If You Increase Your Awareness, Your Life Will Start To Change

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a promoter of mindfulness in the Western world, believes that if we increase our inner consciousness, changes will come into our lives by themselves. But he does not just make a vague imprecise confirmation. Instead, for years, this researcher has dedicated his life to scientifically proving what human experience has been aware of for many years: exploration, introspection, and deep ties help us create lasting change.

According to an interview in the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia , thanks to mindfulness or full awareness, we can pay attention to the present in an active way, without judging.

Through the development of this ability, we can embrace reality. This in turn is purifying and transforming at all levels. In fact, this also creates neurological changes.

Mindfulness is not just for gurus

Behind the term mindfulness there is a large amount of scientific, medical and psychological research. This research shows that this union of zen meditation and vipassana is very beneficial to us.

Mindfulness has helped patients relieve chronic pain, anxiety, panic and other types of physical and psychological problems.

We can say that full attention increases our awareness to be able to achieve a change in attitude, our perspective and our lives. It does not say that we should fall in love in life. Instead, it helps us to accept it and experience it as it is.

This is an innovative method because virtually all Western health methods are focused on removing symptoms. The relief of discomfort, the destruction of chaos and the need to be “normal”.

To maintain experience from your presence

In school we learn to think in order to be able to solve. But mindfulness tries to make you simply live life’s experiences to achieve change. The goal is further to reach deeper into ourselves and better understand our surroundings.

The neurological changes occur, after appropriate training of mindfulness, in regions associated with learning and memory. These areas swell and expand. The amygdala in particular is amplified (remember that our emotions are here because it handles reaction to dangers and warns the rest of our brain).

In the interview above, Kabat-Zinn explains that mindfulness training can result in a modification of our genes. He emphasizes in particular these findings:

• The genes that have to do with inflammatory processes, and thus cancer, are counteracted.
• The density and size of the brain shrinks over the years, but stops doing so if you meditate.
• Neural connections arise and multiply.

How can we achieve all this through mindfulness? What is the pervasive truth? There is no answer to this. It is simply a matter of stopping the sleepy gliding through life and starting to live fully awake, without doing anything or trying to change anything; one only meditates and keeps oneself awake (something that undoubtedly requires great discipline).

Therefore, if we embrace the negative thoughts that cause us to sink into a vicious circle, we will prevent them from occurring. It is obvious that not everything in life is beautiful. We just have to raise our awareness so that we do not promote these thoughts.

For a distracted mind is an unhappy mind. It is only when we combine and gather everything into one whole that we will achieve health, well-being and wisdom. For “the cultivation of mindfulness is a radical act of health, love and care about ourselves” .