Mindfulness is part of meditation. It involves being aware of and paying attention to what is happening, as it is happening. This includes awareness of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, thinking, feeling, and bodily energy as we experience them.Contrary to popular belief you do not have to be able to stop thinking in order to learn to meditate.
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Calm Abiding (Shamatha) and Insight (Vipashyana) meditations both entail practising Mindfulness, but can, with practice, go beyond mindfulness in their scope for personal transformation and working with the roller coaster of getting to know ourselves. You do not have to be Buddhist, or even religious, to practice Shamatha or Vipashyana.
Shamatha Meditation involves learning to be aware of, settle and focus the busy, monkey mind, resulting in feeling more spacious, appreciative, and at peace with a greater feeling of well being.
Vipashyana Meditation in the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu school of Mahamudra includes meditating on who we are, the nature of mind and phenomena in an experiential way. It offers a full path to enlightenment.
Meditation can be used in a secular way just to relax and improve health and well being through mindfulness and Shamatha, or it can also lead to enlightenment, the permanent cessation of suffering, the waking up to the full realisation of who we really are at the deepest level.
As mindfulness entails being aware, accepting our experience as it happens, with practice we become less caught up with concepts and anxiety about the future on the basis of our suffering from the past. We are in the present moment. This can really open us up to appreciating and enjoying the amazing qualities of the ever living present moment. We can relax, truly enjoy ourselves while appreciating what we are seeing, feeling and doing! For centuries meditators, doctors and healers in eastern traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism have believed that mindfulness and meditation improves health and well-being. Now scientists are finding evidence for this.
As mindfulness meditation became increasingly accepted in Europe and America, scientists began to research its effects. Clinical studies have documented how it helps people stay healthier, improve mental focus and feel less overwhelmed by emotions. Used as a secular healing tool in modern health care and therapy, regularly practising mindfulness and meditation have been shown to lessen suffering and improve physical, emotional and mental well being.
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