sit in silence and focus on your breathing or use a mindfulness app on your phone to listen to a guided meditation. Your eyes can be open or closed depending on the situation and what feels safe or comfortable.
Work: Each time you sit down to your computer, take a pause. Close your eyes, notice the sensation of your feet on the floor, your body in your chair, feel your breath come in and out of your body. Continue with your day.
Dinner: As you are preparing the meal, spend a moment reflecting on where the food came from. Imagine who planted it, picked it, or drove it to the store where you purchased it. On occasions when your entire family is sitting around the table at the same time, take a moment to feel grateful.
Bedtime: Decide on a ritual that cultivates mindful awareness. For younger children, consider having them put a stuffed animal on their belly as each of you count how many times the animal rides up and down with their breath. If your children are older try a head, heart, gut check-in at bedtime. Is the mind busy or calm in this moment? Are any emotions present or lingering from the day? Is there anything that needs to be shared or said that has not been already?
Does mindfulness seem a little more doable now? Research indicates that it takes just eight weeks of relatively regular practice to make positive changes to the brain. But if we wait until we have enough “bandwidth” to devote big blocks of time to it, we may never start. For working parents, my advice is to instead insert just a few small moments of mindfulness into your day, even — and especially — when life seems too busy, hectic and out of control.
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in its relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
Article by Kenny Lee | Featured on Make Mind Powerful
Mindfulness meditation is secular in nature, despite being practiced for more than two thousand years in a religious context. Its shift towards modern mainstream practice has seen its application in treating anxiety, depression or as a lifestyle adopted by many working professionals as a relaxation technique. Online meditation instructions are available easily and a list of mindfulness meditation tips like this may help beginners in their practice.
I’m not a meditation teacher. But I do learn mindfulness meditation almost two decades ago. I meditated regularly for 4 years, before stopping this healthy practice. That was when all the positives that I’ve built up from mindfulness practice start crumbling and that includes focus and emotional control.
After 17 years, I restarted my mindfulness practice, and mindfulness meditation has gained popularity in western countries. This time, I find it helpful in my battle against depression and also keeping my social anxiety under control. It is understandable that people with extreme stress or anxiety may find it difficult to meditate. Thus, I’m sharing this list of mindfulness meditation tips hoping to help beginners to kick-start their practice.
One of the greatest martial artists, Bruce Lee‘s may be famous for his quote ‘Empty Your Mind, But if you take it literally as your goal of mindfulness meditation, you’ll end up frustrated because you just can’t turn off your mind like flipping a switch. So stop trying.
Meditation blogger, Allen Wei of LearnRelaxationTechniques.com wisely put it as:
“For beginners, I would focus first on learning to be mindful and unaffected by thoughts that occur during meditation. If they keep practicing and deepening their meditation — rather than trying to force their minds to be clear of all thoughts — they may eventually be able to experience the ultimate state of meditation.”
Despite what you may read how you could stop all your thoughts with meditation, the fact is as long as you’re still breathing and conscious, you will always have thoughts. The one important skill that you will develop with mindfulness meditation is to stop responding emotionally to the negative thoughts. That’s what “clearing your mind” is all about.
One of the common question meditation beginners asked is about getting the right meditation posture. Is the full-lotus better than the Burmese? What is the best posture for meditation? Here are some of the common postures in meditation.
Postures are just there to assist your meditation practice. If there’s anything such as the “best posture”, it’s one that should support your meditation practice, rather than hampering it.
The choice of full-lotus or Burmese become secondary, compared to whether the posture would cause you an unnecessary backache, or do you fall asleep easily while meditating. If there’s something in common with a good meditation posture, it’s to keep your spine firm and straight, but not too stiff.
Most mindfulness meditation instruction starts by instructing the practitioner to focus on their breathing. Some started by counting the breath to develop the initial focus needed, while others may start with directly observing the sensation of each inhale and exhale.
