Learn to Change Negative Thinking » Mindfulness

Mindfulness added to daily meditation helps build a reservoir of positive thoughts that help keep us rooted in the present. In learning to use the mind as an instrument to help promote peace, we will be strengthened to remember the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.”

Additional links for the prayer:

indianchild.com–St. Francis’s prayer

Mindfulness with meditation is easy to incorporate. Shimona Kee whose blog is Happiness is A Choice recommends adding them by:

“When, in meditation, you start to block off all the senses one by one, you are selectively paying attention.
Next, keep talking to yourself, telling yourself to focus on the sound of your breath.
As your breathing gets longer, deeper, louder, and more rhythmic, you might find your mind wandering. Each time it does so, just acknowledge that it did, push the thought away, and continue to focus on the breath.
Patience.
Patience and lots of practice.”

One of my favorite resources for mindfulness is Jim Hopper. He reminds us:

Stressful times, and too much of life in general, can involve repeatedly focusing on difficult experiences and unpleasant emotions. It’s extremely important to train the mind to notice and enhance positive emotions too.

Mindfulness can help you notice the positive emotions that spontaneously arise in your experience. If you’re going through your life feeling down much of the time, reexperiencing negative emotions resulting from past negative experiences, it can become hard even to notice positive emotions. Or positive emotions can be swamped and overwhelmed by more familiar negative ones before you even notice. Also, sometimes people actually dismiss positive feelings, because they’re afraid to get their hopes up. They think to themselves, “it won’t last, so why bother focusing on it?”

Practicing bringing your attention to whatever arises in the present moment, and noticing it without judgment, makes you much more likely to notice positive experiences and emotions and much less likely to judge or dismiss them. Particularly when your mind is moving more slowly, and is relatively spacious, positive feelings have an opportunity to grow, last longer and lead to other positive feelings. And many positive emotions, particularly feelings of appreciation, kindness and love, help to enhance the mind’s calmness.As Dr. Jill Henry of the Mountain Valley Center views it, it’s all about mastering the practice of mindfulness.

Our own mind carries us away. Our thoughts are like unruly children, constantly pulling us here and there. And this constant pulling is the source of our stress and pain. Mindfulness is the skill that allows us to watch our thoughts and feelings without being pulled by them. Initially, in practice, all this mental chatter preoccupies us. Then we begin to realize that we do have control. By noticing and observing, we stop reacting. And it is our reactions to our thoughts that bring us emotional stress and physical dis-ease.

Healing Eating Problems with Savoring

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:32:00 +0000

Sesame Chicken Macro by stevedepoto

Learning to savor the food we eat can help us to learn a new, reflective experience with our food. Emiliya Zhivotovskaya writes about how her first experience with recovery from her eating habits was to eat one meal in complete silence while learning to savor each bite.

She writes:

“I went on to use what Bryant and Veroff call anticipatory savoring, basking, and thanksgiving. I turned gratitude into a meditation tracing the origin of my meal down to its roots. I expressed gratitude to my mother for preparing the meal… to the grocery store for offering the ingredients… to the vendor that sold the produce to the grocery store… to the people and machinery that picked the produce in the field… to the earth that gave rise to the produce… and to the sun for making the growth possible.”

I have been using this technique for awhile and it has helped me learn to pay attention to the food I am eating. Mindfulness teaches us to learn how to stay in the moment and savor what life is giving us every moment of our lives.

For help with mindfulness and eating:

TCME is the center for mindful eating and includes these components:

(1) Learning to make choices in beginning or ending a meal based on awareness of hunger and satiety cues;
(2) Learning to identify personal triggers for mindless eating, such as emotions, social pressures, or certain foods;
(3) Valuing quality over quantity of what you’re eating;
(4) Appreciating the sensual, as well as the nourishing, capacity of food;
(5) Feeling deep gratitude that may come from appreciating and experiencing food

Mastering the Mindful Meal by Stephanie Vangsness begins with the following:

“Eating while multitasking, whether working through lunch or watching TV while eating dinner, often leads us to eat more. On the other hand, eating “mindfully,” savoring every mouthful, enhances the experience of eating and keeps us aware of how much we take in.”

“Our fast-food culture is one where meals have become yet another task we squeeze in during the day. It is all too common to hear of people grabbing breakfast on the run or attending a lunch meeting, where business is front and center and food is merely the bait to get people there.”

Regular yoga practice is associated with mindful eating is a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The study found that people who used yoga practice with mindful eating were less likely to be obese.

“The researchers found that people who ate mindfully – those were aware of why they ate and stopped eating when full – weighed less than those who ate mindlessly, who ate when not hungry or in response to anxiety or depression. The researchers also found a strong association between yoga practice and mindful eating but found no association between other types of physical activity, such as walking or running, and mindful eating.”

Mindful eating links:

The Center for Mindful Eating

The CAMP System: The Joy of Mindful Eating

Mindful Eating

Mindful Eating: Get Out of Autopilot

Emindful: Live Interactive Online Classes