UMA ANáLISE DE HARMONY

Uma análise de harmony

Uma análise de harmony

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Meditation has proven benefits, but the style that works best depends on a person's habits and preferences. In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we explore walking meditation, a powerful practice for feeling more centered and grounded. Dan Harris, host of the award-winning 10% Happier podcast, shares how walking meditation helps him manage the residual stress and anxiety from years of war reporting and high-pressure TV anchoring.

Meditation is a highly personal activity, with everyone finding their best own way to practice. Some find guided meditations to be useful, especially when starting out, to help focus their attention.

Bring your attention to the sensation of air moving into and out of your body. On the inhale, notice it traveling into your nose, your throat, down into your lungs. Notice the rise in your chest and belly. On the exhale, notice how the air leaves your body.

Mindfulness can help combat bias: Even a brief mindfulness training can reduce our implicit biases and the biased language we use. One way this works, researchers have found, is by attenuating the cognitive biases that contribute to prejudice.

Continue like this for two minutes. Noticing the breath moving into your body on the inhale, and leaving your body on the exhale.

So, no matter why we want to start meditating — to feel less stressed, get better sleep, be more focused, or improve relationships — every meditation is one step closer to building healthier habits for a happier mind.

Meditating after a large meal—and certainly after drinking alcohol—can make you feel sleepy, which isn’t ideal. The goal is to stay alert during your practice.

Note that we’re not saying it necessarily reduces physiological and psychological reactions to threats and obstacles. But studies to date do suggest that meditation helps mind and body bounce back from stress and stressful situations. For example, practicing meditation lessens the inflammatory response in people exposed to psychological stressors, particularly for long-term meditators.

During body scan, for example, participants saw the biggest increases in how aware they were of their bodies (unsurprisingly) and the sharpest decline in the number of thoughts they were having, particularly negative thoughts and thoughts related to the past and future. Loving-kindness meditation led to the greatest boost in their feelings of warmth and positive thoughts about others. Meanwhile, observing-thought meditation seemed to increase participants’ awareness of their thoughts the most. Previous research also suggests that observing-thought meditation has an advantage in reducing our judgmental attitude toward others. Taken together, these and other studies suggest that if you’re tackling a specific issue—say, feeling disconnected from your body—then you can choose a practice aimed at helping that issue, like self-knowledge the body scan. Loving-kindness might help in conflict with others, while observing-thought meditation can help break rumination. Body-Scan Meditation

Meditation does have an impact on physical health—but it’s modest. Many claims have been made about mindfulness and physical health, but sometimes these claims are hard to substantiate or may be mixed up with other effects. That said, there is some good evidence that meditation affects physiological indices of health. We’ve already mentioned that long-term meditation seems to buffer people from the inflammatory response to stress. In addition, meditators seem to have increased activity of telomerase, an enzyme implicated in longer cell life and, therefore, longevity. But there’s a catch. “The differences found [between meditators and non-meditators] could be due to factors like education or exercise, each of which has its own buffering effect on brains,” write Goleman and Davidson in

As long as our back is straight, our neck and shoulders are relaxed, and our chin is slightly tucked, we can sit wherever we feel comfortable for the length of the meditation. We can sit on our couch, a dining or office chair, propped up by pillows on the bed, or on a cushion.

Any amount of meditation is better than no meditation at all. But the benefits of meditation are compounded when you do it regularly. And daily? Even better. A daily meditation practice will yield benefits that will reverberate into every area of your life.

If you’re interested in more formal training, here are some successful programs for cultivating mindfulness that we’ve identified..

Mindfulness training for families may lead to less-stressed parents who pay more attention to their kids.

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