Depending on individuals, sometimes the sensation of the air flow on the nostrils could be vague and too weak for their mind to focus on. If you’re experiencing this issue, you’ll find that your mind wanders easily because it’s so difficult to anchor your mind on the breathing itself.
A good solution to this is to change your primary meditation focus to your abdominal. Instead of trying to feel sensations on your nostril, you now observe the movement of your abdomen as each time it contracts and detracts when you breathe. You can even place your palm on your abdomen for better focus.
Perhaps you are not aware, but mindfulness meditation can be found in the form of sitting, walking, standing and lying down. The lying meditation is seldom taught as practitioners could easily fall asleep. The only time I would suggest practicing lying meditation is when you’re having trouble falling asleep.
The sitting form of mindfulness meditation is the best form of meditation if you’re after deep relaxation and calming of your mind. But it is also a condition that your body and mind may find it hard to get used to in the beginning, as the sensations are more subtle.
That’s why I recommend meditation beginners to start with 10 to 15 minutes of walking meditation before proceeding to the sitting meditation. Walking at a slower pace and with your eyes open is something your body is familiar with. The movement of your foot has the obvious sensation to train your mindfulness on.
There is a big difference of bringing back your wandering mind to stopping your mind from wandering. Mindfulness meditation is about doing the former in a relaxed manner. When you’re starting off your practice, you can expect to spend the first few sessions doing nothing but attending to your wandering mind.
This is when most practitioners who’re practicing on their own gave up as they don’t seem to experience the calm that’s often associated with mindfulness. If there’s anything you need to do, it’s to have patience and keep bringing back your mind to your breathing as it wanders.
It could be two, five or ten sessions. In time, you’ll find that it wanders less and the amount of time you spend focused on your breathing is more. This will often result in what most people stereotyped as a good meditation session.
As your practice deepen, it is possible that you’ll start to experience profound joy or deep sadness that you’ve never felt before. Some practitioners also felt grief, or crippling fear when they’re meditating. That’s when panic sets in and they felt something has gone wrong with their practice.
While I do not personally experience extreme negative emotions while meditating, I do encounter moments of bliss while practicing walking meditation. And trust me when I said blissful experiences is as bad as negative emotions when it comes to putting a halt to meditation.
I do remember my meditation teacher’s advice that regardless of what you felt or experience in meditation, you should just mentally note it as “feeling” or “thinking” and bring back your focus to your breathing. This is one golden rule that my meditation teacher emphasized to prevent going astray in our practice.
The reality is, most people meditate because they want to achieve something through meditation. It could be a concrete goal of overcoming anxiety, defeat depression, preserve their brain from aging or something general like having a stronger mind.
It’s normally as a human being to have expectations and goals but it’s very important that you do not bring these expectations to your meditation practice. Not even thoughts like “I want to have a good meditation today”.
Because what happened is when you’re starting your meditation with a goal, there is a high possibility you will spend your entire meditation practice struggling to achieve that. Instead of meditating, you’re drowned in thoughts of expectations. And you became frustrated when you found that the whole meditation ends up as a nothing but a thinking session.
It’s no surprise if you can’t meditate when you have angry or hateful thoughts. After all, you’re all human and not a monk who spend all his time cultivating good thoughts in the forest.
That’s why letting go of ill thoughts is a good way to calm a raging mind before practicing mindfulness meditation. One of the best ways I’ve known is to learn and practice loving kindness meditation.
Loving-kindness is a form of meditation that cultivates and radiates self-love and compassion. Like mindfulness meditation, it can be practiced in a secular context and is particularly effective as an anger management tool.
Just because the mind is abstract it doesn’t mean that it can be reconditioned in hours or days. Even if it could, changing neuron pathway in your brain doesn’t happen instantly either. That’s what mindfulness meditation actually does when you’re practicing it consistently for a period of time.
