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How to Cultivate Mindfulness & the Meditation Habit

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The One Thing You Must Do To Make Meditation A Habit - About Meditation. “We are what we repeatedly do.

The One Thing You Must Do To Make Meditation A Habit - About Meditation

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~Aristotle. How to Make Mindfulness a Habit With Only a Tiny Commitment. When you sit back and reminisce about your life, it’s almost a given that the most enjoyable and memorable moments are the ones in which you were completely present.

How to Make Mindfulness a Habit With Only a Tiny Commitment

Do you look back with fondness all the times you spent thinking about work while you drove home, or pondered dinner while you wheeled down the frozen aisle? Unfortunately most of life passes that way for most of us. We’re in one place doing one thing, thinking of things we aren’t doing and places we aren’t at. The bottom line of almost all self-help, spiritual, or religious literature is that our ability to be happy is determined by our ability to stay in the present moment. 5 Simple Tips to Fix a Stagnant (or Nonexistent) Daily Meditation Practice. Daily meditation has made a world of difference in my life.

5 Simple Tips to Fix a Stagnant (or Nonexistent) Daily Meditation Practice

From bringing me focus as a writer to calming me down when life knocks me off my feet, learning to find peace in the present moment is where it’s at. But meditation is also a practice that takes a lifetime to master and along the way you may struggle with stagnancy in your practice as you do in life. But there are steps that can help you get back on track. 1. Stop putting off your practice. How to Maintain a Consistent Meditative Practice. We are creatures of habit.

How to Maintain a Consistent Meditative Practice

For proof, you only need to observe children. They thrive on routines and within familiar environments. Bedtime rituals such as tucking kids in, reading them a story, or singing them a song, calm and relax them. When it's time to take a road trip, our sons and daughters do much better when they have something nearby that reminds them of home, such as their favorite blanket, and toys that they love to play with. As adults, we may be older and more sophisticated than young children, but it's still important to have routines and rituals, particularly when it comes to meditation . Mindfulness for People Who Are Too Busy to Meditate.

Mindfulness has become almost a buzz-word.

Mindfulness for People Who Are Too Busy to Meditate

But what is it, really? Mindfulness is, quite simply, the skill of being present and aware, moment by moment, regardless of circumstances. For instance, researchers have found that mindfulness can reprogram the brain to be more rational and less emotional. When faced with a decision, meditators showed increased activity in the posterior insula of the brain, which has been linked to rational decision making. This allowed them to make decisions based more on fact than emotion. If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This. Too Busy to Meditate? Think Again! The benefits of meditation are many and varied from reducing stress , blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes to increasing one’s cognition and creativity .

Too Busy to Meditate? Think Again!

As well meditation decreases our need for sleep by heightening our concentration , allowing us to be more productive. Ray Kroc, who took over McDonald’s in its early days and built it into a business of outstanding success, once reported that he’d spontaneously fall into states of meditative reverie during the day and thus didn’t need a lot of sleep (Bennis 1984). Many people think that they have to run off to a monastery or spend hours a day sitting in a lotus position to receive these benefits. If you feel overwhelmed with work, family and personal responsibilities here are three quick and easy meditations to help you release unwholesome emotions, shift your mood and improve your relationships adapted from my new book.

{*style:<b> 1. As you begin, focus on your breath, mentally saying “in” on the inhale and “out” on the exhale. 7 Mindfulness Tips For Busy People With Hectic Lives. Mindfulness helps us achieve healthier, more comfortable lives by lowering stress.

7 Mindfulness Tips For Busy People With Hectic Lives

And if you’re a busy person with a hectic life, that’s exactly what you need. A spiritual and cultural practice that comes to us from the Far East, mindfulness helps monks change their body temperatures, withstand hypothermic-level cold, and keep a hopeful outlook no matter what conditions surround them. But you don’t have to convert to another religion or renounce the world and become a priest or nun. Science has isolated some core practices of mindfulness and we now know that your state of mind is everything. Think That Meditation Is A Waste Of Time? Watch This! Meditation has quickly become one of the most talked about and used conscious practices in the modern world.

Think That Meditation Is A Waste Of Time? Watch This!

