When I look at the current state of our economy – especially growing personal debt and low credit scores among consumers – I often wonder what psychological factors are driving this behavior.

Mindfulness is a state of deliberate and conscious awareness directed toward the present moment. The practice is incredibly simple on paper, but with diligent practice can reap many, many benefits.

A great entry level exercise to mindfulness is the 100 Breaths Meditation. It teaches you how to use your breathing as an object of focus, by deliberately directing your awareness toward the motions of your breath. The goal is to remain fixated on your breath, while ignoring distractions and any other outside stimuli. Often the stronger and more focused your awareness becomes, the more you enter into a state of relaxation, bliss, and insight.

(If you’re serious about practicing this stuff, I also recommend reading a post I wrote awhile back called Mindfulness of Mindlessness. This one was intended to help people overcome the common problem of getting too distracted during meditation. It emphasizes how in fact acknowledging your distractions is a key first step toward cultivating greater mindfulness. This is true for both meditation, and also practicing mindfulness throughout our daily life.)

The purpose of this article, however, is to put together a list of all the ways mindfulness has been scientifically shown to improve our physical and mental health. It is a complete list of all the benefits I know that come from mindfulness. And to be honest, if this doesn’t convince you to start developing a mindfulness practice of your own, I don’t know what will.

The Benefits of Mindfulness

Research into mindfulness has really picked up over the past few decades. Here are some of the benefits we are just beginning to discover:

Improving Attention

One of the most obvious benefits from meditation is that it improves our attention. One study has shown that just 5 days of 20 minute training can show significant improvements in our ability to focus and concentrate. The fact that mindfulness meditation can improve our attention is one of the most well-documented benefits. And the practice of staying focused on our breath can build concentration that often spills over into many other activities.

Improving Cognition

Another interesting study showed that just 4 days of 20 minute training showed significant increases in cognitive functioning, especially memory and learning. Other related research indicates that meditation can help slow down Alzheimer’s and dementia. Some of this may in part be due to our increased attention, but it seems meditation also acts on other parts of the brain more directly related to learning and memory, such as increasing gray matter in the hippocampus.

Managing Stress and Anxiety

Meditation has also been shown to reduce gray matter in the amygdala, which is a part of the brain commonly associated with stress, anxiety, and emotional processing. This demonstrates why meditation does so well in relieving stress and increasing relaxation. Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of The Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at the University of Massachusetts, is one of the leading teachers and researchers in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Here you can find a wonderful lecture he gave to Google summarizing a lot of the research demonstrating how effective mindfulness meditation is for reducing stress and improving medical outcomes.

Improving Heart Rate and Blood Pressure

In light of meditation’s ability to reduce stress, it has also been reported to lower your blood pressure and heart rate. This particular study followed 200 participants for 5 years who were at a “high risk” for heart attacks and strokes. They found that those who practiced meditation regularly reduced their risk for heart attacks and strokes by almost 50%.

Reducing Pain

Mindful breathing has also been discovered to reduce pain, according to a recent study in the Journal of Neuroscience. After just four 20 minute mindfulness sessions, participants did better at reducing unpleasant sensations (such as 120 degrees of heat, a temperature that most people find painful) than those who did not receive mindfulness training. Researchers theorize that mindfulness trainees have an easier time keeping their focus directed toward their breathing and thereby ignoring the discomfort caused by the heat. It’s likely that mindfulness can show similar effects on other types of pain as well.

Overcoming Depression

Surprisingly, mindfulness meditation is said to be on par with antidepressants in preventing depression relapse. According to researchers, mindfulness prevents excessive rumination (a common cause of depression) by teaching individuals how to reflect on thoughts and emotional states in a non-judgmental and non-attaching way. Instead of clinging to “negative” thoughts and feelings – and feeding into them – mindfulness teaches us to sit back and watch these emotions and thoughts without needing to overreact or feel guilty about how we feel. This makes it a lot easier to fully experience these passing thoughts and emotions, and then let them go.

Overcoming Fears of Death

Another recent study published earlier this year found that mindfulness can also ease fears and anxieties related to death. Mindful people tend to be more accepting of their limited time while alive. They also tend to be less dependent on fantasy-filled beliefs and desires for self-preservation or immortality. They understand that death is not the opposite of life, but a necessary part of it. Thus, they accept the reality of their demise, instead of being defensive.

