Tips for Mindfulness Practitioners from the Mindfulness Based Stress Relief Classes

One of the best ways to reduce the amount of stress you are experiencing is to do a meditation class and practice MBSR. This can also be referred to as becoming a practitioner of mindfulness. By quieting the mind, focusing on your breath, you can learn to approach the troubles you are experiencing in a new way. 

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is about being as fully aware as one can be of whatever is happening in the present moment, without filters or the lens of judgment. Put simply, mindfulness consists of cultivating awareness of the mind and body and living in the here and now. Mindfulness is simply observing, watching, and examining what is going on right now.

All of us spend most of the time either rehashing the past, reliving memories or rehearsing the future, making plans and going over them again and again but not paying attention to the only moment we have – the now. Often we get so involved in the past or the future, that we totally miss the present, the moment where our lives actually occur.

Why is Mindfulness helpful?

Mindfulness and meditation may help the practitioner’s well-being in a number of different ways:

• More insight into life. By taking a mindful perspective, mindfulness practitioners observe life’s experience however; they are not caught up in it. Practitioners have the ability to find more clarity about what is happening in their minds, and in their lives;

• Enhanced problems solving. Meditators can slow down and investigating their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The process of mindfulness allows the practitioner to respond to difficult situations rather than habitually react.

• Improved attention. Mindfulness improves the meditators ability to pay attention. It improves concentration. Because they are less distracted, practitioners are able to accomplish tasks and reach goals.

• Greater enjoyment of life. We can become more aware of pleasant experiences that were previously unnoticed because of our mental focus on the past and the future.

• Less negativity. With greater equanimity, mindfulness practitioners break away from the negative thinking patterns most of us have. Meditators are able to treat themselves with a greater sense of kindness and self-care.

If you are looking for Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Classes in Memphis, you can click on this link for our MBSR schedule of classes.