Psychologist and mindfulness researcher Dr. Norman Farb explains the does and don’ts of mindfulness practices. He explains how through mindfulness, in our neural pathways, we begin to learn how to sort our bodily and sensory information in a less judgmental good vs. bad fashion.
Mindfulness helps us learn to reduce our conceptual elaboration of experiences, cognitions, and physical and sensory sensations and that learning to feel our feelings more in a less judgmental way and simply learning to accept that we feel this way is more beneficial.
Dr. Farb also explains that there is actually a way of going about meditation that may actually make us feel worse. Those who stated that they meditated just to feel good may actually be doing themselves a disservice in relation to those who responded by saying that they meditate because it increases their ability to use their attention in different ways, change their relationship with their thoughts, and accept their emotions, actually did better in the long run.
Through meditation we learn to stop blaming others and we take responsibility and take control of our lives and even our social relationships. This is the real benefit of meditation. Higher awareness with ourselves. Not just to relax. There are scientifically researched benefits to meditation, however, with anything that is good, there is always a bad way of using it. So mindfulness and meditation is not actually just hype, it very much so is hope over hype, but just like anything good there is also a lot of hype around it and less useful ways of using it. Don’t buy into the hype. Do it the right way and buy into the hope it offers us.
Below is the attached YouTube link to Dr. Farb’s full 49 minute speech.
Namaste.
Στην υγεία μας.
Counseling Comedian. Affirmation Aficionado. Meditation Man. 