This New Year, make mindfulness your New Year resolution. Mindfulness refers to paying attention to one's thoughts, feelings and sensory experiences in the present moment in a non-judgmental and nonreactive manner. This is achieved through exercises such as meditation and breathing. Want to know mindfulness will help you? Read on
Good for weight loss: Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD at the University of Massachusetts Medical School observed in his experiments that mindfulness improved the quality of life in obese women in addition to lowering the fasting blood glucose levels in the body.
Good as anti-depressent: A study published in The Lancet says that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) could provide an alternative non-drug treatment for people who do not wish to continue long-term antidepressant treatment. Mindfullness changes the way people think and feel about their experiences. When patients with depression practiced mindfulness while continuing their antidepressant medication it reduced the risk of relapse in depression.
Good as a painkiller: Mindfulness meditation may provide an alternative to usual drug-based pain relieving pills, especially to those suffering from chronic pain, suggests a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Good for increasing focus: Researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison found that heavy media multi-taskers (like people who text while watching TV or listen to music) become more attentive to tasks than their low multi-tasker counterparts after meditation. Previous studies have shown that people who most often let several types of media overlap can be distracted in the moment, but also score poorly on tests that assess attention even when the media sources are absent.
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