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Meditation and Mindfulness Go Together by Chelsey Charbeneau
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editation and mindfulness are high on the list of topics of conversation these days due to the increasing stress and anxiety we are seeing on a global level. Everyone from executives at Fortune 500 companies to professional Explore • Enjoy • Protect Explore Explore••Enjoy Enjoy••Protect Protect Explore • Enjoy • Protect
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athletes are practicing meditation or mindfulness to improve performance and get mentally healthy. These two practices have many similarities and intersect at times, but there are stark differences between them. Meditation can be considered a type of formal spiritual or mental practice, while mindfulness is a quality we embody as an informal practice.
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of stilling the mind and ideally moving towards a state of enlightenment. Mindfulness is slightly different in its approach. According to founder Jon KabatZinn, mindfulness is “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally.” This essentially is a quality that we begin to embody in our day-today life and cultivate through practice. In mindfulness, we follow specific precepts to help us live a more attentive state which include: beginner’s mind, patience, trust, non-striving, acceptance, letting go and non-judging. Mindfulness becomes more of a philosophy or way of life, rather than a specific technique to meditate. Many people practice living mindfully by becoming more present, using their senses intentionally and focusing on doing one thing at a time, rather than multitasking. When we meditate, we can incorporate the qualities of mindfulness into the formal practice by paying attention to whatever the specific focal point is, depending on the type of meditation, being more present from minute-to-minute without judgement. We can become more aware our bodies by using our senses and allow our thoughts to come and go with greater ease by incorporating the foundations of mindfulness. Most of us want to avoid the mental, emotional or physical pains we feel when stop to meditate, but with the idea of acceptance, we can learn to ease up the fight or struggle, move toward a state of letting go and ultimately trust in the process. Mindfulness is a way of living, while meditation is a way of being. Living mindfully can be enhanced with a daily meditation practice, and our meditation practice can be enhanced by becoming more mindful. They two go hand-in-hand and complement one another. Chelsey Charbeneau is the founder of Breathe Meditation & Mindfulness, a certified yoga therapist with The International Association of Yoga Therapists and an experienced registered yoga teacher and continuing education provider with the national Yoga Alliance. For more information, visit BreatheMeditationAndWellness.com.
