Mindfulness & Meditation

what is Mindfulness & Meditation?

Mindfulness is a concept and treatment philosophy common in talk therapy frameworks such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Mindfulness is about consciously focusing on the present moment in a rational, objective, and non-judgmental way.

Mindfulness promotes setting aside emotionally charged reactions to difficult, frustrating, or overwhelming experiences, and aiming instead to redirect your mental energies towards accepting and observing your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and circumstances.

Young multiracial latina woman meditating at home with online video meditation lesson using laptop. Meditation and spirituality concept.

Meditation, on the other hand, is an ancient relaxation technique that is often (but not always) combined with spiritual elements. In the context of mental health, meditation is often an exercise used to induce calm, reduce stress responses, and “center oneself”, or review the present objectively.

Mindfulness and meditation therapy approaches have become more popular in recent years, and as awareness around mental health issues and common treatment approaches grows, more and more people are learning about the benefits of meditation, and mindfulness-based treatments.

Benefits of Mindfulness and Meditation

Many of the benefits of mindfulness and meditation-based therapies center around acceptance, awareness, and calm:

Stress Reduction: Mindfulness-based training can help improve mental resilience and reduce stress by teaching you how to deal with stressors in a constructive way, and by giving you a greater feeling of control over your thoughts, emotions, and life.
Emotional Regulation: Mindfulness and meditation can help teach you to regulate and manage your emotions, so you are less likely to feel caught off-guard by feelings of anxiety, anger, or depression. Mindfulness and meditation can help a person softly dissociate from these feelings, and remind themselves to focus on rationality, reasonable action, and accept the reality of a frustrating situation in order to move onto a better solution or coping mechanism.
Enhanced Focus and Clarity: Learning to cope with negative emotions through present-moment thinking and meditation can help free us up to focus on energies on other priorities in life, and give us the flexibility to solve problems as they occur.

There are many philosophies and mental health concepts that are related to mindfulness and meditation. Breathing exercises meant to help reduce feelings of panic or avoid hyperventilation are sometimes related to some of the physical exercises included in meditation techniques. Mindfulness-based training closely resembles ideas of stoicism, in which someone learns to choose how to react to situations around them, rather than being overwhelmed by their own emotional reaction, while remaining aware of the present moment, and accepting the reality of it.

Mindfulness and Meditation at Resolutions

A common analogy for mindfulness utilizes traffic as an example of a difficult situation – when you’re feeling frustrated or anxious in a given situation that you have no control over, being mindful of that anxiety is like taking yourself out of the position of someone enraged in the middle of a traffic jam, and instead becoming a passive observer of the situation from an outside perspective, such as someone looking down at a busy road from a window.

Rather than letting the situation take control of you, at Resolutions we can help you decide to regulate your emotional response and realize that you can spare your energy for more constructive things through mindfulness and meditation therapy.