September 2014
even during a meeting or waiting at
traffic lights. This simple practice
helps many people feel more calm,
sleep better and worry less.
Walking awareness involves
simply paying attention to physical
sensations associated with movement, noticing the quality of your
awareness and emotions as you pay
attention to the feet and legs and
the entire body in motion. Simply
slowing down for three or four
mindful steps when I realize I am
in a hurry helps me regain a sense
of calmness and self-control.
Awareness of the body
(body scan) can be done seated,
reclining or lying down and
involves paying attention to sensations throughout your entire body.
You can move your attention from
the head to the feet or from the
feet to the head, whichever is most
comfortable for you. The body
scan helps some people connect
with their bodies for the first time
— an important initial step in taking good care of themselves.
Loving kindness and
compassion practice can
change your experience of yourself
and your life in just a few days.
Even two or three minutes of daily
repeating to yourself “May I be
happy. May I be free from suffering”
can start to transform your life. Even
more transformative is the extension of this practice to others by
imagining them and repeating “May
you be happy. May you be free from
suffering.”
Positive emotions and feelings of
connectedness are learnable skills.
Regular practice of these meditation
techniques can lead to the spontaneous arising of compassion, kindness,
joy, gratitude, hope, self-acceptance,
social support and purpose in life.
While many of the benefits of
meditation can occur in a matter
of weeks, these benefits can be lost
without regular practice. Given the
infancy of meditation research, it
seems clear we have a lot more to
discover about it. Your meditation
experience may have benefits that
science has not yet uncovered.
A word of caution is also in order.
Like any other intervention for
health and illness, meditation may
cause side effects, discomfort or
even worsening of one’s condition.
For this reason, it is important that
anyone with physical or emotional
conditions seek the counsel of a
well-trained meditation instructor
and discuss the use of meditation
with their medical provider.
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References
Center for Investigating Healthy
Minds
www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/
Center for Mindfulness in Medicine,
Health Care and Society
http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm
Transcendental meditation
http://www.tm.org
About the Author
Dr Patterson is past president of
the Kentucky Academy of Family
Physicians and is board certified
in family medicine and integrative
holistic medicine. He is on the family practice faculty at the University
of Kentucky College of Medicine
and the University of Louisville
School of Medicine, Saybrook
University’s School of Mind Body
Medicine (San Francisco) and the
Center for Mind Body Medicine
(Washington, DC). He operates the
Mind Body Studio in Lexington,
where he offers integrative medicine
consultations.