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Mindfulness is a Buddhist philosophy that looks at craving – our desire and pursuit of natural rewards, from chocolate to gambling to compulsive sex and addictive drugs – as the root of all our suffering. Mindfulness uses meditation to a great extent, as a mental process. The objective is to observe our thoughts in a detached, decentered and non-judgemental way, so as to bring awareness to what we are doing and feeling, especially to habits and thinking errors that drive self-defeating behavior.
Ride Out the Wave
During Mindfulness Meditation we learn to pay attention to cravings without reacting to them and to notice why we feel compelled to indulge. The concept is to ‘ride out the wave’ of intense desire, essentially defying the craving until it is quelled. In other words, to kill the craving with calm.
Mind and Body Wholeness
Mindfulness Meditation encourages people to analyze why they feel compelled to indulge, and to watch what is going on in their mind, neither rejecting nor pursuing their cravings, but to just let them be and let them go, according to psychologist Jon Kabat-Zinn. In Mindfulness Meditation a thought of failure, for example, is seen as simply an event in the mind, not as a step toward the conclusion that “I am a failure.” With a little practice we can learn to envision mind and body as one thing.
Controlling Dopamine Output
There is research that shows that Mindfulness can counter the flood of Dopamine in the brain causing the pleasure sensation, and quiets the Posterior Cingulate Cortex, the neural space in the brain that can foster a loop of obsession.
2,000 Years Old
Buddhist meditation has incorporated the Practice of Mindfulness for more than 2,000 years but the benefits were not clinically tested and proven until the early 1990s. According to Kabit-Zinn, each of us is more than just a body and more than the thoughts that go through our mind.
Better Than 12-Step Programs
Researchers at the University of Washington showed that a program based on Mindfulness was more effective at preventing drug-addiction relapse than 12-step programs. In other studies Mindfulness training was twice as effective as the best anti-smoking program. With proper Mindfulness training we may be capable of out-waiting our cravings.
Systematic Desensitization
And, as the late psychotherapist Joseph Wolpe taught (1915-1997), “if someone is relaxed, they cannot also be anxious” and “if deep relaxation is taught as a conditioned response to a feared object, anxiety cannot be felt at the same time.” Wolpe transformed the field of psychology by developing a new way to treat anxiety and phobias with calming behaviors. Wolpe’s technique is called systematic desensitization.
This report is not a diagnosis. We hope this information can guide you toward improving your life.
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