Athanasia of MeditationDailyHabit.com puts it this way:
“Something else that people needs to know is that meditation requires patience, persistence, and daily commitment. If you meditate once in a while you will always find it as difficult as the first time. It’s like exercising. If you exercise every once in a while you will not see any results. When you meditate on a daily basis the moments that you stay focused (or without any thoughts) will become longer. It’s these moments between your thoughts/distractions. You can imagine them like gaps. These gaps become bigger as you continue to meditate daily.”
If there’s any number I could put to the minimum amount of duration you need to meditate, it would be 15 minutes a day. While results may differ per individual, most people experienced positive improvement in their mind and body after 8 weeks of meditation.
Depending on your physical condition, it could be possible that numbness could set in pretty early in your sitting meditation. The most common instinctive behavior would be to shift your posture or to move your leg around to cease the numbness.
While there is nothing wrong with that, strong sensations like numbness or itchiness could be turned into a powerful meditation object. Here’s what you should do before giving up to these uncomfortable sensations.
Shift your focus on your breathing to the numbness. Observe and feel without emotionally attaching to the sensations. Be aware of any intention or thoughts of moving or scratching that arise in your mind. Try to do this as long as you can before shifting to a more comfortable posture mindfully.
It’s not common for distractions to occur during your meditation practice, especially if you’re meditating at home. When your phone rang or your neighbor’s dog bark interrupt your meditation calm, thoughts of anger and hatred could pretty fast overcome your mind.
That’s because we as human are naturally attached to good experience, and when robbed out of it, we respond based on our natural instinct. To prevent a moment of distraction from turning your meditation bliss into emotional brooding session, it’s important to remember that calming experience is just a by-result of meditation, and not the end goal itself.
The next time you are distracted by external noises in meditation, just mentally note that you are “hearing”, and avoid placing emotional labels such as “I hate the dog barking” or “Who would have called at this wrong moment?”. That is what mindfulness is all about.
It is a common occurrence for meditation beginners to start feeling drowsy after a few minutes of sitting meditation. At times it seems so hard to force yourself to stay awake even when you’re determined to. While I’ve read some “guru” talk about how this is another state of consciousness in meditation, I prefer to discuss ways to get around this, instead of overcomplicating the whole issue.
Avoid heavy meals before meditating. If you find yourself sleepy after a heavy lunch at work, it’s going to be the same thing in meditation, especially with your eyes closed. If the feeling of drowsiness persists, turn your mindfulness to your mind itself. Note how your mind feels when it’s struggling to stay awake. For me, it’s like having a huge damp cloth slowly suffocating my mind.
Sometimes that drowsiness could give away to great clarity if you persist to be mindful. But if you struggled for more than 15 minutes fighting to stay awake, your body could be really tired and in need of rest. Well, if that’s the case, go get a good sleep.
Body ache happens in meditation, regardless of age and gender. I often struggled with backaches when I’m practicing sitting meditation. Sometimes it could be you’re sitting with an incorrect posture that gives pressure on your spine. (Read this article for correct meditation postures)
In meditation practitioners of older age, existing physiological problems could cause backaches that could further be aggravated by unsupported sitting posture. In that case, meditation cushion with strap could be useful, or practitioners could opt to sit on a normal chair and cushion instead.
As with other distractions encountered in meditation, painful feelings can be turned into a mindfulness object. With that said, meditation should not be anything but a painful experience. When the pain is overbearing, it’s time to shift to a comfortable posture mindfully.
Read more about dealing with pain when practicing mindfulness here.
For first-timers, mindfulness meditation could be an interesting concept and you may want to back your practice with additional knowledge from mindfulness books. While reading about mindfulness causes no harm to meditation practice, you should need to be aware of the difference between intellectual knowledge and the real experience itself.
It could be tempting to compare what you’re experiencing with meditation with the different state of mind that you could have read in meditation books, but such attempts could hamper instead of helping with your progress.
Analytical thinking is, in fact, the opposite of meditation. The former is all about judging and involved emotional decision making while mindfulness meditation is about experiencing thoughts and senses as ‘they are’. Put your analytical mind away when you meditate.
