2. Intro
Mindful meditation is a mental training practice, its meant to help the
racing thought go away, lets you go away from negativity and calm you
and your body down.
The practice involves meditation with the practice of mindfulness (as it
says in the name) it can be defined as you practicing your full focus on
“the now” so you can acknowledge and accept your thoughts, feelings
and sensations without judgement.
3. Origins
• According to https://www.physio-
pedia.com/ mindfulness meditation started
and originated ancient eastern and
Buddhist philosophy and dates back 2500
years.
• The concept of it has been inspiring many,
especially Jon Kabat-zin and his colleagues
at the university of Massachusetts, short
said: they made it get more popular in the
western world.
(note to self: I will mention Jon kabat more
later)
4. mental health, physical health and emotional
regulation.
MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) has been shown to have reduced symptoms of stress in
healthy individuals.
The practice has also been shown to be beneficial to mental and physical health disorders inc.
anxiety, depression and chronic pain.
The practice lowers you heart rate and as we know, one of the biggest death causing illnesses in the
us is heart disease and when the practice lowers your heart rate, researches say: its also being
beneficial to it.
In one study, participants either participated in an online meditation program, or were added to a
waitlist to traditional heart disease treatment.
Those who meditated had a significant lower heart rate and had a better cardio system.
5. Immunity and sleep
• Researchers say that the practice also
improves your body's resistance to illness.
One study impact of both mindfulness and
exercise on immune function, they found
out that the people that had taken the 8-
week mindful course had greater gains in
immune function than the exercise group.
• Studies have also shown that the practice
also might improve your sleep and can the
useful to treat certain sleep disturbances
• Another study (in 2019) has shown and
found that the practice significantly
improves sleep quality.
6. Goals and cognitive functions
• Whether your goals are to improve your heart, mental health
or something else, I can say that it probably mostly affects
your attention and memory: the practice affects your cognitive
functions by physically altering the structure off the brain:
your brain is made of a vast array of networks that signal to
different areas and light up in response to certain stimuli. You
can think of it as your brain being an extremely complex
highway that sends various type of info and messages
completely depending on what action you are doing and what
type of sensory stimuli is being fed to your brain. The layout of
the highway will determine how fast you will respond to the
stimuli, how easy it is to recall a memory, how flexible your
memory is and more. Researchers say that the practice is like
a construction crew that comes in to reorganize the
highways, makes sense right?
7. Practical applications: education and more
• Because of Jon the importance of mindfulness has been shown and popularized. (thank
him, pheew!)
• Fortunately, I don’t have to “google any example, because I have one at my public school:
recently my state has chosen to do this program as the only school in the country to do so:
it included us meeting at school 1 hour later than all normal public schools in the country,
enough talking: the results were that we had better sleep and faster working pace. I was
glad to be a part of it. Talking about the results: they were so good that we are keeping it
to the next year. The school is name “Islev skole” and you can search it on google.
8. Tips and tut for the practice
• Sit comfy with your back preferably being straight, feet flat on
the floor and hands on your lap. Breathe through your nose,
focus on your breath moving in and out of your body. If physical
sensations or thoughts interrupt your meditation, note the
experience and then return your focus to your breath.
• Sometimes it is just good to feel your body parts, but its most
important to stay relaxed and be in “the now” and if a thought
crosses your mind while doing this, its best to let it be there and
don’t stress about it, but try to make it go away.
9. Personal testimonial
• Maddie burke: a person who went through this, shared her experience, college student
and phycology studier.
Before experience: she new nothing about the concept of meditation and had never
practiced it event though she studies phycology
The experience: “ my first day was an ackward experience: just focusing on breathing. I
constantly had to refocus my wandering brain on my breathing “ “day two was a similar
experience. I found it very hard to not focus on all my tasks that needed to be
finished.” “However, on day three, I was excited to start my meditation. Breathing
seemed to calm my body and my mind. After five minutes of mediating I still felt
stressed, but my tasks felt more obtainable and possible. On my final day, I looked
forward to meditating. Instead of seeing meditation as an assignment to get to the
next task, it was relaxing to take in the calm. It made me feel like, at least for those
five minutes, I could just focus on being in the present.
10. Jon Kabat zin
Born June 5th 1944 Jon Kabat was an American boy, now creator of the
“stress reduction clinic” and “center of mindful medicine, healthcare,
and society“ at the university of Massachusetts medical school.
He was the student of Zen Buddhist:Philip Kapleau, Thich Nhat
Hanh,[1] and Seung Sahn. And a founding member of the
cambridge zen center. Anyway. The way he found the practice
was because of his zen Buddhist teachers, at a later age he
began teaching in the same place he was taught and in 1979 he
founded the “stress reduction clinic” in the Massachusetts medical
school and where he adapted the Soto Zen, Vipassana, Hatha
Yoga and Advaita Vedanta teachings and developed the Stress
Reduction and Relaxation Program and subsequently adapted the
well known “MBSR” as we know it today.
11. Conclusion
• It’s a short practice
• Very effective
• Healthy
• Easy
• No need for much motivation
• You should do it!
12. Credits and info sites
• to https://www.physio-pedia.com/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn
(at least once)
• https://www.purdue.edu/stepstoleaps/new/fea
tured/well-being-tips/2023_0109.php
• https://www.mindful.org/mindful-working-the-
best-practices-for-bringing-mindfulness-to-
work/
• https://chopra.com/blogs/meditation/the-
benefits-of-mindfulness-meditation-for-
cognitive-health-and-learning
• https://www.verywellmind.com/mindfulness-
meditation-88369
