Mindfulness Therapy for Trauma and Anxiety.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to bring one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgment or being overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.
While mindfulness is something we all naturally possess, it’s more readily available to us when we practice on a daily basis. Individuals may be able to pay attention to a variety of experiences, such as bodily sensations, cognitions, and feelings, and accept them without being influenced by them. Mindfulness practices are believed to be able to help people better control their thoughts, rather than be controlled by them.
Whenever you bring awareness to what you’re directly experiencing via your senses, or to your state of mind via your thoughts and emotions, you’re being mindful. Mindfulness is now being examined scientifically and has been found to be a key element in stress reduction and overall happiness. And there’s growing research showing that when you train your brain to be mindful, you’re actually remodeling the physical structure of your brain.
mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR)
Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder and former director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, helped to bring the practice of mindfulness meditation into mainstream medicine and demonstrated that practicing mindfulness can bring improvements in both physical and psychological symptoms as well as positive changes in health, attitudes, and behaviors.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) actively teaches mindfulness meditation as a part of treatment. MBSR is in over 250 hospitals around the country and many more around the world supporting people with stress, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, alleviating stress related to medical conditions and much more.
MBSR works in part by helping individuals to learn to identify the moment of choice before we react to stress and pain in life. However, for most of us, we're unaware of this space to make a choice because we get caught in habitual patterns of reacting to life. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and mindfulness training help us become more aware of these habitual reactions and helps us relate to ourselves in a new way to interrupt this cycle and create more choice in life.
“If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don’t really know where we are standing...We may only go in circles...”
How will mindfulness therapy help me?
Evidence has linked practicing mindfulness to changes in many parts of the brain. Some research suggests that mindfulness can affect the production of chemicals that change our mood. Other evidence shows that connections between different regions of the brain change when we are mindful.
To live mindfully is to live in the moment and reawaken oneself to the present, rather than dwelling on the past or anticipating the future. Mindfulness can also be a healthy way to identify and manage unconscious emotions that are causing problems in personal or professional relationships. Mindfulness has many positive benefits, including lowering stress levels, reducing harmful ruminating, and protecting against depression and anxiety.
MINDFULNESS IMPROVES WELL-BEING
Increasing your capacity for mindfulness supports many attitudes that contribute to a satisfied life. Many people who practice mindfulness find that they are less likely to get caught up in worries about the future or regrets over the past, are less preoccupied with concerns about success and self-esteem, and are better able to form deep connections with others.
Mindfulness can be of great benefit, as it can enable people to become better able to separate themselves from negative thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations that may be present, often before they become too overwhelming. Regular mindfulness meditation practice is believed to help further psychological insight and emotional healing, over time.