Weather by kevindooley

Goals are dreams with a deadline. Do you have both short-term and long-term goals? If you set a few hours aside each week—Sunday evening is my favorite—you can develop goals that you can easily transfer into short to do lists. Each week you could choose one short-term goal and one long-term goal. The trick is if you finish the long-term goal during that week—do not choose more. Instead reward yourself for living a balanced life.

When my life is out of whack, the first thing I do is to evaluate on a short note how much time I’m spending with the major areas of my life. Generally—but not always—I am spending too much time living in the past or in the future. Forgetting to live in today is the major way I get out of sorts—emotionally and in all ways.

Mindfulness takes such a little bit of time for the vast rewards it gives to my serenity. I have to have that inner calm to make and keep goals and to enjoy my life everyday. Some of my favorite places for mindfulness exercises are:

(1)  Anxiety Insights: Workplace Meditation and Yoga can Lower Stress--“

Twenty minutes per day of guided workplace meditation and yoga combined with six weekly group sessions can lower feelings of stress by more than 10 percent and improve sleep quality in sedentary office employees, a pilot study suggests.

The study offered participants a modified version of what is known as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a program established in 1979 to help hospital patients in Massachusetts assist in their own healing that is now in wide use around the world.

(2)  Jack Canfield in “Shift Your Life to be More in Line With Your Vision” writes about: ”Where are Your Habits Leading You?”

oddsock

Learning to relax and enjoy the life you have is made easier by practicing mindfulness. Use the following resources to practice mindfulness:

(1)  From “Zen” from youmeworks reminds us–”Mindfulness meditation is somewhat different. There is no particular focus. It is a process of paying attention to your ongoing experience, whatever it may be at the moment. If you have a pain in your knee and that happens to be prominent in your awareness right now, you pay attention to that — not trying to concentrate, but simply noticing it and letting it be there. You don’t try to make it different. You don’t try to hold onto it. You just notice it as fully as you can, including what is going through your mind about it.”

(2) “How to do Mindfulness Meditation” by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche includes this:

“In mindfulness, or shamatha, meditation, we are trying to achieve a mind that is stable and calm. What we begin to discover is that this calmness or harmony is a natural aspect of the mind. Through mindfulness practice we are just developing and strengthening it, and eventually we are able to remain peacefully in our mind without struggling. Our mind naturally feels content.”

(3)  From Jim Hopper’s excellent site, an excerpt from “How Could Mindfulness Help Me?

“Learning to bring one’s attention back to the present moment, including the ever-present process of breathing, over and over again, involves learning to catch oneself entering into habitual patterns that prevent clear awareness of the present moment. With continued practice and increasing development of mindfulness, one becomes increasingly able to notice those habitual reactions – to unwanted and wanted but unhealthy experiences and emotions – that prevent one from responding consciously and constructively.”

“For example, instead of realizing 5-10 minutes later that you’ve been lost in bad memories or fantasies of revenge, you can catch yourself after only 30-60 seconds. Better yet, you can learn to catch yourself in the process of getting lost in a memory or fantasy. In time, you can increasingly observe these habitual responses as they arise, and choose to respond in other, more skillful ways.”

Into the light by mindfulness

Wikipedia identifies mindfulness as “the practice whereby a person is intentionally aware of his or her thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally”. Although my faith is based in Jesus Christ, I am thankful that He has given me the gift of openness to explore and implement practices from other faiths and religions.

In 1976, when I began implementing breathing exercise with meditation practices, I immediately knew that finding my center and focusing on my breath in and breath out enabled calm and peace to flow through my body. Being human, I learned in a moment what has taken a lifetime to implement. Transcendental meditation has been found to decrease heart rate and blood pressure because the mind-body connection prospers when one experiences peace and calm.

The following websites can help someone to experience mindfulness, mediation and peace: From New Dream Network come several sites linked together: Energy Breath—-Healing Arts Online–-Thinking Peace. Although these blogs are selling selected books does not take away the thoughtfulness presentations here.

