How Mindfulness Meditation Works
What’s the Latest Development?
Mindfulness meditation, a process through which the practitioner becomes more aware of his or her own thoughts and emotions, is gaining in popularity across the US, with medical studies and productivity reports behind the practice. A report issued by the German Justus Liebig-University and Harvard Medical School suggests that “mindfulness meditation operates through a combination of several distinct mechanisms: attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and a change in perspective on the self.” When the processes combine, an enhanced capacity for self-regulation is achieved.
What’s the Big Idea?
The process of achieving greater self-awareness, and therefore greater self-control, has three main phases: awareness of the mind, awareness of the body, and finally, a dissociation between thought and identity. In a culture that continually emphasizes the cultivation of the self, this may be the most profound lesson that mindfulness meditation has to offer. “According to the Justus Liebig-University and Harvard Medical School report, upon achieving a strong sense of internal awareness and the ability to ‘observe our mental processes with increasing clarity,’ we begin to see the self as something that is continually arising, rather than fixed.”
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