Most people who tried mindfulness meditation hopes that their life, in general, could improve in a positive way. Yet, we often notice that some confined their mindfulness to the 15 minutes of meditation, and spent the rest of their days absent-mindedly.
It’s only common sense that if you don’t put what you practice into daily tasks, your progress in meditation and life improvement could be limited. A huge list of meditation tips couldn’t help you if you’re not willing to bring mindfulness to your daily life.
The same concept of being attentive could be applied to mindful eating, or when you’re commuting to your work. Mindfulness is also helpful when you’re driving and trapped in a bad traffic. You’ll be amazed how much impatient thoughts you’re keeping away with mindfulness.
While there is no definite best time to meditate, most practitioners either chose to meditate early in the morning, when their mind is fresh or in the evening, as they sought to relax and unload from the stress and work.
Ther are circumstances though, that meditation may not be conducive and you should not force your mind upon meditating in such scenario. People who suffered anxiety and depression struggled with meditation when their mood is on the low.
You may also find it hard to meditate when your mind is fatigued and very low on energy. A good analogy will be getting your body to work out at the gym when it’s already tired from moving heavy objects in the day. Mindfulness meditation, after all, is like the brain heading to the gym.
When you’re paddling a boat off to the sea, you’ll notice the shoreline disappear gradually. You know you’re actually moving off. Then, everything seems the same, except the occasional island and gulls that fly past. It may seem that you’re not moving, but reality can be deceiving.
That’s what happened to most practitioners who started mindfulness meditation. After a few sessions, they start to feel a calmer and relaxed mind when meditating, before the meditation experience turned more routine than spectacular.
Progress in meditation could be subtle, but if you’re experiencing a better focus or better emotional control, then you are definitely making progress. Unlike hypnosis, mindfulness meditation has no end-goal and should be viewed as a constant mind workout for our continuous wellness.
Starting mindfulness meditation from online resources is easy, but continuing the practice at a more advanced stage may be a challenge. As one goes deeper in meditation, joining a group of like-minded practitioners could be conducive to progress in meditation.
The experience of meditation in a group and sharing of each individual’s experience thereafter could be quite enlightening. You can learn more from a meditation group than reading mindfulness meditation tips like this. If you can’t find a meditation group locally, try searching for forums or meditation groups in social media online.
Meditation e-books and online resources could never substitute the guidance of a meditation teacher. Learn from an experienced meditation teacher whenever possible. I have the privilege to train under one when I started my journey in mindfulness meditation. But that was almost two decades ago.
These days, especially in busy cities, it could be difficult to get access to a meditation teacher. Alternatively, you could subscribe to online meditation courses, or learn mindfulness from renowned mindfulness teachers like Jon Kabat-Zinn, Tara Brach, and Jack Kornfield here.
You may have heard how mindfulness meditation could be relaxing and calming, but that is only when you have mastered mindfulness to a certain degree of competence. Else, trying to meditate with a stressful mind could be pointless. That’s when meditation music comes to play.
Putting on relaxing music may provide a calming environment, but it serves nothing more than a pleasant distraction and defeats the purpose of meditation. Mindfulness meditation in its purest form is about awareness of the senses. Of course, it’s a personal choice but I highly do not recommend that in your practice.
Personally, I do not listen to any music when practicing mindfulness meditation. But listening to relaxing meditation music before meditating is a good way to calm down an anxious mind, especially for beginners.
With mindfulness meditation becoming a mainstream trend, one of the most common questions revolved around the optimum duration of a meditation practice. While some meditation blogs recommend 5 to 10 minutes of daily, I will up the limit to a minimum of 15 minutes per session.
That’s right. Even an additional 5 minutes will make a huge difference when it comes to making real progress in meditation. For most beginners, the first 10 minutes are nothing more than ‘warming up’ process, often involving wrestling stray thoughts that never seems to stop. It takes more than that to produce real results.
