There is immense excitement about mindfulness in many areas of life, including in businesses, and for good reason.
Broad benefits
Research and practical experience have shown that mindfulness has helped people in a number of significant areas, including:
- well-being (including overall mood and outlook)
- resilience (including adaptability, equanimity and emotional regulation)
- compassion
- cognitive functioning (including clarity, objectivity, decision making, concentration)
- emotional intelligence (including self-awareness & interpersonal skills)
- effectiveness and productivity
In fact, it can have a potentially profound and enhancing impact on all aspects of one’s life – increasing clarity, wisdom and connection to your experience. It helps you become more aware of what is helpful and what is not.
Positive brain changes and health improvements
Neuroscience research has demonstrated positive changes in the brain structure and functioning in regular meditators. Mindfulness has also been shown to have a beneficial impact on the immune system, on blood pressure and on symptoms related to ageing.
Specific areas where improvements have been seen
People have experienced improvements in the following*:
self-awareness, cognition, clarity, emotion/ impulse regulation, objectivity, decision-making, strategic thinking, resilience, equanimity, listening skills, noticing, compassion, empathy, open-mindedness, tolerance, lower blood pressure, well-being (less stress, better health), sleep, calm, different/ wider perspective, outlook, contentment, self-esteem, focus, memory, comfort with change and ambiguity, appreciation, creativity, innovation, curiosity, wisdom, authenticity, intuition.
*These have been researched and evidenced
You can read more about mindfulness research here.
An important note:
Attend mindfulness training with an open mind. Ways in which people have benefited are listed above to give you some sense of how mindfulness has been useful to people. However when attending a training it is important to let go of any expectations as best you can. The training is in being present with what is here right now.
Accessing individual insights
Some of the changes you may experience from mindfulness can have a universal quality. But many will be highly individual. Mindfulness increases self-awareness. This in turn gives you access to insight, understanding, learnings and shifts that are specific to you and your current context.
“The heart of mindfulness meditation is the development of wisdom – a deepening understanding of ourselves and life. It is profound understanding that liberates us from the constraints of habit, conditioning and limitation.”Christina Feldman
Tapping into your inner resources
Mindfulness enables you to get more in touch with, and to heighten, that which is already in you and which is useful. This includes awareness, curiosity, kindness and discernment. These qualities are powerful for operating wisely in the world – in relation to yourself, others and your environment.
With repeated practice you get trait change, not just temporary state change. It can create new defaults which feel natural to you, rather than having to be ‘remembered’ or ‘applied’.
We find that mindfulness is a transformative practice, leading to a deeper understanding of how to respond to situations wisely.The Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group
Click here to read more about what mindfulness is.
Register your interest in Mindfulness Training
To find out how mindfulness training could work in your organisation, please get in touch with me, Rachael, either by filling in this form or calling 07876 495 968.