Vajra Blue

Mindfulness and Compassion. Understanding trauma in young people.

Category Archives: Mindfulness


by

Mindfulness: creating space for thought.

image

Mindfulness helps us to become aware of our feelings and thoughts, and how they influence both our behaviour and our perception of the world.

The practice can help us to uncover the thinking errors and traps that our minds can fall into, unless we are alert.

It is important to be aware of these thinking traps in order to allow mindfulness to fully develop.

Mindfulness meditation also help us to become more aware of these thinking errors.

When we are able to identify them, it means that they become less frequent, this then enables our level of mindfulness to increase.

Continue reading →


by

Mindfulness: Three steps to better communication.

Wise men speak because they have something to say;

Fools because they have to say something.

Plato.

As humans we use speech to communicate with each other on a daily basis. While these situations usually lead to a harmonious outcome, many end confusion and ill will. This is down to misunderstanding and a breakdown in communication.  This is usually accidental, although there are times when obfuscation through language seems to be the main aim of any communication. Donald Rumsfeld seemed to be an expert at this.

This breakdown in two-way communication is much more common when the conversation is negative, or when it involves real or perceived criticism. Under these circumstances, excessive emotional responses to neutral information are quite common. We find it hard to tell other people that we are not happy with some aspect of their behaviour, or to hear them say the same kind of thing to us. This uncomfortable experience makes it all too easy to lose sight of our good intentions, and to fall back on what might be our  habitual, unhelpful, and inappropriate ways of behaving, with the inevitable poor outcome.

When we feel attacked and make an emotional response the main drawback is that we stop listening to the conversation and instead we become reactive. This means that we either do not hear, or find ourselves ignoring any other information that might be available. Real communication is no longer possible in this situation and all ends in acrimony and recrimination.

For accurate communication we need to be able to develop a mutual understanding of the issues at hand. We need to understand what we each mean by our words, what the other person understands us to mean, what we feel about the conversation, and what we need to get out of it. Without this we are unable to accurately communicate. As Wittgenstein put it, we need to be playing the same language game as the other person with whom we are talking.

Fortunately it is possible to handle our interactions with others sensitively and confidently on a much more regular basis. Continue reading →


by

Research Finds Meditation More Useful Than Sleep Education in Fighting Insomnia

In our sleep deprived times another good argument to teach mindfulness as widely as possible.
Start them young.

http://www.zmescience.com/medicine/alternative-medicine-medicine/meditation-insomnia-sleep-17022015/?utm_content=bufferb62d2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Sandy


by

Mindfulness and the future

image

Many of us live by other peoples’ rules. We are afraid to act in our own interests.  There is always someone else whose opinion carries more weight than our own. Someone to whom we have given the power to veto the decisions that we make about how we live our lives. These are often internalised figures from our past.

We wait for the right moment to act; when we have the right job, when we have enough money, when we meet Mr or Ms Right.  If we retrain for a different job it might be years before we are ready, so we choose not to. We decide to stay with the status quo and miss out on opportunities to have a richer life.

Where our future is are concerned we have to act, otherwise we will be at the mercy of everything else that is happening. As the Nike advertisement said “Just do it.”

Continue reading →


by

Mindful living for young people

image

Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different, enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t) James Baraz

The benefits of mindfulness in adults are being well researched, and the available evidence about this practice shows many positive benefits across several domains of human functioning.  Research into the benefits for young people has lagged behind the work in adults but is starting to demonstrate very similar effects.

Several studies which have used brain scans and other neuroscientific assessments, have demonstrated both structural and functional changes in the brain following mindfulness practice. These changes are directly related to improvements in both the clarity of our thinking as well as our awareness and control over our feelings.

This means that we can act out of what is happening in the present moment rather than allowing past events and scripts to dictate our current choices and behaviours.

Continue reading →


by 3 Comments

Mindfulness: fitting it into a busy day.

imageTo see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.

William Blake

.

Mindfulness is a buzz word at the moment.

It is touted as being the best thing since sliced bread, in many areas of our lives.

It is promoted for everything from mindful selling, to mindfulness for health, or even as the latest treatment for all our mental health problems.

It has even been suggested as a route to nirvana.

Continue reading →


by

Mindfulness and the brain.

Freedom is about having choice.  If I am aware of my automatic reactions to experience as they arise, then I can take a breath, creating a space for something new.  I can choose a response in that moment, one that reflects the version of me that I aspire to be.

Stacie Smith

The brain is a highly complex organ that makes a contribution to nearly every aspect of the body’s functioning; from awareness of where we are in space, to highly complex thought, to consciousness itself.

It contains about seventy-five billion nerve cells, each of which can make roughly a thousand connections with other neurons. There are about the same number of support cells as well.

Because it is so vital to human functioning the brain is well protected inside the skull.

The evolution of the brain that has occurred over the last several million years has enabled the human species to go from being prey animals to the top predator on the planet.
Continue reading →


by

How to start the move from depression to happiness.

image

I’m sure many of us care about how we will look back on our lives on our deathbed, but the value of our lives comes from the experiences of pleasure and purpose over our lifetimes and not from a judgement we might make at an arbitrarily chosen moment in time.

Paul Dolan.

Most of us want to avoid depression and to be happy. Happiness is something that we pursue with varying degrees of intensity. There are even greater variations in the success that we have in pursuing this Holy Grail of the emotional world. Much of the time we do not even seem to be aware of what we mean by happiness, and seem to have even less idea of how we might possess it. Continue reading →


by

5 ways to make your resolutions stick

wpid-cigarettes_in_ashtray.jpg

It is that time of year when we all usually decide that we need to change something about ourselves. We drink too much, we are killing ourselves through smoking or eating too much chocolate. We were going to exercise more, cycle to work or get better at being organised.

Somehow we usually seem to find something that we can use to beat ourselves up. We are not good enough, so we must stop doing something in order to make ourselves better people. Very occasionally we meet people who do not make negative resolutions, but instead make resolutions that are positive. They choose to take up more sensible ways of behaving or decide to do something new.

Somehow, these people seem to be able to carry through on their decisions much more effectively, whatever new habit they have decided to adopt.
Continue reading →