Meditation

"Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life (...) and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it." Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is the art of recognising again and again that you are not who you think you are.

We are always in problem-solving mode. Even when we think we are in the present, we are looking for what'll happen next.
- Thinking is useful but constantly losing oneself in thought is a nightmare.
- We are unaware of the story we are telling ourselves all day long.
Meditation is the practice of running your brain in "debug mode".
- Create space between your thoughts by being aware of them.
- "We suffer more in imagination than in reality" – Seneca
One can't fail at meditation.
The practice isn't about staying in focus but coming back into focus.
- coming back to paying attention to the breath
- building up an "attention muscle".
It's better to ask "how am I relating to what’s happening?" than "what is happening?".
- How we think about our experience changes the experience.
Be kind to yourself.
It's not about sitting. Walk around and practice accepting the moment you are in without making judgements.

Meditation, mindfulness and executive control: the importance of emotional acceptance and brain-based performance monitoring: "emotional acceptance and performance monitoring play important roles".
Mindful Emotion Regulation: Exploring the Neurocognitive Mechanisms behind Mindfulness: "mindfulness has achieved effective outcomes in the treatment of anxiety, depression, and other psychopathologies through the contribution of mindfulness to emotional regulation".
How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective: "Evidence suggests that mindfulness practice is associated with neuroplastic changes in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, fronto-limbic network, and default mode network structures".

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