Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation Practice

By Lori Lines

​I often recommend, to my clients, a Mindfulness Meditation practice to strengthen their awareness of themselves, especially when they are concerned they cannot go under QHHT hypnosis easily. And, here's why:

The promises of a mindfulness meditation practice are well documented. From less stress, sleeping better and a lower incidence of a whole range of mental health conditions, mindfulness has been presented as a silver bullet that can make a difference to many of the problems in our modern lives.

But mindfulness is so much more than this. It’s so much more than a prescription, to be taken once or twice a day, to cure our ills. A mindfulness practice is a way of life that can utterly transform us, changing the way we see our minds, ourselves and the world around us.
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And that’s where the real benefit comes in.

Mindfulness changes how you relate to the mind

Developing a mindfulness meditation practice can fundamentally change how you view the goings on inside your own mind.
 
In the first instance, mindfulness meditation makes you more aware of what is going on in your mind. It allows you to get a clear picture of how busy the mind really is. It helps you to see clearly the kinds of thoughts you are carrying with you.

It also allows you to get a clearer picture on your emotional life. How does the mind respond when something doesn’t go your way and a powerful emotion takes over? In what ways does the mind fuel these emotions? Regular mindfulness meditation brings clarity. It helps us to see the mind as it really is.

It also helps us to realise that our thoughts and emotions are here one moment and gone the next. As we pay attention to the mind, we realise that nothing is permanent. Everything changes. And so we can begin to hold less tightly to our thoughts and feelings in the moment.
  
It is only in seeing the mind as it really is that we can we begin to make positive changes to our inner world.

Mindfulness changes how you relate to yourself

All of this new information about how the mind works, and about your thoughts and emotional life, gives us a much deeper understanding of ourselves. It allows us to see more clearly what is going on in the mind and, with regular practice, it allows us to go deeper than the busyness of our thoughts, into a place of intuition and calm.
 
Many practitioners describe this experience of the mind using the analogy of the blue sky. Underneath the clouds, even on a cloudy day, the blue sky is always there. It's a bit like that with our thoughts. Some days there are less of them, and we can see the blue sky clearly. On other days the whole sky is dominated by clouds and we hardly even know that the blue sky is there at all.

A regular mindfulness meditation practice helps us to find acceptance. Acceptance that beneath our thoughts truly is a place of peace, a place of calm, and when we access this place we can live more intuitively and authentically. This doesn’t mean we chase the thoughts away. Instead we just wait for them pass, knowing that the blue sky is always there, right beneath the clouds.

For many people, this place within us, that exists beyond thought, is a deeply spiritual place. It is a place where we can access our truest self, our deepest wisdom about life and find guidance for the things in life that matter most. For some, this practice has allowed them to delve deeply into the imagination, accessing the multidimensional lives we live on other timelines.

Practicing mindfulness meditation, and carrying what you have learned in meditation out into your everyday life, allows you to live in a way that is more in tune with this deeper awareness, this true self. And this can be spiritually liberating for many.

Mindfulness changes how you relate to the world

A regular mindfulness practice also transforms the way in which we relate to the world. By drawing us into living life on a deeper and more intuitive level, we become less reactive.
 
Many mindfulness meditation practices begin with setting an intention for the practice and identifying who this practice will benefit beyond yourself. There are many ways in which those around us will benefit from our mindfulness practice. Those closest to us will benefit from the greater sense of calm that we experience as a result of regular mindfulness practice, but they also benefit from our greater ability to be present in the moment.
 
We live in a highly distracted age. There is always somewhere else to be or something else to do. Technology allows us to connect with anyone at any time. Our full attention, then, is one of the most precious things that we can give to anyone. Mindfulness practices helps us to strengthen the muscle of presence. It allows us to really be where we are and our relationships are often all the stronger for it.

Mindfulness practice can transform our relationship with the natural world. By being more present we begin to notice our surroundings so much more. And in noticing, we are much more likely to access our authenticity and experience feelings of genuine gratitude. Our gratitude for what we have, and the beauty of the world around us, can be a powerful driving force to protect our world and care for it.
 
When we regularly practice mindfulness, and become more in tune with that which matters most to us, we are more able to prioritize what really matters. We are able to work in the world for meaningful change, whether that is in the form of caring for others or caring for our beautiful planet. 

We could easily enter into a mindfulness practice simply to gain the benefits that are so often talked about of an improvement to our wellbeing and mental health. And these are great goals to have.

But mindfulness practice offers us so much more. It offers us a way to connect deeply with ourselves and with the world. It gives us a simple way to begin to understand the inner workings of our mind and to access our intuition and wisdom.
 
From this place we can make intentional decisions about what matters most to us and how we spend our time and energy. We can live life in a wholly different way.
 
That is the true benefit of mindfulness.

In love and truth,

Lori Lines

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