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Mindful Mindfulness

Silvia • November 27, 2019
"Feelings, whether compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, accepted and treated equally because both are ourselves. The tangerine I eat is me. The cabbage I plant is me. With all my heart and soul, I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I could use to bathe the baby Buddha or Jesus. In mindfulness and compassion, the cabbage plant all become holy."/Thich Nhat Hanh/

The word "conscious presence" is most often used as  the equivalent of mindfulness, but to clarify what it is, I will try to clarify it through a few examples: 
  • Have you ever noticed that many times when you do your everyday activities, e.g., go shopping, your mind is entirely different? You either think about what happened at work that day or what tasks await you when you get home. So you are not present but somewhere in the past or the future. 
  • Has it ever happened that when you were in a position of attention, whether you were just learning something, calculating, or driving in a strange place, your attention slipped, and you lost the thread because your mind was again on a trip to the past or the future?
  • Does it happen that when you are listening to a performance or watching a movie, sitting in a theatre, you suddenly switch to "dreaming" mode because the play does not engage your mind and, therefore, starts producing another one, which of course is about YOU, but not about your present, but again about your PAST or your FUTURE? 
  • Have you ever had the experience of arriving somewhere without having any idea how you got there? If someone were to ask you what you saw on the way, would you be able to recall much? 
Suppose you answered yes to the above questions. In that case, you know how wandering our minds can be; perhaps you have already experienced how dangerous it can be in a given situation. And I'll go further: if this foggy, inattentive state persists for a long time (as, for example, it is unfortunately common after experiencing trauma and in crises), then your physical health can suffer as well. However, suppose you learn to build awareness and conscious attention through mindfulness and practice it regularly. In that case, you will not only enter a state of non-judgmental full attention, but you can achieve much greater physical and mental health than you could have ever imagined. 

This, your best version of yourself is not as unattainable as it seems at first. You must return to the original state of being because being in the present is our primary state, so it's much more comfortable for your mind and soul than you think. Countless scientific research proves that it is the most effective way to reduce stress and protect you from relapse after all kinds of therapy. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the most well-known researchers on the topic, put together the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which is taught, researched and developed at the world's best medical universities and health institutions. An improved version of this is the version expanded with cognitive therapy, MBCT, which will slowly become a basic requirement for psychologists and professionals in the health sector. 
Living with fears means you are anxious, you are not efficient at your work, you are often in a bad mood, and you don't feel that you can control your life, then maybe a mindfulness-focused online consultation would help you a lot, which you can sign up for here:
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