mindfulness

• Mindfulness


  A state of active, open attention to the present; involves observing one's thoughts and feelings without judging them as good or bad
• Mindfulness


  • Living in the moment and reawakening oneself to the present, rather than dwelling on the past or anticipating the future
  • A healthy way to identify and manage latent emotions causing problems in personal or professional relationships
• Transcendental meditation


  Choosing a mantra (word, phrase, sound) and repeating it for 20 minutes twice a day, typically done seated with eyes closed, to help the body and mind fully relax and feel a sense of peace and calm
• Guided meditation


  A form of mental pictures or situations that you find relaxing, typically led by a guide or teacher, using as many senses as possible to evoke calmness

  
• Loving-kindness meditation (Metta meditation)


  A practice of directing well-wishes toward others by reciting specific words and phrases meant to evoke warm-hearted feelings
• Chakra meditation


  Relaxation techniques focused on bringing balance and well-being to the 7 chakras (centers of energy and spiritual power in the body), often involving visualizing each chakra and using corresponding crystals or colors
• Yoga meditation


  Performing a series of postures and controlling breathing exercises meant to promote flexibility and calm the mind, requiring balance, concentration, and focus on the present moment
• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)


  A program where an instructor guides participants in weekly practices like meditation and yoga to reduce stress levels, often used as a complementary practice alongside other therapies
• MBSR Session


  Typically runs 1 session per week for 8 weeks, each lasting 2-3 hours where a certified instructor teaches participants a mindfulness technique and they practice together as a group, with the aim of cultivating greater awareness of the present moment, reducing overall arousal and emotional reactivity, and gaining a deeper sense of calm
• Frontal lobe


  • Important role in decision-making and impulse control
  • Controls problem-solving skills (thinking, planning)
  • Helps concentrate and pay attention to different activities
  • Motor cortex in the back of the frontal lobe controls voluntary movements
• Temporal lobe


  • Helps with hearing and understanding sounds, understanding speech and creating speech
  • Contains the auditory cortex which controls hearing
  • Involved in memory functions
• Parietal lobe


  • Plays a big part in our ability to understand the world around us (perception), e.g. recognizing faces
  • Front of parietal lobe responsible for our sense of touch (somatosensory cortex)

  
• Occipital lobe


  • Deals with our ability to see, helps process visual information from the eyes and make sense of what we are seeing (visual cortex)

  
• Cerebellum


  • Plays a vital role in movement, coordination and balance (motor skills), combining information from the spinal cord and other parts of the brain to coordinate behaviour
• Corpus callosum


  Allows messages to be passed from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere and vice versa, making it easier for the brain to pass messages between different areas and make connections between different types of information
• Hippocampus


  Involved in long-term memory formation and retrieval, plays a role in spatial memory allowing individuals to keep track of where objects are and the position of their body relative to objects
• Amygdala


  Processes emotions, links emotions to many other brain abilities, memories, learning and senses, helps process fearful and threatening stimuli
• There is questioning of the idea that specific areas of the brain have specific functions, as modern scanning techniques suggest functionality is more dispersed than previously believed

  
• Meditation can reshape the brain