The Miracle of Mindfulness Puns

it s impressive, how after a certain amount of pain, your body just shuts it out. like, you know it s still there, you just can t reach it...like the rest of your feelings or thoughts. its fogging you to prevent one pain, but it s also fogging the stuff that could practically save you. like, isn t the human mind wonderous?

I have suffered major depression most of my life, especially during winter months of sub zero temperatures and very cloudy days. (Born in Florida, live in Michigan)

Last spring I began a mindfulness routine of meditation, and intentional cold exposure through r/coldshowers. I am now walking outside in 20 degrees F in a t shirt, shoveling snow. I do not suffer. I experience cold as a sensation, but it does not register as pain or discomfort. I could go into details, but suffice it to say that mindfulness has made me mentally immune to the suffering of cold.

What a game, some of the best ice skill I have ever seen. Anyone got any other close games that i should try to see?

Edit: Thanks for the suggestions people, I will bookmark this and try to find these games.

Don’t take it for granted that you have already seen everything there is to see. If you do, you are conceptualizing the process. You are not observing its living reality. When you are clearly mindful of breath or indeed anything else, it is never boring. Mindfulness looks at everything with the eyes of a child, with the sense of wonder. Mindfulness sees every second as if it were the first and the only second in the universe. So look again."

 -- Henepola Gunaratana,From Mindfulness in Plain English

Hey sex-positive folks! Join me in the Den!

Let me know your sex and intimacy questions, and I'll answer through the lens of sexual mindfulness and sociology.

I'm Dr. Jenn Gunsaullus, a sociologist, sex speaker, and intimacy coach. I started teaching about sex and communication over 25 years ago.

My specialty area, and the topic of my new book, From Madness to Mindfulness: Reinventing Sex for Women, is female sexual empowerment through the lens of sociology, mindfulness, and compassion. We've inherited a lot of BS from society about our bodies, sexual expression, and self-worth, and mindfulness is a powerful tool to create a version of our sexuality on our own terms.

Social proof on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/B2fhow0H7_T/

If you want to know more about me: https://www.drjennsden.com

Read about my new book here: https://www.amazon.com/Madness-Mindfulness-Reinventing-Sex-Women/dp/1627782966/ref=pd_ybh_a_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=42DWMS8EH5FNZ3TZGEX5

UPDATE -- This AMA is complete now! Hopefully, you've learned a new tip or insight. Thank you for your fantastic questions!

While I have been practicing and studying mindfulness and in particular Buddhist tradition for over a decade, I've never become part of an online community. I'm wondering if anyone knows a good place online where people are dying to contribute to mindfulness research?

Thanks to help from other redditers, I've found r/meditation, r/yoga, r/dbtselfhelp, r/buddhism and some other great recommendations, our study only needs about 10-20 more participants but really, the more people we can get who are serious about mindfulness the better!

Edit: since some of you are interested you can contribute here if you like. It takes 10-15 minutes, and your time and consideration is greatly appreciated http://fullerton.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0j3UChhtlHHgMv3

Any recommendations are greatly appreciated!

Thank you all for your time and consideration.

David

I want to preface this by saying that this is just my favorite form of mindfulness, and that I don't mean to knock anyone else's preferred methods. I just found the following to be very easy to start implementing and easy to adjust the difficulty of.

Mindfulness meditation used to be a bit of a chore for me, especially because the oft referred practice is to "focus on one's breath." I found it somewhat difficult to truly get invested in that for several reasons:

1. Finding a focal point to be mindful can be really tricky when it involves breathing. And it can be constantly shifting due to the nature and anatomy of breathing (at least for me).
2. It's easy to not be mindful "in between" breaths, because you're so focused on being mindful of the breathing. Sometimes those spots in between we lose it (I often did). Of course, we can always be mindful and come back to our exercise.

