Considerações Saber Sobre self-knowledge

Considerações Saber Sobre self-knowledge

Blog Article

Some seem to believe mindfulness practice will invariably induce a sense of peace and calm. While this can be the experience for many, it is not the experience for all. At times, sitting quietly with oneself can be a difficult—even painful—experience.

Meditation is the practice of lightly holding your attention on an anchor, such as your breath, and gently bringing it back there when it wanders.

Add to this that we have entered what many people are calling the “attention economy.” In the attention economy, the ability to maintain focus and concentration is every bit as important as technical or management skills.

We’re teaching ourselves to be comfortable with our mind just the way it is. It really is that simple. Meditation isn’t about achieving anything other than doing it: slowing down during our busy day, checking in with ourselves, and noticing how the mind is. Because meditation is about being kind to our mind.

We might feel sleepy. If we doze off, don’t worry. The mind’s getting used to figuring out the difference between slowing down and shutting off.

An essential component of mindfulness is acceptance. Whatever you’re thinking and feeling at that moment is neither right nor wrong. You notice it, and accept it, and move onto the next moment without getting caught up in judging what you’re thinking or feeling.

If we have trouble meditating at first, that’s okay. It happens to all of us. Even if we find ourselves wondering if we’re meditating correctly, don’t forget: they’re just thoughts.

Note that we’re not saying it necessarily reduces physiological and psychological reactions to threats and obstacles. But studies to date do suggest that meditation helps mind and body bounce back from stress and stressful situations. For example, practicing meditation lessens the inflammatory response in people exposed to psychological stressors, particularly for long-term meditators.

However, social bias isn’t the meditation music only kind of mental bias mindfulness appears to reduce. For example, several studies convincingly show that mindfulness probably reduces sunk-cost bias, which is our tendency to stay invested in a losing proposition. Mindfulness also seems to reduce our natural tendency to focus on the negative things in life. In one study, participants reported on their general mindfulness levels, then briefly viewed photos that induced strong positive emotion (like photos of babies), strong negative emotion (like photos of people in pain), or neither, while having their brains scanned. More mindful participants were less reactive to negative photos and showed higher indications of positive feeling when seeing the positive photos. According to the authors, this supports the contention that mindfulness decreases the negativity bias, something other studies support, too.

Meditation does have an impact on physical health—but it’s modest. Many claims have been made about mindfulness and physical health, but sometimes these claims are hard to substantiate or may be mixed up with other effects. That said, there is some good evidence that meditation affects physiological indices of health. We’ve already mentioned that long-term meditation seems to buffer people from the inflammatory response to stress. In addition, meditators seem to have increased activity of telomerase, an enzyme implicated in longer cell life and, therefore, longevity. But there’s a catch. “The differences found [between meditators and non-meditators] could be due to factors like education or exercise, each of which has its own buffering effect on brains,” write Goleman and Davidson in

To start, aim for three meditation sessions per week, and increase that number over time. As you begin to notice its effects in your life, you’ll look for any opportunity to meditate!

It’s often said that meditation may be simple, but it isn’t easy. And this makes sense. It’s not part of our normal routine to sit quietly, without any distraction, and just… breathe.

Participants also reported that they became more assertive in saying ‘pelo’ to others in order to lessen their load of responsibility, allowing them to become more balanced in acknowledging their own as well as others’ needs.

According to neuroscience research, mindfulness practices dampen activity in our amygdala and increase the connections between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Both of these parts of the brain help us to be less reactive to stressors and to recover better from stress when we experience it. As Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson write in their new book,