Changing Bad Habits

There is a particular technique in mindfulness training that helps individuals overcome addictions and other bad habits. It’s called urge surfing, and it’s a popular tool in some psychotherapies to help individuals quit smoking or stop obsessive eating. The main goal of the meditation is to “ride out” your desire to do certain negative habits, but not act on them. Mindfulness teaches you that many of these desires are impermanent, and if we just sit back and watch them, it is very likely that they will subside and go away (without us necessarily needing to smoke another cigarette, or eat that slice of cake).

Changing Brain Structure

In addition to many of the benefits mentioned above, it has also been shown that 8 weeks of mindfulness training can cause long-term changes to our brain structure. While this isn’t necessarily a “benefit” in-and-of-itself, it is evidence for just how powerful mindfulness training can be. For more on this you can also check out my article Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity.

Conclusion

These are just about all of the main benefits I know of that are associated with mindfulness, but I’m sure there are countless others. Mindfulness can be such a fundamental skill to living that it truthfully affects just about all areas of our life.

If you haven’t started a mindfulness practice of your own, I highly recommend it. And if you want any help getting started, feel free to e-mail me questions at contact@theemotionmachine.com. I’d be more than happy to help you out.

You can also check out the “Mindful Awareness Training System” below if you want a great training course on how to apply mindfulness to your daily life.

Usually they go around in a circle, so you can basically sit there for an indefinite amount of time – not really having a care in the world. The whole experience can be really relaxing, and even a bit trance-inducing.

A good lazy river will also have some scenery (nature stuff – trees, flowers, waterfalls, maybe some animals) which can add a whole other layer of serenity.

I actually haven’t been in a lazy river in years. I know there is one at the Splish Splash in Riverhead, New York, but that’s at least a couple hours away and I haven’t made the trek yet (to be completely honest – I haven’t even been to the beach yet this summer, and that’s only 20 minutes away – yeah I’m bad).

But either way, I actually think the idea of a “lazy river” is a good analogy for relaxation. That’s because, when you’re in the lazy river, there is a healthy sense of non-striving:

• You’re not trying to get anywhere.
• You’re not trying to accomplish anything.
• You’re not trying to control anything.

You’re just letting yourself flow wherever the water goes.

No fight. No resistance.

I think there is something incredibly useful in being able to tap into that energy every now and then.

To just relax – and not always feel like we need to go somewhere.

That’s not to say we should never try to have goals, or go anywhere important, or try to fight resistance. But I believe being able to turn off that drive every now and then is very healthy.

It allows us to take a step back, recharge our batteries, and maybe even re-examine what’s really important in our lives.

Question.

• What is your “lazy river?” What activities do you do when you just want to sit back and relax? Meditate? Watch the weather? Listen to music?

Share your answers and thoughts in the comment section!

The opposite of emotional independence is “situational happiness.” Situational happiness is when we depend on external circumstances in order to provide us with joy and well-being. We crave our “external world” to be a certain way, and if we don’t get it then we are left disappointed and unhappy. Those who learn to cultivate emotional independence (especially dedicated meditation practitioners like Buddhist monks), find out how to find happiness that is independent of these external conditions.

Some of the most common things we become dependent on for happiness include:

• Excessive eating.
• Alcohol and drugs.
• Movies, TV, music, video games, the internet, and other entertainment.
• Sex.
• Shopping and consumerism.
• People.
• Pets.
• Wealth and money.
• Traditions and routine.
• Etc.

These are all desires that we can develop a near-addictive personality toward. Of course, someone can develop an addictive personality toward nearly anything, but of course that doesn’t make any of these habits necessarily bad. Only when can no longer exercise these habits in moderation, and we begin to depend on them to enjoy ourselves, do these habits turn into a problem. Then, we are emotionally dependent on them in order to live a fulfilling life.

For example, if you always need to eat McDonalds, watch videos on YouTube, play videogames, or be around Person A to feel good about yourself, then what happens when you can no longer get your fix? If you’re truly addicted, you will begin to experience withdrawals. Then, the pain and suffering you feel from not being able to satisfy all these desires becomes that much worse.

Like a junkie, you may even go through desperate and unhealthy measures to reclaim that short and temporary high. But you can’t keep chasing temporary highs all your life. Happiness needs to be rooted in something deeper, not simple sensations of pleasure and pain.

