Mindful Happiness

Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

  • Home
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
    • About
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Contact

May 19, 2015 By Admin

Benefits of Regular Meditation Practice

Many Benefits of Mindfulness and Vipassana Meditation

MindfulHappiness-MeditationThe Dalai Lama (Gyatso, Tenzin), the world leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and Paul Ekman, the world famous Psychologist of human emotions, have teamed up to discuss how to use mindful emotional awareness skills to become more emotionally balanced and compassionate. These two highly skilled practitioners have listed 21 potential benefits of regular meditation practice. These will be listed below.

1) Attention and concentration mind training expand the gap in time and space between stimulus and impulsive emotional reactions, thus improving emotional and behavioral balance in responses to stressors.

2) Meditative focus on breath awareness helps to calm both the body and the mind, and become an alternative focus of attention when stressed.

3) The time pause that comes from meditation practice helps you to develop more adaptive responses to emotional triggers.

4) It is suggested that you maintain a mindfulness journal about regrettable  emotional reactions in your life, as well as your improvement in emotional balance.

journal-writing

5) Using vipassana awareness of the arising of phenomena, work at catching the earliest possible arising of unhelpful emotional reactions.  Stop, breathe, take executive control, and defer to a more adaptive response.

6) Regular meditation practice improves your ability to perceive and respond to the emotional reactions of others, thus improving interpersonal interactions.

7) Mindfulness-based awareness helps you to use your facial emotions to improve emotional issues both intrapsychically and interpersonally.  Smile and laugh more often!

8) Regular meditation practice, especially vipassana, will improve your ability to feel emotional sensations in your body (interoception), thus giving you a small window of time to use executive functions to improve your responses.

9) Regular meditation practice enhances executive functioning and weakens limbic emotional reactivity, thus enabling you to shorten time periods of negative reactivity and shift back to your emotional baseline more quickly.

MindfulHappiness_WhatisMindfulness-meditating-by-water

10) Meditation practice helps you to discover the behavioral implications of emotional and behavioral reactivity; you begin to understand how a stimulus situation leads to impulsive emotional reactions.  Once you know your strongest triggers, you are in a  better position to deal with them constructively.

11) Improved mindful awareness of increasing mind-body reactivity helps you to separate from it more quickly, and activate a more adaptive response.

12) Rather than “I am angry” regular meditation practice helps you to label emotional feelings as “I am feeling anger.”  This slight change in verbal description helps to separate your mind-body system from the internal reaction to an external trigger.  Anger is arising, but you are not the anger.

13) Learning meditative breathing techniques helps you to use breath as a diversion of attention away from reactive stimuli and triggers.  This re-assignment of attention reduces your emotional reactivity and calms the body.

14) Meditation practice, especially vipassana, helps you to become more aware of how to attain freedom from emotional suffering.  All phenomena are impermanent, so just wait it out rather than reacting emotionally.  Patience is good!

15) Improved awareness in the present moment helps you to better avoid and respond better to emotional situations that may trigger unhelpful emotional reactions.  Wise-mind skills help us greatly.

16) If you experience strong afflictive emotions (unhelpful, unwholesome), do your best to shift responses into the opposite directions.  This mindfulness skills is much like “opposite action” in Dialectical Behavior Therapy.

17) Use present moment mindfulness skills to increase the neuronal power of happy, good, and wholesome experiences and memories in life.

iStock_000007042277Small

18) Practice letting go of your self-cherishing, and do more to help others improve their emotional experiences in life.  Compassionate acts of kindness help both parties – the giver and the receiver.

19) As within The Four Noble Truths, recognize that suffering is normal, and that meditation practice is one way to reduce personal suffering.

20) Along with the joy of meditation, do much more gratitude practices. Be aware and happy with what you do have right now – all those things you may take for granted that are actually quite special.   You may want to keep a brief daily gratitude journal.

21) Remember that your thoughts, words and deed become how you impact your own emotions and the emotions of others in the world.  Be wholesome and compassion – kind in your thoughts, words and actions.

For more information refer to Dalai Lama (14th, Gyatso, Tenzin) and Ekman, P. (2008). Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion. New York: MacMillan Audio Book,  CD#6.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE to Order!

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

Filed Under: Featured, Meditation, MIndfulness, Practices Tagged With: DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, MEDITATION, MEDITATION BENEFITS, MINDFULNESS, VIPASSANA MEDITATION

Twitter

Mindful Happiness -Currently in Production

Mindful Happiness Posts

Stress In America – How to Deal with it Effectively The American Psychological Association just released the results of its annual stress survey for 2014.  This comprehensive study of stress in America has some serious implications for our health and happiness.  Although self-reported stress levels in many categories are lower than in 2013, the overall […]

Happiness #5 – Last Post on Characteristics This will be my last post for a while on the important topic of happiness.  Here I will hit a few highlights about simple joy and lasting inner experiences of true happiness. Simple Joy – We experience simple joy in simple experiences, small sometimes subtle events in our […]

Expanded Information about Your Compassion Practices and Benefits Compassion Practice Tips and Exercises The Buddha noted that one should not dwell on the past, become too attached to future outcomes, but instead concentrate our mind only on the present moment of our experiences.  The Dalai Lama noted that compassion is a necessary condition for inner […]