But in all actuality, being mindful of one's breathing is only one way to be mindful. When it comes to mindfulness, we are just training our metacognition (awareness of awareness). There are plenty of ways to be mindful, but my favorite is this:

Following my heartbeat

I initially do this by lacing my fingers together all the way to the finger webbings and having the palms touch each other (sorta like a prayer position). If you put enough attention towards that, you may notice your heartbeat pulsing through your hands, especially through the point of contact between the webbing and fingers. To make it a bit more challenging, I may keep the fingers interlaced but simply not have the palms touch anymore. This makes the beat feeling a bit more faint and harder to keep focusing on. To make it harder, I may unlace my fingers and simply touch the pads of my fingers together and continue to try to feel the beat. To make that harder, I may touch the fingers closer to the tips instead of the pads. To make it harder, I may do the previous but just with one set of fingers touching. Etc.

I like this for several reasons:

1. Your heart is always beating, and it's even more consistent of an anchor than the breath is.
2. It's very easy to modify the difficulty.
3. It's easier for me to bring my attention back to something more concrete like a pulse feeling in my hand than a shifting phenomena like breathing. In effect, I don't get frustrated as easily if and when I do lose my attention.

Also, the most important thing is keeping that benign attention toward your awareness. If your atten

Mindfulness is about being fully present and aware of where we are, what we're doing, how we feel, and what we think on a moment by moment basis. By doing so, we wake up to the inner workings of our mental, emotional, and physical processes and understand why we are the way we are, think the way we think, and feel the way we feel. This understanding, coupled with acceptance leads to deep peace in the here and now.

The four best ways to develop mindfulness are:

1. Pay more attention - Try to take the time to experience your environment with all of your senses; touch, sound, sight, smell, and taste.
2. Live in the moment - Try to intentionally bring an open, accepting and discerning attention to everything you do. Find joy in simple pleasures.
3. Accept yourself fully - Treat yourself the way you would treat a good friend, with patience, empathy, and kindness.
4. Mindfulness meditation - Allow the mind to flow naturally and simply observe where it goes. Ground ourselves in our observing nature and watch life play out like a movie.

Mindfulness has changed my life as it has to everyone who has cultivated it in the past and present. It is about developing something we all have innate without ourselves, being our observing nature that's free from discriminations, criticism, and judgments.

I talk about it in detail in this video. Please take a look and let me know what you think! =)

Best wishes to you and your mindfulness journeys.

It took me a long time to realize that it was not healthy for my mind to be constantly “turned toward God in prayer”, and that many of the teachings around prayer can resulting in erosion of my mental health. I took literally the admonitions to “always have a prayer in your heart”, to constantly have your mind turned towards God, that you can get God to do anything if you pray “with enough faith”. Turned out I couldn’t get God to do anything, which left me assuming that the problem was with me. And when you assume that the thoughts in your head come from God… well, that can end badly, too.

After 4 years of mindfulness meditation (and therapy), I have a much healthier way of processing thoughts and feelings. I did not realize how much of my mental health the church was stealing.

The event is called Presence at Play. It's a drop-in thing that happens every Monday night, so you can come once or come every week. There is a suggested donation of $15, but it's pay what you can. If you can't pay, that's fine too. It'll be at Simple Studios in NYC (134 W 29th St Floor 2, New York, NY 10001) from 7:30-9:30. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY:) Link to the facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/492929898102877/

***Sometimes the venue locks the front door due to construction, so if you get there and it's locked just call them (the venue) at (212) 273-9696 and they'll come down and let you in. They're supposed to have a sign up, but it's not always there.

~Mahasi Sayadaw

Im running a study out of California State University Fullerton regarding how mindfulness interacts with other psychological mechanisms,

Since mindfulness is a key component of DBT, It was suggested I post here to see if anyone had any suggestions for online sites or communities where people would be interested in contributing to our research.

The goal for this is to better understand mindfulness so that it can be more effectively applied in clinical settings.

