Strategies And Techniques For Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the English translation of the word “sati” which means something like “awareness, attention and memory”. In today’s article, we will show you two important strategies and techniques for mindfulness.

Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn is a pioneer in mindfulness in the Western world, especially from a clinical perspective. He says that “Mindfulness means paying attention in a specific way: deliberately, in the present and without judging”.

In other words, you must radically accept the present without judging. This means that you are open to experiencing and living with your emotions, mental events and circumstances, whether they are positive or negative.

When it comes to the negative side of things, the goal is for you to expose yourself to them without performing any direct action.

This is very reminiscent of Buddhist teachings. Buddhists believe that one should disconnect from oneself and observe one’s experiences, thoughts and actions from a distance.

Some of the important things you can do when it comes to your attitude is not to judge and not to let past experiences influence you. Accept things as they really are.

Strategies and techniques for mindfulness

Bishop (2002) presented a detailed list of the components that mindfulness includes, such as self-regulation of attention, and that one focuses on experiences in the present.

Self-regulation of your attention

This strategy means focusing your attention on the direct experiences. This means that you do not try to take control. If you do, you can gain a better understanding of the things that are happening to you right now.

To be able to do this, you also need to work with some techniques and skills such as staying focused for a long time.

You will also need to train yourself to change your attention and focus on breathing once you have removed your thoughts and feelings.

You must also learn not to follow or develop thoughts and feelings. In other words, you need to avoid getting caught up in them. You should simply just observe them and redirect your attention to your breathing.

This is one of the mindfulness strategies that really involves the concept of “beginner’s mind”. This is a mindset that involves focusing on direct and pure attention.

You have to take in the things that you see in the surrounding environment as if it were the first time you saw these things.

This means that you do not look at things through the filter of experience. One must instead focus his attention on getting rid of this baggage.

Techniques for mindfulness: Orient yourself to the experience

The important thing here is that you are curious. You need to open your mind so that you can discover every thought and feeling that arises. You must be able to let yourself think, feel and experience things without trying to avoid them.

In other words, you need to approach your experiences with a curious attitude, whether they are emotionally positive or negative. You must radically accept the experiences for which they are.

Other mindfulness strategies include that you focus your attention on the present, and that you radically accept things without judging, and that you freely choose to engage with something (breathing or any activity, etc.)

The benefits of practicing mindfulness

These mindfulness strategies can help you focus your attention better on what you want. It is a great way to counteract a rigid state of mind with automatic negative thoughts that arise in your mind without you even realizing it.

Since mindfulness helps people break free from that automatic circle, it can help reduce physiological and somatic symptoms of various health problems by activating your parasympathetic nervous system.

It can therefore help you relax even more than traditional relaxation methods.

Some neuroscience studies say that they can modify brain functions such as perception, cognitive processes and emotional regulation (Cahn and Polich, 2006).

Last but not least, there is another amazing benefit of mindfulness, and that is that it improves both emotional and physical health.

All evidence points to the fact that mindfulness is linked to greater behavioral flexibility, which has a clear positive impact on your health. So what are you waiting for? Try mindfulness!