Various religious leaders, spiritual gurus, professional athletes, celebrity figures and probably a number of your family and/or friends all swear by it to being a key part in their lives. As a person who practices meditation somewhat regularly, I can personally understand not only its benefit but also why it continues to grow and be adopted by more and more people worldwide. Despite its continued growth and popularity, meditation -like so many other practices -is not without ridicule, as a large portion of the world’s population are still happy to classify it as pseudoscientific, or a waste of time.

In response to this common classification, the group at Big Think have created an easy to understand short video that explains the neuroscience behind meditation. Removing The Skepticism “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Neale Donald Walsch. Why Mindfulness Techniques Can Bring You Success In A Wired World. How to Build Powerful Mindfulness Exercises Into Your Life. We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens we will have no regrets. ~Dalai Lama. Benefits of Meditation 101: How To Meditate In Less Time.

May is National Meditation Month: are you ready to learn how to meditate?

Benefits of Meditation 101: How To Meditate In Less Time

You have tons of options. There are *at least* 50 shades of zen to pick from! (And then there’s 40 Years of Zen, too… One-Moment Meditation: "How to Meditate in a Moment". Do Nothing for 2 Minutes. How to Stay in the Present Moment in Everyday Life: 5 Simple Habits. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”Buddha There is only one time and place where you can be and have any control over.

How to Stay in the Present Moment in Everyday Life: 5 Simple Habits

The present moment. But most of us still spend a lot of our regular days lost in memories, reliving a sunny vacation or maybe more commonly repeating an old conflict or negative situation over and over in our thoughts. Or we get lost in scenarios about what could happen in the future. Maybe through wishful daydreams. Or your thoughts may become split and unfocused between several different things and tasks.

Body Scan Meditation : M Cullen. 6 Mindfulness Exercises You Can Try Today. 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. But it is essential for our wellbeing to take a few minutes each day to cultivate mental spaciousness and achieve a positive mind-body balance.

So if you are a busy bee like me, you can use these simple mindfulness exercises to empty your mind and find some much-needed calm amidst the madness of your hectic day. I'm going to cover 6 exercises that take very little effort and can be done pretty much anywhere at anytime: Mindful breathingMindful observationMindful awarenessMindful listeningMindful immersionMindful appreciation Let's get started… Mindfulness Meditation: 8 Quick Exercises That Easily Fit into Your Day. You can fit these mindfulness exercises into your life while walking, brushing your teeth and just listening. Although mindfulness meditation is all the rage nowadays, most people have little time for formal practice. That’s a pity since studies have found mindfulness meditation has many benefits, including reducing depression and pain, accelerating cognition, increasing creativity, debiasing the mind and much more.

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to add a little mindfulness meditation to your day without formal practice, then these mindfulness exercises are for you. They mindfulness exercises can mostly be slotted in while you go about your everyday business, without the need for a formal sit-down meditation session. 1. » 9 Mindfulness Rituals to Make Your Day Better. “Smile, breathe and go slowly.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist monk Post written by Leo Babauta. Are you simply moving through your day, without fully living? I did this for many years. It was as if life were just passing by, and I was waiting for something to happen. I always felt like I was preparing for something later. 10-Minute Meditation Breaks. When kids get too rowdy, they’re given time-outs. Regardless of why parents and teachers administer a time-out, it’s ultimately meant to help children slow down, reconnect with the present moment, and begin again.

It’s a reset that helps kids re-enter the playground of life a little more slowly and with increased awareness of their actions. Adults too, can benefit from a periodic reset. Although most people move so quickly through fast-paced, deadline-driven days that they often neglect their own health and well-being. 12 Indispensable Mindful Living Tools. By Leo Babauta. 40 Quotes that Will Quiet Your Mind. Post written by: Angel Chernoff Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. Mindfulness refers to ... Mindfulness: What’s the POINT? Joseph Goldstein - "Mindfulness: What it is and is Not" Mindfulness (psychology)

Mindfulness as a psychological concept is the focusing of attention and awareness, based on the concept of mindfulness in Buddhist meditation.[1] It has been popularised in the West by Jon Kabat-Zinn.[2] Despite its roots in Buddhism, mindfulness is often taught independently of religion.[3][4] Clinical psychology and psychiatry since the 1970s have developed a number of therapeutic applications based on mindfulness for helping people suffering from a variety of psychological conditions.[5] Several definitions of mindfulness have been used in modern psychology.