The best method I know for minimizing these desires and increasing our capacity for intrinsic happiness is meditation and the development of equanimity.

Equanimity is a non-reactive acceptance of our circumstances without judging them as necessarily “good” or “bad.” It’s usually seen as synonymous with “being calm and relaxed,” but equanimity actually penetrates deeper than that.

Instead of having our strings pulled by every little thing that enters our lives, equanimity allows us to take a step back and accept things for what they are, without always feeling like we need to “react” to something or “fix” it.

Achieving complete equanimity and acceptance is something that can probably only be achieved if you meditate for years and years, but luckily there are a few things we can do to begin experiencing the benefits of equanimity in our own lives:

• Start meditating. Even practicing something simple and easy like the 100 Breaths Meditation can do wonders for cultivating a less reactive mindset.
• Accept things you have no control over. We cause ourselves so much unnecessary stress by worrying about things that are outside our sphere of control. The quicker we can accept them and move on, the better off we are.
• See the bigger picture. This is a reframe I write about a lot (most recently I mentioned it in my article “Social Anxiety and CBT“). I feel that when we put things into a “big picture perspective” we often find that the things that irritate us the most aren’t such a big deal after all.
• Stop and take a breather. When we don’t have equanimity, we become very impulsive. We react to things without ever taking a step back and thinking about them. There’s a technique in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) called STOP that provides a great buffer between our thoughts and our actions. The more “buffer” we have between our actions, the less reactive we become.
• Practice, practice, practice. You won’t develop an impenetrable attitude overnight. This stuff takes a lot of practice and a lot of failure. Most likely, you’ll still get frustrated at that crying baby on the bus, or when you spill your drink, or when a deadline at work begins approaching. It’s near impossible to be completely non-reactive to your circumstances, but with practice you can become less reactive – and that can make a big difference over time.

Following these simple guidelines is a great way to combat situational happiness and develop some emotional independence. By doing these things, we begin to take greater control over our internal states, and that can often be a lot easier than trying to always fulfill external desires.

Check out this online course by Sean Cooper to learn more about how to face your social anxiety and shyness.

One of the techniques in the book is a very short exercise called STOP. This is a technique we can use at any point in our day to help remind ourselves what we are doing. It’s a very simple and easy exercise to practice:

How to Practice STOP

• STOP what you’re doing.
• TAKE a few deep breaths, focusing on the sensations of your breathing. This helps reconnect you with the present moment and also creates a buffer between your thoughts and your actions.
• OBSERVE what is going on. Ask yourself:
• What am I thinking?
• What am I feeling?
• What am I doing?
• What are my intentions?
• PROCEED with your day with this new sense of mindful awareness (based on how you answered the questions above).

This small injection of mindfulness allows us to live more consciously no matter where we are or what it is we are doing. I like to consider it a form of mini-meditation. The best part about this exercise is that it doesn’t take up a lot of time (less than 30 seconds), and we can do it virtually anywhere:

• While at work.
• While at home.
• While at school or in class.
• While procrastinating.
• While eating.
• While exercising.
• While interacting with others.
• While pursuing others hobbies and interests.

As you can probably tell, the implications of this small exercise are huge and can be applied to a wide range of different activities in our lives. We can use this STOP technique to be more aware, more productive, and better decision-makers. We can also use this STOP technique when we find ourselves being distracted or overwhelmed. We then take a step back, make sure we are acting with the right priorities in mind, and continue our day with a clearer idea on what we want to accomplish.

I use the STOP technique at least 3-5 times a day. It’s an effective way for me to prevent myself from running around like a chicken without a head. Before I practiced STOP, I found myself frequently getting distracted by getting engaged in activities that I shouldn’t have been doing, because I had other more important stuff to do. STOP allows us to monitor ourselves better, and get back on our path when we may have tread off course.

It’s all-too-easy to keep refreshing your Facebook page, or checking your e-mails, when you know you’ve already done that a bunch of times within the past hour. We all have our common distractions. With mindfulness, it’s important to be aware when we get caught in these distractions, and then shift our attention back to what matters most at that moment in time.

I hope you will try to practice this STOP technique a couple times within the next few days. You will certainly find yourself exercising greater control over how you spend your time, fighting procrastination better, and living with greater consciousness. Come back and let me know your experiences with it.