What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is to bring our complete attention and awareness to the present moment…accepting things just as they are, without judgment. Another way of saying it, is that when we are being truly mindful, we are intentionally observing and noticing what is happening, right here and right now, in this moment, without trying to change anything, regardless of whether the experience feels pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

So what is meditation? Well, meditation is a specific type of formal mindfulness practice; meditation practices are intended to cultivate a heightened state of awareness and focused attention, which over time can transform the mind in many beneficial ways. Essentially, meditation is concentrated attention and awareness training. Developing a daily meditation practice is the most direct, efficient, and effective way to improve your overall mindfulness.

Decades of research on the benefits of mindfulness-based programs, such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) have shown that regular mindfulness and meditation practices will lead to increased capacity for  

• Sustaining focus, attention, and concentration

• Reducing chronic stress

• Calming the mind

• Dealing with strong emotions

• Improving performance in athletics, the arts, in business, and other achievement-driven domains

• Cultivating happiness, equanimity, loving kindness, and compassion

• Significantly reducing anxiety, worried thinking, and depression

• Changing addictive and/or harmful patterns of behavior

• Deepening relationships with others and with ourself

If you practice meditation daily and get nothing out of it other than just a couple of these benefits, it would be well worth your time and effort. All of use want to feel less stressed out, less anxious, more patient, calmer, and more focused in their day-to-day life.

However, for many, there is an even deeper reason to practice. As Bill Tempchin and Robb Strandlund wrote in the song Already Gone, recorded by The Eagles: “So oftentimes it happens, that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key.” 

All of us become chained by conditioned patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that help us survive our upbringing in a world that can be scary, dangerous, unpredictable, fickle, unkind, harsh, critical, and rejecting. Although these patterns have helped us survive early in life, they often interfere with helping us thrive as we get older. What none of us are taught when we are young, is that we have the keys to freeing ourselves from these chains.

Mindfulness meditation is the path to freedom from unnecessary suffering that leads to a life where we can thrive rather than simply survive.