When you’re comfortable with 15 minutes of meditation, do try to increase your practice to 30 minutes a day. That’s the best duration for city dwellers where most people have hectic schedules. An old Zen saying goes “You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour“.
While I’m always of the opinion that it’s best to learn meditation under the watchful eyes of an experienced teacher, I can’t discount the fact that some meditation apps are pretty useful in guiding beginners. Otherwise, beginners can feel pretty disheartened not knowing if they are practicing correctly.
It can be even harder to meditate alone if you’re facing a high level of stress or anxiety. I personally use Aware to complement my practice. I suppose it’s the next best thing when you can’t get hold of a meditation teacher in your local area.
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in it’s relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Women’s Health and Lymphedema.
Physical Therapy Portland Oregon
Article by Kristen Peck | Found on MindBodyGreen
I’m quick to regret the label of chronic pain. I believe in the power of words and thoughts, so the idea of labeling a consistent pain as “chronic” feels like a resignation of control and possibility. For about two and a half years now, I’ve experienced persistent little nudges and discomfort in various parts of my bodies—mostly symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, joint pain, and the general discomfort that comes along with a desk job. Yes, I visited doctors and specialists to no avail and eventually turned to alternative healing modalities—like acupuncture, exercise, hot and cold therapy, physical therapy—searching for answers in the form of relief, management, and prevention. And while these methods worked, only temporarily so. Plus, I never feel that these practices address the root of the pain circulating throughout my body, which is sharp and rarely dormant these days.
Recently, my symptoms have fluctuated in and out of remission, except for, I noticed, during the periods of heightened stress and anxiousness, which seemed to exacerbate the symptoms. On my quest to further investigate the mind-body connection in relation to pain and body trauma, I stumbled across Pyeng Threadgill’s work with mindful movement.
Threadgill came across the Alexander Technique years ago as a vocalist and performer looking for tools to help strengthen her voice and body instruments. “I learned a lot about how we’re using our whole system. There’s an opportunity for openness. Time feels less rushed,” she told mbg during a session at her studio in Brooklyn. Today, she’s a certified instructor who’s reframed the technique as mindfulness and movement re-education to help everyday people focus on their movement habits and the stresses that can trigger chronic injuries and pain. “It’s about guiding people on how to be more integrated into all areas of your life. It’s a practice, not an overnight thing.”
During our session, Threadgill led me through a series of exercises steeped in awareness and conversation. Different from other bodywork treatments like massage, both Pyeng and I guided the treatment, with Pyeng adjusting the moves depending on how I responded to a particular feeling, a gentle pull on my arm there, a guided neck stretch here. After all, one of the primary principles of the technique is cultivating awareness. She explained that the moves were to help retrain the nervous system. “A lot of what we’re connecting to is connective tissue—loosening the grip of connective tissue to allow the muscles underneath to move more freely.”
I walked away from my session with Pyeng lighter and with remarkably less tension and tightness. If we all learned to think about our full alignment and our daily habits, could we shift the conversation on chronic pain from coping to healing? Pyeng’s take: “It’s about the liberation from identifying with your energies. If we can recognize our body and habits, we can change the course of our movement and, ultimately, our outlook on pain.”
Below, Pyeng offers up four tips for incorporating mindful movement into your own life.
Pyeng notes smartphone usage as a major factor in body alignment issues. “Since so many people are using smartphones nowadays, it is important to raise your smartphone more often when texting, typing, or reading. This takes practice, but it will reveal how often you are closing off the front of the throat and therefore, part of your body’s lengthening and widening potential.” She says a question to ask is, “How can I allow my body to lengthen with ease?”
A key element of Mindful Movement is to practice noticing your body and habits while engaging with the world. Part of this engagement, Pyeng says, starts with our breath and “how it feels to pay attention to your breath with your eyes opened.” In what ways can you use less force or holding when breathing while fully present in a task, chore, or activity.
