Why should you bother with a mindfulness meditation practice?

One of the first questions you may ask yourself when you hear about mindfulness meditation is, why should I bother with it? What reasons are there for taking up mindfulness meditation as a habit, why would I want to sit for hours a week doing seemingly absolutely nothing?

 

Would I be achieving something really well worth my while by sitting to meditate daily? Maybe you will have heard that meditation can help you out if you are stressed, perhaps you will be aware that meditation can help with deep physical relaxation if practiced regularly.

 

The truth is that the benefits of a regular and tuned mindfulness meditation practice are just so numerous and so beneficial that I could not hope to either list them all or to do them any deserved justice in this simple article. However, I will outlay the general benefits as I understand them and hopefully give you some insight into the reasons why I believe it’s a good idea for anyone reading this article to begin a daily meditation practice as from today.

 

 

 

 

There have been several scientific studies done on meditation in this area now. Most significantly are the recent studies comparing scans of the brain of long-term mediators, of new mediators, and of a control group.

 

These scans showed conclusively that a part of the brain known as the left prefrontal cortex, an area typically associated with pleasant emotions and positive feelings, was significantly more active in long-term mediators than in either of the other two groups.

 

The study also demonstrated that the left prefrontal cortex was somewhat more active in the new mediators group than in the control group.

 

 

To put it simply – a daily mindfulness meditation practice causes you to be happier. This is something I can also verify from my own experience with mindfulness meditation.

 

The group of new mediators had actually under-taken an 8 week course which involved at least 45 minutes of meditation a day. So that gives you an idea of the level of commitment you should start at if you wish to see some really powerful tangible effects on your happiness using mindfulness meditation.

 

 

The mind of most people is buzzing constantly with silly thoughts which they are not even aware of. Thoughts which are day by day controlling their actions, but which they have no conscious recognition and thus no ability to affect.

 

A trained sense of mindfulness quite early into your regular practice will teach you to always recognise these thoughts as they come, to see them before they cause feelings or reactions in you.

 

Mindfulness thusly offers you liberation from your own mind; from any pre-programmed habitual thoughts which may have been occurring for many many years on a daily-basis. With a trained sense of insight you are aware of these thoughts as they occur.

 

You are able to first see the effect which they were having, and then, as you further train your awareness, you are able to accept or release those thoughts and remain completely unaffected by them.

 

 

A regular mindfulness meditation practices teaches you to accept everything as it is, and as it comes. So an event occurs, a thought happens, and your mindfulness training is that you look at the sensations and experiences with insight, you examine them and see them as purely the representations that they are without having an opinion about them or a preconception about them or getting too involved in some emotion which may arise towards them.

 

Then you accept the way these things are, as purely the experiential qualities which are presented to your awareness at the time. Such an attitude, over time, develops within you a deep sense of inner-calm.

 

There is a reason why monks just seem so calm all the time. It is not some great secret or some great wisdom which they are hiding from the rest of the world.

 

It is simply that they have trained parts of their mind which are trained using this kind of meditation. They have trained them to such an extent that they are able to see that all these things that come their way are nothing to get into a fuss about.

 

The ability of some monks to commit suicide, in protest, by setting themselves on fire is well documented. This ability requires a huge amount of will-power and a monolithic ability to watch experiences as they come with impartiality. It is the well trained mind of the monks which allows them to act in such unbelievable ways.

 

It is the regular meditation practice of the monks which allows them to train their mind in such ways.

 

 

 

A well trained mindfulness ability allows you to accept feelings which previously you would have resisted or struggled with, such as anxiety and fear.

 

The ability to accept these emotions as they come; to look upon them with impartiality, nonchalance, and insight causes them to weaken and to eventually be ineffectual.

 

But as well as learning the ability to tolerate and accept emotions, meditation also trains the mind to be able to see things differently; to be able to look at all the positives about your situation rather than to have your view obscured by only the negatives.

 

It is similar in a way to how you can sit and be uncomfortable in one part of your body, but with a trained sense of bodily awareness you can be aware only of the positive relaxation feels in your body instead.

 

 

As well as training your insight, mindfulness also trains an ability to focus. Although there are meditations which better train your focus, mindfulness is still a great place to start for this kind of mental training. In mindfulness focus often is placed upon the breath.

 

However it can also be trained upon the feelings of relaxation pleasure which flow through the body as it sits, or it can be watching the mind like a hawk – waiting for the new thought to arise so that it can be looked upon with insight and the flow of thought tracked with a deep sense of awareness.

 

 

Very simply for a most basic introduction; sit and observe your thoughts for 20 minutes.

 

Do not become involved or attached to any thoughts – if this happens, accept it, and move back to the observation process. At first the process may feel frustrating or be associated with a sense of anxiety.

 

Observe those feelings also with neutrality also, accept them, and return to the observation process.

 

For a more complex breakdown of what mindfulness is read my article on an introduction to mindfulness meditation.

 

For all the articles I have wrote on mindfulness you should check out the awareness tag.

 

Practice well.