Mindfulness is now widely taught in businesses and organizations such as Google, Apple, Proctor & Gamble, General Mills, Toyota, Aetna, Ford, Ernst & Young, healthcare networks, educational institutions, the military and other prominent and cutting-edge institutions. Even the Seattle Seahawks’ players and coach, Pete Carroll, practice mindfulness meditation.

The advantages of mindfulness are scientifically established, and more and more people are appreciating the benefits. Mindfulness is for everybody. It isn’t a religion and doesn’t require you to believe anything to learn and practice being more mindful and present in your life.

Our lives are filled with so much information, busyness and distraction that we sometimes start feeling lost and overwhelmed. Creating a mindfulness practice can help us to slow down, so that we can notice that the conditions for happiness are already present.

Meditation is the art of paying attention, of listening to your heart. Rather than withdrawing from the world, meditation can help you enjoy your life more fully, effectively and peacefully.

Mindfulness offers:

• A way of affecting and nurturing deep states of relaxation and of managing stress.
• An ability to be more responsive and less reactive to a wide range of situations. Often, we react without any awareness of the larger range of possibilities.
• The development of mindfulness brings an inner quietude resulting in a felt-sense of “spaciousness” that allows a person room to step back and choose a considered response.
• A capacity to be present, to be fully awake to life. Relationships become richer and connections more powerful as we actually listen and learn to speak from our direct experience.
• A method for increasing concentration and focus through the practice of mindfulness in daily life. By bringing attention to the habits of the mind and body, we become better equipped at directing the mind – instead of the mind controlling us.

Mindfulness:

• Helps in cultivating the awareness that arises when we intentionally pay attention to our thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations in the body and the surrounding environment through a gentle nurturing lens – moment-by-moment.
• Involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we are sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.
• Mindfulness practice helps us consciously cultivate a sense of connection, calm and well-being so that our day to day lives can have more meaning and ease.
• When we practice mindfulness we develop greater awareness, clarity and acceptance. A non-judgmental attitude can often diffuse the tension in both ourselves and others.
• Mindfulness provides a simple, yet powerful, way to get ourselves unstuck and back in touch with our wisdom and vitality.

Meditation is like Training a Puppy

Meditation is very much like training a puppy.
You put the puppy down and say, “Stay.”
Does the puppy listen?
It gets up and it runs away.
You sit the puppy back down again. “Stay.”
And the puppy runs away over and over again.
Sometimes the puppy jumps up, runs over, and
pees in the corner or makes some other mess.
Our minds are much the same as the puppy,
only they create even bigger messes.
In training the mind, or the puppy,
we have to start over and over again.
With patience and a sense of humor.