Even if you feel mindfulness meditation is “not working” (whatever that means!), do it anyway. The benefits occur, even if you feel they don’t. Here’s a reminder of the benefits of mindfulness meditation from the Mindfulness Works Newsletter today:
“How mindfulness works to reduce stress and anxiety
Practising mindfulness meditation will automatically and quite naturally cause us to relax more often; it does this by triggering the relaxation response. When we are sitting in one place for a period of time and focusing on our body or our breath and we naturally start to relax, we find that:
• the breathing slows
• our blood pressure drops
• our heart rate slows
• oxygen in our blood increases
• our muscles relax
• the mind starts to soften and/or feel more spacious.
Over time and with consistent practice, both the structure and the chemistry of our brain changes so that we are relaxed and at ease more often. This happens automatically and, in fact, it shows us that relaxation will happen even if our mind seems very busy and full of thoughts.”
So keep practising, especially during these big changes in daily life all over the world because of…. you-know-what!
And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to send me an email via the contact page, or leave a comment!
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If you’d like a guided meditation to use, you could check out this open awareness guided mindfulness meditation recording on Soundcloud.com, made by me. Or choose from the heaps more, wonderful Mindfulness Works NZ facilitators, put Mindfulness Works in the search box and find a voice you like.
I also recommend having this in the background if you don’t live in nature (and are lucky to have unlimited data/wifi): 8 hours of bird and water sounds (on Youtube)