If you want to participate, youre welcome to! The study is a brief, 4 part survey, it takes about 10-15 minutes and is linked here: http://fullerton.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0j3UChhtlHHgMv3

mostly though I'm interested in hearing back from the community if there are recommendations! Please let me know what you all think!

I understand mindfulness meditation is an integral part of Buddhism, but so is compassion and love.

I have been in a bad place mentally for a long time now and I want to find peace. Mindfulness meditation is more difficult for me to stick to and with metta I find results more quickly.

Thanks.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/232890-mindfulness-is-simply-being-aware-of-what-is-happening-right

This is just a fun trick I've discovered. As you go through your day, when you get the chance, think to yourself, "In the middle of the lake there is...." and fill in the blank with whatever you are experiencing. "In the middle of the lake there is cold." "In the middle of the lake there is silence." "In the middle of the lake there is the taste of peanut butter." It helps to detach yourself from what you are feeling and see it for what it is.

Being a technically minded fellow, I thought reading a few books would be the biggest help. Pulling socialising apart into a set of rules and guidelines. But after much trial and error over the last few years, mindfulness has helped me truly get it.

For those who aren't aware, please don't confuse mindfulness with meditation, chanting and sitting with your legs crossed. Essentially, it is just being more aware of your thoughts and feelings and what's going on around you at any moment. Meditation and watching your breath is simply one way of becoming more mindful.

How did it help me with my social skills? There are so many different ways, but here is a very brief overview of just a few:

• I became less anxious and more rational in my thinking, because when you're aware of your thoughts you realise which thoughts are hurting you and just how ridiculous they can be

• I became more aware of the impact others people's words had on my emotions. Now, I'm much better at bringing a positive vibe into a conversation because I just copy the way other people have helped me feel better. As humans we are so good at mirroring other people, and learning through story and character. I guess I just try and take on the good aspects of the characters I like. Much easier than memorising rules from a book.

• I have become more interesting and interested in conversation. I notice the types of things people do and say that leave me hanging on to their every word, and then simply copy these things. Also, when you notice the things you like about other people, this is great conversation to bring up when talking about said person.

• I avoid more social errors. Being mindful of how others make me feel, I strive to avoid doing things that other people do that make me feel annoyed or hurt. For instance, rambling, not listening well, hurtful teasing, the list goes on.

• Having become more aware of the things that interest and excite me (and journalling about these things) in movies, books, music and the like, I can talk with much more passion than before

I kind of just put all these together on a whim, because of how grateful I've been feeling about mindfulness... So apologies if it's a bit scattered. I'm not saying rules and analytical thinking are bad, just that for me personally mindfulness helped with their application a hundred fold.

tl/dr: Basically it just comes down to being more aware of how others make you feel, and how you might in turn be making others feel.

Mindfulness is about being fully present and aware of where we are, what we're doing, how we feel, and what we think on a moment by moment basis. By doing so, we wake up to the inner workings of our mental, emotional, and physical processes and understand why we are the way we are, think the way we think, and feel the way we feel. This understanding, coupled with acceptance leads to deep peace in the here and now.

The four best ways to develop mindfulness are:

1. Pay more attention - Try to take the time to experience your environment with all of your senses; touch, sound, sight, smell, and taste.
2. Live in the moment - Try to intentionally bring an open, accepting and discerning attention to everything you do. Find joy in simple pleasures.
3. Accept yourself fully - Treat yourself the way you would treat a good friend, with patience, empathy, and kindness.
4. Mindfulness meditation - Allow the mind to flow naturally and simply observe where it goes. Ground ourselves in our observing nature and watch life play out like a movie.

Mindfulness has changed my life as it has to everyone who has cultivated it in the past and present. It is about developing something we all have innate without ourselves, being our observing nature that's free from discriminations, criticism, and judgments.

I talk about it in detail in this video. Please take a look and let me know what you think! =)

Best wishes to you and your mindfulness journeys.