In-Depth Means to Discover and Be Your True Self Henry David Thoreau reminded us that it is not what you look at, but it is what you see that matters. How do you SEE yourself?  John Muir reminded us that the sun shines in us as well as in our souls. Do you find “the […]

Vipassana Meditation:  Impermanence Although standard vipassana meditation practice leading to insight about the true nature of reality does not recommend what I am about to do, I plan to do it anyway. This meditation center is all about innovation in practice and generalization regarding the benefits of meditation for both regular meditators and novices.  Below […]

Our Brains React to Worry According to research by The American Psychological Association in 2015, some of the core sources of severe stress reaction for Americans are: financial problems, job-related problems, family problems, and health problems.  Our lives are complete only with joy/happiness, suffering and boredom – sometimes referred to as pleasant, unpleasant and neutral […]

Plasticity – The Amazing Human Brain We humans are very fortunate in that our brain is one of the most complex entities in our known universe. Natural selection, genetic modifications, and use-related neuroplasticity have blessed us with a brain quite capable of some of the most complicated tasks imaginable. Some of these tasks (medical miracles, […]

Tantric Meditation on Emptiness of Self Mind training on emptiness of self requires single-pointed attention and concentration on space, empty space. Emptiness awareness in equipoise of meditation appears as the empty of space. When we practice this repeatedly with calm abiding we can attain direct experience of non-conceptual realization – true emptiness. Awareness of emptiness […]

The Lotus Sutra and Meditatin Practice The Lotus Sutra is one of the most important and sacred of Buddhist sutras. It is often considered a summary of The Buddha’s teaching, presented many years after he began to teach and share his experiences. The version considered here is the Kumarajiva translation,  as translated by B. Watson; it […]

Failure and Success: After We Fail, We Succeed Humans tend to get very discouraged when things do not go our way. This may be especially true for younger people, who have grown up attached to their instant gratification digital devices. Below I will list several highly successful people, but I will also note their many […]

Basic Self-Compassion Process Practice: To practice self-compassion as needed, follow these specific self-compassion steps. Sensitize your mindfulness skills to become aware of your immediate experience of suffering. Hold a strong intention to respond with self-kindness. Use self-talk to be kind to yourself. Begin by softening your body. Relax your muscles, tendons, joints. Hold a natural […]

Psychoanalytic Gems – Even More D. W. Winnicott has made significant clinical contributions to both building therapeutic alliance and maintaining a positive, helpful focus in psychotherapy. Below I have noted various approaches to use in your therapy.  Use of these “gems” requires considerable knowledge and skill by the therapist.  Here is the list: Respect the […]

Breathing Practices and Emptiness Here I will introduce you to five breathing practices, each one moving progressively closer and closer to emptiness/no-self experiences. Do your best to remain open in these practices. Notice the feel of your posture. Once comfortable notice your breath as it is. Relax and close your eyes if ok. Rest your […]

Meditation at the Deepest Levels In 2007 M. A. Singer’s The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, opened up a whole new, deeper perspective on why consciousness or pure awareness is the root of self. Even in a Buddhist  “no-self” view, Singer’s inquiries leave us with a great deal to unravel.  Here are some reasons why […]

A Dark Night with Saint John of the Cross The writings of Saint John of the Cross offer a special viewpoint about the suffering of souls, suffering souls on their way to unity with the divine.  What follows stands in contrast to the Buddha’s views in The Dhammapada about ultimate happiness without any form of union […]

“i Rest” Yoga Nidra Practice (Richard Miller, Ph.D.) All regular meditation and yoga practices are capable of bringing us closer to our true self and our relationships in the world. A by-product is deep relaxation and equanimity. Richard Miller, Ph.D. (Clinical Psychologist, yogic scholar, spiritual teacher), has created a yoga nidra practice that promises to […]

Mindfulness in the NFL Yes, mindfulness as part of sports psychology programming is being used in the NFL.  Yes, big and physically tough football players are being helped via a mindfulness component of sports psychology. There are some important roots here. Dogen, the famous ancient Japanese Buddhist meditation master, brought Chan Buddhism from China to […]

Winnicott’s Ideas – Best Possible Clinical Alliance To develop and maintain a strong clinical alliance it is best to follow some of the well-known clinical advice on this topic.  Rogers, Kohut, Winnicott and many others have suggested just how to do so.  Here are some general clinical recommendations for enhancing the clinical alliance. Develop authentic […]

Tonglen Meditation or Giving and Taking I have added various posts about many compassion practice.  Earlier posts have covered a range of practices – from super-easy to more demanding. Here, I will add a more advanced practice.  This Tibetan compassion meditation practice has been taught often in the Vajrayana school of Buddhism.  In my opinion […]

Trauma Informed Care – The Absolute Basics This post aims at providing a very basic introduction to Trauma Informed Care.  Advanced versions of this information are available from the author.  So what is Trauma Informed Care (hereafter TIC)?  Below I have listed rationales of need and core characteristics of TIC in organizations. Why We Need […]

Mindful Categories

Mindful Happiness Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Site Map

Copyright © 2023 · Mindful Happiness