How To Use Mindfulness Meditation and Self-Hypnosis
Discover how easy it is to use this skill to change your everyday life...
Jeremy Dyen, CHt.
Co-Creator - The Birth Relaxation Kit™
Over the years I have realized this: it is amazing how, when we practice what we teach, the results are profound. We heal ourselves, AND we become more effective working with others.
Mindfulness meditation and self-hypnosis are two of the most valuable skills we can teach clients, but they are also the most valuable skills we can practice in our own lives. And trust me, I practice this, though perhaps not as often as I truly wish to :)
As a certified hypnotist, I have moved towards strategies and suggestions that teach these skills. In my own life, I have found them to be very powerful. This practice has helped me be a more mindful and calm parent, it has helped me focus and achieve goals I didn't previously think were possible and it has even helped me through a rather painful injury, which you can read about in my article, "How Self-Hypnosis Got Rid Of My Pain (A Man's Story)."
Mindfulness meditation is taught is hospitals around the world, as an effective tool for pain control, oncology and cardiac recovery, PTSD and many other health conditions. If you are struggling with depression, illness or even financial stress, you will greatly benefit from learning mindfulness meditation and self hypnosis.
The cool thing about mindfulness meditation, is that is it's a different type of meditation, one that does not require hours of boring practice. There is no sitting in weird positions, there are not robes or rituals and there are no long periods of boredome. In fact, you don't even have to "turn off thinking" to practice mindfulness.
If you are stressed about birth, work, finances, becoming a new parent or just about anything, mindful meditation works, and here's proof.
In a clinical study done by Miller, Fletcher and Kabat Zinn for the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, "22 medical patients with DSM-III-R-defined anxiety disorders showed clinically and statistically significant improvements in subjective and objective symptoms of anxiety and panic following an 8-week outpatient physician-referred group stress reduction intervention based on mindfulness meditation."
When the study was continued over a 3 year period Miller, Fletcher and Kabat Zinn found continued results. They concluded that mindfulness meditation has long term benefits for patients with anxiety disorders.
John Kabat Zinn is internationally known for his work as a scientist, writer and teacher of mindfulness meditation. You can find out more about his amazing workshops at www.eomega.org. He and his wife, Myla, wrote one of Mavi's and my most cherished parenting books, called Everyday Blessings. It's a wonderful approach to mindfulness meditation that helped us relax, truly connect with our daughter and foster an internal enrichment for her that we believe will carry her through life.
Hoizel, Carmody, Vangel, Congleton, Yerramsetti, Gard and Lazar showed, in their 2011 study published in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, that Mindfulness Meditation is associated with changes in gray matter concentration in regions of the brain involved in memory and learning processes and emotional regulation. This is strong support for the physical effectiveness of meditation.
Although different, mindfulness meditation and self-hypnosis have many similarities. Both bring your attention to one of the most simple but overlooked human function: breathing. It is through the awareness of breathing--even if you simply focus on breath rather than try to change it--that we are able to easily and deeply relax.
Where mindfulness meditation and hypnosis differ is in the approach once that state of relaxation is reached. Mindfulness meditation is more about being in the present moment, while hypnosis uses that heightened state of subconsciousness during relaxation to make and absorb positive suggestions of learning.
In hypnobirthing, for example, the process is actually very simple: once a client reaches that deep state of relaxation, we make positive suggestions about birth, helping to reshape the client's entire mindset about birth. We have the client focus on a strong connection with their baby. The client taps into their natural and intuitive ability to birth, and to birth comfortably. They learn that their body knows just what to do--it knows to nourish their baby throughout pregnancy and it knows how to move their baby down and out during birth.
Mindfulness meditation and self-hypnosis are two of the most valuable skills we can teach clients, but they are also the most valuable skills we can practice in our own lives. And trust me, I practice this, though perhaps not as often as I truly wish to :)
As a certified hypnotist, I have moved towards strategies and suggestions that teach these skills. In my own life, I have found them to be very powerful. This practice has helped me be a more mindful and calm parent, it has helped me focus and achieve goals I didn't previously think were possible and it has even helped me through a rather painful injury, which you can read about in my article, "How Self-Hypnosis Got Rid Of My Pain (A Man's Story)."
Mindfulness meditation is taught is hospitals around the world, as an effective tool for pain control, oncology and cardiac recovery, PTSD and many other health conditions. If you are struggling with depression, illness or even financial stress, you will greatly benefit from learning mindfulness meditation and self hypnosis.
The cool thing about mindfulness meditation, is that is it's a different type of meditation, one that does not require hours of boring practice. There is no sitting in weird positions, there are not robes or rituals and there are no long periods of boredome. In fact, you don't even have to "turn off thinking" to practice mindfulness.
If you are stressed about birth, work, finances, becoming a new parent or just about anything, mindful meditation works, and here's proof.
In a clinical study done by Miller, Fletcher and Kabat Zinn for the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, "22 medical patients with DSM-III-R-defined anxiety disorders showed clinically and statistically significant improvements in subjective and objective symptoms of anxiety and panic following an 8-week outpatient physician-referred group stress reduction intervention based on mindfulness meditation."
When the study was continued over a 3 year period Miller, Fletcher and Kabat Zinn found continued results. They concluded that mindfulness meditation has long term benefits for patients with anxiety disorders.
John Kabat Zinn is internationally known for his work as a scientist, writer and teacher of mindfulness meditation. You can find out more about his amazing workshops at www.eomega.org. He and his wife, Myla, wrote one of Mavi's and my most cherished parenting books, called Everyday Blessings. It's a wonderful approach to mindfulness meditation that helped us relax, truly connect with our daughter and foster an internal enrichment for her that we believe will carry her through life.
Hoizel, Carmody, Vangel, Congleton, Yerramsetti, Gard and Lazar showed, in their 2011 study published in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, that Mindfulness Meditation is associated with changes in gray matter concentration in regions of the brain involved in memory and learning processes and emotional regulation. This is strong support for the physical effectiveness of meditation.
Although different, mindfulness meditation and self-hypnosis have many similarities. Both bring your attention to one of the most simple but overlooked human function: breathing. It is through the awareness of breathing--even if you simply focus on breath rather than try to change it--that we are able to easily and deeply relax.
Where mindfulness meditation and hypnosis differ is in the approach once that state of relaxation is reached. Mindfulness meditation is more about being in the present moment, while hypnosis uses that heightened state of subconsciousness during relaxation to make and absorb positive suggestions of learning.
In hypnobirthing, for example, the process is actually very simple: once a client reaches that deep state of relaxation, we make positive suggestions about birth, helping to reshape the client's entire mindset about birth. We have the client focus on a strong connection with their baby. The client taps into their natural and intuitive ability to birth, and to birth comfortably. They learn that their body knows just what to do--it knows to nourish their baby throughout pregnancy and it knows how to move their baby down and out during birth.
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Recent Comments:
"I enjoyed the series! I got the emails, and wanted to thank you for highlighting hypnobirthing. I used Hypnobabies with my son, and loved it! More people need to know how wonderful it can be." Dana "Awesome!!
If we can transform womankind’s experience of pain in birth, fear would no longer be the primary motivator of our collective birth choices and we could finally create a culture of trusting birth and gently bringing our babes into the world!! Thanks for doing this!!" Sherry |
