Mindfulness has been in the public domain for a number of years now; it is a practice that has been adopt in schools to assist students with exam nerves and pressure, as a form of self help to reduce anxiety, to assist in the reduction of chronic pain, mindful eating for weight management has now also been thrown in to the mix.
But what is mindfulness and where does it originate from?
Mindfulness is a loose term associate with many meditation practices.
Mindfulness is about being constantly aware of yourself in the present moment. It involves acknowledging your emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations without judgment. It may sound like a new age theory or something only for tree huggers, but it’s a practical approach to self-awareness.
You may well think so, but, it is a highly recognize practice that has been in existence for hundreds of years.
Well, Mindfulness has been practice by a variety of secular religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and within yoga. In fact, Many Hindu deities are commonly picture performing meditation, such as the Hindu god Shiva.
Based on Zen and Tibetan meditation techniques, Buddhist masters adopted mindfulness to enhance their meditation practices a means to reach their ultimate goal to reach –Nirvana
( a state where the desires and sufferings of an individual simply go away.)
So how can this assist us to live with chronic pain?
Well, in a number of ways, Research shows that chronic pain is associate with negative emotions and depression. Among people with chronic pain, it is observe that there are low levels of glutamate in the body, (a chemical that nerve cells use to send signals to other cells) and this impairs the ability to process positive emotions.
Mindfulness can be useful in that it is a way to focus on the present rather than focusing on the pain. This is a very simplistic explanation of mindfulness, why not look in to it and give it a try.
