Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Mindfulness”
Positive emotions are supposed to be great for you, and of course it feels better to be happy than sad. But so what? If sadness is where you are, what’s the point of lecturing yourself to “be more positive”? Before we start lecturing ourselves or others about what emotions we are supposed to be feeling in any given situation, it …
Are you breathing wrong? Breathing is about the most basic thing we do as living beings, and it’s hard to imagine there being a right and wrong way to do it, but experts say that constant high stress stimulates rapid, shallow breathing, which raises the heart rate, suppresses digestion, and heightens the brain’s tendency to detect danger, whether real or …
More evidence for Mindfulness Mindfulness practices continue to gain in acceptability and evidence of effectiveness in a variety of settings. MoodSurfing has reported on several of these studies in the past, and we continue to monitor the state of the current research. A recent study1 looked at anxiety and considered pharmaceutical intervention compared with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), finding similar …
A discussion with a patient this past week really brought into focus the power of the mind to affect the world. Or maybe it would be better to say how we decide to live in the world. Our patient, I’ll call her “Amy”, is a teacher’s aide in a crowded, underfunded special ed. classroom, and she was saying she is …
Anger seems to be a topic on everybody’s mind these days. Meltdowns in the mall, road rage, demonstrations, shootings… What’s going on? Well, as we all know, it’s been a stressful two years, and there seems to be a lot of pent-up steam to be let off. But since we are supposed to be civilized adults, we also need to …
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a way of learning to live with chronic illness that teaches the patient to be present in the moment and get in touch with reality, instead of the scripts that may be running in their brain. Learning to live in the present moment can take a lifetime, but it also allows one to step …
Mindfulness practices are a staple of non-medication approaches to managing chronic illness and maintaining mental and physical health, but they have sometimes been considered unscientific, unproven, or just not “modern”. However, more and more experience and research is backing up the claims of mindfulness practitioners. A recent study looking a mood homeostasis, or balance, found that people who utilize strategies …
Ginger showed up in my office today feeling “incredibly irritated” by “people who don’t do their jobs.” She is a small business owner who relies on the work of many contractors for her business and she has been running into the usual excuses for work done late, or not at all, and finding the excuses to be almost intolerable. She …
Sometimes our lives can become so full of the myriad items to manage and tend to that we lose track of what is most meaningful. Rarely do we afford ourselves the time to stop and ask, “How do I really want to be spending my time? What is it that I value?” The end-result of this way of functioning tends …
Can you change your brain? Recent research in the field of “neuroplasticity” suggests that the human brain continues to change and adapt throughout life. Furthermore, there is clear evidence that an individual can affect the changes to their own brain structure by how they pay attention to stimuli around them. The implication of this research is that, for example, a …
Moodsurfing has often recommended mindfulness exercises for those grappling with bipolar and other chronic illnesses, but is it possible to go beyond exercises and make mindfulness a part of your everyday life? One way to do this is to take an activity that you do habitually, like turning on the coffee maker in the morning, brushing your teeth, or whatever …
Are you busy? Why? Are you rushing? Why? Being busy and accomplishing a lot of things is supposed to get us somewhere we want to be, or something we want to have. But is it working? We usually believe that we have to rush to get everything done and we have to get everything done in order to get what …
Present Moment Awareness in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a way of learning to live outside of your head. So often we spend time and energy thinking about how we wish our situation was, or (even more often) trying to avoid thinking about how it isn’t what we wish it was. ACT encourages us to start by Accepting what …
Everyday Contemplation: Maintaining a Hush for Mental Health “Contemplation:” The word’s Latin root means “a space to view auguries.” (Those are implements used for divining the future.) I say that you don’t forecast the future by quiet sitting: you change it, and for the better! You reach into your heart, bring up from it your essence, and refine that into …
How can we reconcile acceptance and the unacceptable in our lives? A new blog post from Rick Hanson sparked me to thinking about the relationship between acceptance and acquiescence or even complicity. So many things are wrong with the world. Is there no role for righteous anger? And yet… Acceptance in the sense that Rick means is really about not …
Perfectionism and depression are opposites that often seem to attract each other, and the combination can be a great challenge for anyone trying to “live creatively with moods.” Depression enhances our brain’s natural tendency to see problems in the world around us… it shines a spotlight on every imperfection. It is a perfectionist’s nightmare. Perfectionism Perfectionism itself is not necessarily …
Early birds can save 180$ on a remarkable program that will help put them on the path to wellbeing in 2018. Longtime readers of this blog have been exposed to the ideas and insights of Rick Hanson in many previous posts. I think he is one of the most important figures in the field of positive psychology. Once a year, …
Newcomers to the practice of mindfulness meditation tend to imagine that mindfulness practice should ideally be associated with a state of calm happiness or relaxed bliss, so the idea of mindfulness as an approach to illness may seem odd or incongruous. It is worth going back a few years to Jon Kabat-Zinn‘s early work popularizing mindfulness in the United States. …
This is a quote from one of my patients which illustrates how profoundly a regular meditation practice can affect mood and anxiety. The woman who shared this experience with me is a genuine skeptic about all things “new age” and that made her words even more meaningful in my mind… “The most important thing to know is that for the …
Mindful speech seems to be in short supply these days. A pervasive sense of urgency about communication propels us into comments that we later regret. Rick Hanson reminds us of the words of Buddha, wise speech always has five characteristics. It is: Well-intended – Born of goodwill, seeks to support and strengthen rather than belittle and criticize. True – Not overstated, taken out …
