The practice of mindfulness and mindfulness meditation has been shown through scientific research to decrease stress, depression, anxiety, physical pain, and blood pressure while boosting the immune system. Practicing mindfulness has become a no-brainer for optimizing physical and mental health.
Non-Judging Online Therapy:
Mindfulness is cultivated by assuming the stance of an impartial witness to our own experience. If we observe our own mind, we may recognize that it constantly judges things as “good” or “bad,” and then we seek to hang onto the “good” and avoid the “bad,” which is the source of most of our suffering. As part of your online counselling for depression you’ll learn that judging prevents us from fully enjoying the pleasures in life because we fear losing them. Judging also prevents us from understanding and learning to deal effectively with stress and suffering because we try to avoid them. Learning to observe and accept all of our experiences, both the pleasurable ones and the painful ones, without needing to hang onto them or avoid them will eliminate much of our stress and suffering.
Patience for Online Counsellors:
Patience is a form of wisdom. It understands that sometimes things must unfold in their own time. Impatience is simply a form of judging: “I don’t like this. I want things to be different.” It’s most helpful to be patient when the thinking mind is agitated because an agitated mind does not make good decisions. We must also learn to be patient with ourselves as we grow and heal
The Beginner’s Mind:
To see the richness of the present moment, we need to cultivate what has been called “the beginner’s mind,” a mind that is willing to see things for the first time. Too often we let our thinking and our beliefs about what we think we know prevent us from seeing the richness of what’s right before our very eyes.
Trust Your Online Counselling Service:
Developing a basic trust in yourself and your feelings is an integral part of the practice of mindfulness. This attitude of trusting yourself and your own basic wisdom and goodness is very important in all aspects of mindfulness. You cannot possibly become someone else. You can only become more fully yourself. So, you must honor your feelings and needs.
Non-Striving:
As your mindfulness grows, you will see that the best way to achieve your goals is to back off from striving for them and instead focus on seeing and accepting things as they are, moment by moment. Then, with patience and regular practice, movement toward your goals will take place by itself. For example, if you stop hating your panic attacks and instead focus on observing and accepting them, you will soon understand them better, which will quite naturally lead to more effective ways of coping with them.
Acceptance:
Acceptance means seeing things as they are in the present. Acceptance does not mean that we live passive lives, feeling powerless to improve ourselves or fight injustice. Acceptance simply means that until we see things as they are in any given situation, our actions will be less effective. Thus, it makes sense to spend time accepting things as they are until the clarity of our observations makes the right course of action obvious.
Letting Go:
This is a way of letting things be, of accepting things as they are. Therapists often say, “Well, John, you just have to let it go,” but they don’t explain how to actually let go of intrusive thoughts and memories that rob us of the richness of living fully in the present moment. Learning to let go is crucial for taming the mind. Fortunately, when you practice mindfulness meditation on a daily basis, it’s like going to gym to exercise the muscles of letting go of unhelpful thinking, which is why research has shown that mindfulness meditation is the best way to reduce stress.