We spend a lot of our time in a state of alertness, planning and anticipating the future or in recalling the past. Mindfulness practise is simple training in gently bringing the mind back to a state of present awareness, as an antidote to the anxious and depressive states which are sometimes associated with future and past focused thought. This is achieved through basic meditation and relaxation techniques which anyone can learn and practise alone. This is a great resource for self-calming and for general self-care.

 

Mindfulness was developed at the University of Massachusetts by Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944-) and his team. They studied meditation techniques, originating in Buddhist practices, and tested them under scientific conditions. Techniques which were proven to reduce persistent negative emotional states were used to create a simple method of cognitive training known as mindfulness. It is interesting to note that though Mindfulness has been taken up in psychotherapy and clinical psychology - Zinn's teams were not psychologists or psychotherapists - and they intended Mindfulness to be useful for a much wider population than simply people doing psychotherapy. .