Mindful Meditation

Last night was my last guided meditation session until mid January.  I wonder if I will be able to carry on on my own over the holidays.   While attending one session a week, I was able to meditate on my own five or six times a week.

Meditation is good for me.  I am calmer, more relaxed.   It only takes about fifteen minutes a day.  The trick will be to make it a habit - like taking vitamins every day. 

A few days ago,  I came across an interesting article about meditation in our free local newspaper:   While it didn't explain exactly what meditation and mindfulness was, here is how the opposite was described:    "The opposite of mindfulness is mindlessness, in which our monkey minds jump from one thought to another, from the past to the future and from emotion to emotion.  Your usual mental state may be reactive - reacting to the urgency of the moment, unresolved sadness or anger about the past, or anxiety about the future".  I can certainly relate to that. 

 

Time Magazine has produced some good articles on Mindful Meditation.  Here is some of what they have had to say a few years ago:

...studies show that meditation is boosting their immune systems, and brain scans suggest that it may be rewiring their brains to reduce stress.   .... Ten million American adults now say they practice some form of meditation regularly, twice as many as a decade ago. Meditation classes today are being filled by mainstream Americans who don't own crystals, don't subscribe to New Age magazines and don't even reside in Los Angeles. For upwardly mobile professionals convinced that their lives are more stressful than those of the cow-milking, soap-making, butter-churning generations that preceded them, meditation is the smart person's bubble bath.

I am hoping that this bubble bath will help me lose weight and sleep better and maybe be better organized.