Some current articles or posts about mindfulness meditation:

Mindfulness Meditation and Concentration Meditation–by Matt Clarkson:

“Mindfulness meditation is also known as insight because the intention is to gain insight as to the true nature of reality.  While concentration involves the practitioner focusing their attention on a single object, in mindfulness meditation practice, every aspect of experience is welcomed and appreciated.”

“With concentration practice, we give the attention a target that keeps us anchored in the present moment.  The target can be a physical object, or more commonly, the breath.  We give the mind something consistent to focus on and this becomes the object of the meditation.”

“Whatever is used as the object for the attention, the aim is to keep the mind focused as often as you remember to do so.  As the mind starts to wander, we simply direct the mind back toward the object of attention with a sense of “friendliness.”

“What do I mean by friendliness?  Whenever we become lost in thought or confusion, we simply acknowledge those thoughts and then gently re-focus the attention.  If we consciously try to prevent thinking, it’s going to have a negative impact on our practice.  Instead, the moment we recognize we have become distracted, we gently bring our attention back.”

An Online Meditation Room (with video)

The following is a book review by  Shai Coggins:

“Arriving at Your Own Door (108 Lessons in Mindfulness) by Jon Kabat-Zinn (Non-fiction, Self-help) – A collection of short thoughts from Kabat-Zinn and some quotations that relate to the topic of mindfulness or meditation.”

“Review: If someone told me that I’d be interested in the topic of “mindfulness” or “meditation” a couple of months ago, I would’ve said they’re nuts. My mind runs a hundred miles a minute and it seriously hurts to try to make it go still. Unless I’m totally exhausted, the brain just won’t stop buzzing.”

“But, something happened to me at the end of last year that I can’t quite explain. And, that something led me to the concept of finding stillness within me. When I was trying to understand the whole thing better, I came across Kabat-Zinn’s work.”

“Since I wasn’t quite sure I’d be all for the mindfulness thing, I decided to read whatever was available from my local library. Thankfully, they had this concise version of one of his books. And, I’m glad I read it. I can’t wait to read more and to learn more. Of course, my mind still buzzes about – and I still struggle with the stillness. But, I am more aware of this concept, and I know I want to get to know it more and to see how it will work for me.”

Stsava Serbian Orthodox by newagecrap

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:

Mindfulness is a technique in which a person becomes intentionally aware of his or her thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally. It plays a central role in Buddhism, with Right Mindfulness being the seventh element of Noble Eightfold Path, the practice of which is considered a prerequisite for developing insight and wisdom. In a secular context, mindfulness is attracting increasing interest among western psychiatrists as a non-pharmacological means of dealing with anxiety and depressive mood states.

Right mindfulness (often also termed Right Meditation) comes in a variety of forms. One example of mindfulness is to mentally give a verbal label to each inbreath and outbreath during sitting meditation. So, each time one breathes in, one thinks “rising”, and each time one breathes out, one thinks “falling”. In this type of meditation, the breath serves as a tether that the practitioner uses to bring his or her awareness back to the present moment.

By residing more frequently in the present moment, practitioners begin to see both the inner and outer aspects of reality. Inner reality may unfold as one sees that the mind is continually chattering with commentary or judgment. By noticing that the mind is continually making commentary, one has the ability to carefully notice those thoughts – and decide if those thoughts have value.

Most often, mindful people realize that “thoughts are just thoughts” – the thoughts themselves have no weight. People are free to release a thought (“let it go”) when they realize that the thought is not concrete reality. They are free to observe life without getting caught in the commentary.

As one more closely observes inner reality, one finds that happiness is not a quality brought about by a change in outer circumstances, but rather by realizing happiness starts with releasing attachment to thoughts; thereby releasing “automatic” reactions toward pleasant and unpleasant situations or feelings.