Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment with openness and curiosity. Mindfulness can be a state, a trait and/or a practice. You can have a moment of mindfulness, which is the state of your mind. You can also have a sustained experience that is more like a habit or strong tendency to be mindful, a trait. Or you can engage in a more intentional practice of mindfulness by using different forms, postures and activities, such as seated mindfulness meditation, mindful walking, mindful eating and yoga.
Mindfulness can support and sustain you by helping you manage the stress of today’s world. Mindfulness has been shown to have a positive impact on stress, attention, and even relationships. It has a variety of research backed impacts, including:
- Stress Reduction
- Boosts to Working Memory
- Increased Focus and Attention
- Decreased Emotional Reactivity
- Increased Cognitive Flexibility
- Relation Satisfaction
- Embodiment and Somatic Experiencing (getting into your body)
- Trauma Treatment and Recovery
At Healthy Connections Counseling Center we believe that mindfulness can take you beyond the terrain of managing symptoms to a place where you can develop a deeper human capacity for awareness, attention, empathy, kindness and compassion. Mindfulness in therapy teaches people to consciously pay attention to their thoughts, feelings and bodily sensation without placing any judgments upon them.