What I know about Mindfulness practices

Why do I publish Mindfulness Practices books?

Daily prayers and mindfulness practices are part of my day-to-day routine. As small business owner and single dad, I face struggles and frustrations very often. The calm and focus that I sense comes, no doubt, from a good mindset, which is the outcome of practising mindfulness.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of purposely bringing one’s attention in the present moment without evaluation, a skill one develops through meditation or other training. Mindfulness derives from sati, a significant element of Buddhist traditions, and based on Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan meditation techniques. Though definitions and techniques of mindfulness are wide-ranging, Buddhist traditions explain what constitutes mindfulness such as how past, present and future moments arise and cease as momentary sense impressions and mental phenomena. Individuals who have contributed to the popularity of mindfulness in the modern Western context include Thích Nhất Hạnh, Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richard J. Davidson, and Sam Harris.

Why Mindfulness Practice Books are good for you?

Mindfulness can: help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, , improve sleep, and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties.

Benefits of mindfulness

1 Stress reduction.Many studies show that practicing mindfulness reduces stress. In 2010, Hoffman et al. analysed 39 studies that explored the use of mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. The researchers concluded that mindfulness-based therapy may be useful in altering affective and cognitive processes that underlie multiple clinical issues.

2 Decrease in anxiety, negative affect, and emotional reactivity. The researchers found participants who experienced mindfulness-based stress reduction had significantly less anxiety, depression and somatic distress compared with the control group. Mindfulness meditation shifts people’s ability to use emotion regulation strategies in a way that enables them to experience emotion selectively, and that the emotions they experience may be processed differently in the brain (Farb et al., 2010; Williams, 2010). Mindfulness meditation practice helped people disengage from emotionally upsetting pictures and enabled them to focus better on a cognitive task as compared with people who saw the pictures but did not meditate (Ortner et al., 2007).

3 Mindfulness meditation affects our ability to focus attention and suppress distracting information. Individuals who practice mindful meditation had significantly better attention and higher mindfulness, which were directly correlated with cognitive flexibility and attentional functioning (Moore and Malinowski, 2009).

4 Reduced rumination.Several studies have shown that mindfulness reduces rumination. For example, in one study by Chambers et al. (2008), participants at a 10-day intensive mindfulness retreat reported significantly higher mindfulness and a decreased negative affect compared with participants who did not engage in the mindfulness retreat. They also experienced fewer depressive symptoms and less rumination.

5 Relationship satisfaction.A person’s ability to be mindful can help predict relationship satisfaction — the ability to respond well to relationship stress and the skill in communicating one’s emotions to a partner. Mindfulness: protects against the emotionally stressful effects of relationship conflict (Barnes et al., 2007); is positively associated with the ability to express oneself in various social situations (Dekeyser el al., 2008); and predicts relationship satisfaction (Barnes et al., 2007; Wachs & Cordova, 2007).