How to Sharpen Focus and Open Minds

 Mindfulness is a Method to Sharpen Focus and Open Minds


People experience tension and anxiety and need to find ways to cope.

Mindfulness. Elementary school students practice it. Doctors practice it — and their patients. Prisoners practice it. There’s mindful eating that promises a healthier way of eating. And scans show mindfulness may change the way our brains function and help us improve attention, reduce stress hormones and even bounce back faster from negative information.

“Intentionally paying attention to the present nonjudgmentally” is the way that Janice Marturano explains it. She runs the nonprofit Institute for Mindful Leadership. What it’s not, she said, is only about reducing stress. Or about emptying our minds of all thoughts. Or about religion.

The basic techniques: 

First, find a quiet place to focus your attention — on your breath or perhaps on an object. It’s not deep breathing, but rather experiencing “when the breath enters and leaves,” Ms. Marturano said. “Feel the stretch in the rib cage, without me doing anything. Can I notice when the mind takes a hike and redirect it? That redirection is the exercise.”

Perhaps you start at 10 minutes and work your way up to half an hour or 40 minutes a day. But that’s only part of the whole practice.

Use “purposeful pauses”, like deciding that instead of thinking of a coming meeting while brushing your teeth you really focus on the taste of the toothpaste and the bristles and the water.

“Take yourself out of autopilot,” she said. And eventually expand that “being in the moment” to other parts of your life... over time you’ll feel more focused and more connected to yourself and others.

Mostly we want to get things done, to identify and fix problems. And that’s the opposite of what mindfulness is all about.

“The way it’s presented in the media, people begin to believe it’s a magic pill ” 

“It takes time and sustained practice to experience maximum benefits” said Christy Matta, author of the book “The Stress Response” (2012, New Harbinger Publications).

If you go into it with the idea of reducing stress, you’re working against the very thing you are trying to attain, because you are aiming at a goal. Mindfulness, “is about being present,” she said. “You have to do it just to do it. You cannot strive for things.”

Dr. Baime said another common misconception is that mindfulness is about learning to be happy. It’s not. Nor is it about eliminating stress.

“Stress does not go away, ever. That’s why we call it stress management rather than stress elimination,” he said.  Mindfulness can “create a world where you experience depth, meaning and connectedness. You see joy and sadness more fully and settle more deeply into an authentic way of being.”

Mindfulness can help with anxiety and depression, but it does not replace your doctor's advice.

“Full Catastrophe Living”  by Jon Kabat-Zinn is a good place to begin learning about mindfulness.
 
Ms. Marturano compares mindfulness to exercise, in that you can watch a video of how to play tennis and perhaps learn to play at a basic level. But to get better, you need a teacher.

“You’re on a journey of self-discovery and you need a guide,”.

Read more @ Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/your-money/mindfulness-requires-practice-and-purpose.html?

Writer: ALINA TUGEND