Meditation In Practice Continues

Not to long ago I wrote a blog piece about my struggles with keeping a regular meditation practice.  A friend recently recommended the book Full Catastrophe Living to me. This book is one by Jon Kabat-Zinn who is a founder of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Programs. In class form this consists of 8 2.5 hour classes plus one full Saturday class. You have to commit to meditation 45 minutes a day while in the program. In fact, there is some recent research that doing this program can change your brain in the 8 week period.

My first reaction to looking at dong the home program was “No Way!” I If you are didn’t think I could do 45 minutes a day of meditation. But I tried it. I am now starting week 3 of the program where you can add Mindful Yoga to your routine if you are able. I have to say that since I have been doing this I have felt really good. I have also found myself looking forward to doing my 45 minute meditation every day. It is hard no doubt. Right now I am doing the Body Scan Meditation which is focusing on one part of your body at a time. I have to redirect my thoughts about every 5 seconds or so it seems. But I do it and I feel like it is making a difference. Interestingly enough I have been more engaged in doing the longer meditation daily than I ever was in the shorter ones I did previously. I know I can keep up on the practice for the 8 weeks it is structured for and I hope I can keep it up as an ongoing practice beyond that. I have read so much research recently on how meditation can improve both physical and mental well being that it seems really important to add this to my day.

If you are interested here is a resource to get the meditations for free. And here you can find more information on MBSR and buy Jon Kabat-Zinn’s cds for the program.

I would love to hear from you more about how you try and integrate mindfulness into your day.

 
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