The mainstreaming of mindfulness meditation

[Jesus Malverde]

Why is mindfulness so popular?
It appeals to people seeking an antidote to life in work-obsessed, tech-saturated, frantically busy Western culture. There is growing scientific evidence that mindfulness meditation has genuine health benefits — and can even alter the structure of the brain, so the technique is drawing some unlikely devotees. Pentagon leaders are experimenting with mindfulness to make soldiers more resilient, while General Mills has installed a meditation room in every building of its Minneapolis campus. Even tech-obsessed Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are using it as a way to unplug from their hyperconnected lives. "Meditation always had bad branding for this culture," says Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter. "But to me, it's a way to think more clearly and to not feel so swept up."

What is mindfulness, exactly?
It's a meditation practice central to the Buddha's teachings, which has now been adapted by Western teachers into a secular self-help technique. One of the pioneers in the field is Jon Kabat-Zinn, an MIT-educated molecular biologist who began teaching mindfulness in the 1970s to people suffering from chronic pain and disease. The core of mindfulness is quieting the mind's constant chattering — thoughts, anxieties, and regrets. Practitioners are taught to keep their attention focused on whatever they're doing at the present moment, whether it's eating, exercising, or even working. The most basic mindfulness practice is sitting meditation: You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and focus your awareness on your breath and other bodily sensations. When thoughts come, you gently let them go without judgment and return to the focus on the breath. Over time, this practice helps people connect with a deeper, calmer part of themselves, and retrain their brains not to get stuck in pointless, neurotic ruminations about the past and future that leave them constantly stressed, anxious, or depressed.

Does it work?
Scientific research has shown that mindfulness appears to make people both happier and healthier. Regular meditation can lower a person's blood pressure and their levels of cortisol, a stress hormone produced by the adrenal gland and closely associated with anxiety. Meditation can also increase the body's immune response, improve a person's emotional stability and sleep quality, and even enhance creativity. When combining mindfulness with traditional forms of cognitive behavioral therapy, patients in one study saw a 10 to 20 percent improvement in the mild symptoms of their depression — the same progress produced by antidepressants. Other studies have found that up to 80 percent of trauma survivors and veterans with PTSD see a significant reduction in troubling symptoms. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is also teaching mindfulness as a form of treatment for patients with substance abuse problems.

Why does it work?
MRI scans have shown that mindfulness can alter meditators' brain waves — and even cause lasting changes to the physical structure of their brains (see below). Meditation reduces electrical activity and blood flow in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in strong, primal emotions such as fear and anxiety, while boosting activity regions responsible for planning, decision-making, and empathy. These findings have helped attract the more skeptical-minded. "There is a swath of our culture who is not going to listen to someone in monk's robes," says Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, "but they are paying attention to scientific evidence."

Read More: http://www.theweek.com/article/index/259351/the-mainstreaming-of-mindfulness-meditation

The average American now consumes 63 gigabytes of content, or more than 150,000 words, over 13.6 hours of media use every single day — and all indications are that those numbers will keep climbing.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

1. May all beings....

Be happy, be free...
One part of me loves the thought of mindfulness meditation sneaking into the
Hearts and minds of those who work in the Pentagon, or Wall Street.
It is so sweetly subversive, how self inquiry can transform one into a kind and feeling being.
Then there is the other part of me that wonders how those places will
Try to mold it into some darker form to use for their own benefit.

[quaker bill]

2. A practice unprogrammed Quaker Meetings share with Budhists.

I have been meditating this way for 30 years. We call it "centering down".

It does work on health in the ways reported. My last check up at the MD involved about a 25 minute wait in the exam room. I "centered down" and meditated until he arrived. I got the best physical readings I have had in many years.

[marions ghost]

3. we take in a lot of information

without time to process it...flush it out. Delete. Clear cache. Clear all.

The collective mind is hyper, crazed, frenetic these days--nowhere more so than in America where people talk over each other, over-schedule, spend enormous amounts of time consuming (not only stuff to buy but stuff to think about), and never ever, have a sense of "being caught up."

We are rarely what you'd call "present."

So I think this is a useful and generally accessible meditation practice as an anxiety and stress reliever.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

4. Namaste

.

[Fred Sanders]

5. Thai people, 98% Buddhist, and daily practitioners of mindfulness, have to be the most content and

gentle people in the world, particularly in the Northern Lanna Kingdom....it is like living on another planet there. Watching people bear gifts to monks at 7 in the morning and hearing the gentle lecture received in return is plain awesome.

[Jesus Malverde]

6. Bump..nt