Try to look out at eye height when walking. Oftentimes, so many people look down when they walk, and as a result, they reinforce the shortening of their spines and entire torso by forgetting that we, like any other animal, lead our movement with our eyes and head, followed by our bodies.
Most of us get so wrapped up in any given task that we forget to sense ourselves. It’s as if we are TOO focused on the bull’s-eye to remember our feet being on the ground and heads being light above. Set a timer once an hour for a five-minute pause to take inventory of your body. Instead ask yourself what you notice in your body while sitting in a chair, your car, or even standing in line.
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in its relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
Article Found on Mindful.org
Has someone ever sent you an angry email, and then you found yourself, weeks later, thinking about it while you’re wide awake at 2am?
Emotions can be a major source of distraction, according to researchers Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman, who have chronicled what we know thus far about the meditator’s mind in a new book, Altered Traits, Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.
In this whiteboard session for Harvard Business Review, Davidson and Goleman talk about one of the most important discoveries: repeated practice helps us untether from emotional cues that keep us mired in distraction — specifically, rumination.
Research suggests mindfulness practice can strengthen the connections between the brain that direct our decision-making and impulses, so that when we encounter a strong emotional trigger, we’re not pulled to immediately react.
“[Mindfulness] strengthens the prefrontal (cortex’s) ability to say no to emotional impulse,” says Goleman. This increases resilience because it helps us hold things more lightly — like that snarky email — and not devote all of our attention to emotional cues. Davidson explains:
Goleman cautions that the science of mindfulness — what we know, what we don’t — is still in the early stages of study. There are benefits, but there is a lot of hype as well. Since the early 2000s, research on mindfulness has been expanding rapidly. For more, here’s a look at 10 leaders in the field, what their research has shown us, and the future directions their studies are taking.
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in its relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
Article by Tara Healy | Found on Mindful.org
Our faces are windows into our most intimate feelings. Yet we’re apt to treat them as strangers, reserving for them our harshest criticism.
We’re surrounded by mirrors that show us our faces. But how often do we really take the time to look at our faces, as opposed to concentrating on ways to conceal what we consider to be their less than agreeable qualities? The onslaught of internal commentary is probably familiar to us all. “My nose is too big/too small.” “I wish I had more hair/less hair!” “Why can’t I be more like my sister?” “…my brother?” “…my daughter?” “…my friend?” Read more
Article by Judson Brewer | Found on Mindful.org
When I was first learning to meditate the instruction was to simply pay attention to my breath, and when my mind wandered, to bring it back. Sounded simple enough, yet I’d sit on these silent retreats sweating through t-shirts in the middle of winter. I take naps every chance I got because it was really hard work. Actually it was exhausting. The instruction was simple enough but I was missing something really important. Read more
Article by Elaine Smookler | Found on Mindful.org
Change comes whether we want it or not. If we can stay open and curious to an ever-new landscape of life’s possibilities, change can actually be the key to resilience. By learning to explore what presents itself, we ride the waves of change rather than losing ourselves in the undertow. Read more
Article Found on RickHanson.net
What can you do when you’re shaken?
The Practice:
Find your ground.
Why?
I’ve been to New Zealand, and really respect and like it. There’s a Maori term – turangawaewae, “a place to stand” – that I’ve come back to many times.
I’m sure I don’t know the full meaning of the word in its cultural context. But at a basic level, it’s clear that we all need a place to stand. A physical place to be sure – hearth and home, land and sea, a bed to curl up in – but also psychological or spiritual places, such as feeling loved, a calm clear center inside, knowledge of the facts, compassion and ethics, and realistic plans. Read more
Article Found on PocketMindfulness
In this busy world of ours, the mind is constantly pulled from pillar to post, scattering our thoughts and emotions and leaving us feeling stressed, highly-strung and at times quite anxious.
Most of us don’t have five minutes to sit down and relax, let alone 30 minutes or more for a meditation session. Read more
