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Read: Why Are Meditative Relaxation and Mindfulness Important?

Mindfulness is a practice that will help you develop greater awareness and contentment by being in the present moment. Too often, people are focused either on the past or on the future and do not have a full focus on the present.

Mindfulness is not meant to be relaxation although at times it can be very relaxing, especially while practicing. Mindfulness is developing full awareness of the present even when the present may not be pleasant. Much of the time what makes the unpleasant even worse are the future or past-oriented thoughts negatively evaluating it. When we allow the full experience of the moment, no matter what it is, we allow the natural coping and healing to occur.

The following is part of a series of short mindfulness practice exercises to help train your brain to be more mindful or present focus. They are meant to be used frequently throughout the day. It is difficult to put mindfulness into words because it gives the impression that you should be saying the descriptions of the events to yourself. Actually, however, mindfulness is just being aware of these things without having to describe them. The audios are to help you get started by creating awareness. Eventually, you want to be able to be mindful without an inner verbal description.

Practice these exercises many times throughout the day with your different activities. If your mind wanders, gently bring your focus back to your immediate experience.

These audios are not imaginal experiences. It is necessary to actually engage in the behavior described. The audio is for guidance only. You do not listen to the audio while practicing mindfulness. This exercise focuses on doing aerobic exercise to exhaustion. This is a good exercise to practice the mindful experience of discomfort and just "being" with the changes that occur in your body as you exercise and afterwards as you relax.

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Choose an aerobic exercise that you can safely do to exhaustion. A simple exercise that will exhaust most people in a short time is walking or running up and down stairs. As you engage in the exercise notice the changes in your body. What does your body feel like at the beginning? What is your energy level like? How fresh are your muscles? As you continue with the exercise, what do you notice? How does your rate of breathing change? Do you feel a tightness in your muscles? Do you feel fatigue in your body? Where do you feel the fatigue? Is it in your muscles or is it in your energy level? What does it feel like to breathe harder and faster? Are you sweating? What do you feel when you sweat? Does it cause your clothes to feel different in places? Does it cool your body? As you continue this exercise to exhaustion notice what your body feels like. Does it feel pleasant or unpleasant? Whatever it feels like, allow yourself to just “be” with that sensation. When you stop the exercise, what are the differences that you notice? How does your breathing change? What does your chest feel like? What do your muscles feel like? How do these things change as you relax after the exercise? Allow yourself to fully experience the changes that occur.

When I ask clients what they do for daily relaxation I usually get responses such as:

"I relax by watching TV every night."

"I have a glass of wine."

"I read a book."

"I go out with friends."

"I go to the gym and work out."

"I find gardening relaxing."

"I like to fish."

Although each of these activities may be perceived as relaxing and may even have an element of mindfulness, they don't provide the brain and body with the deep meditative relaxation we require. In fact, most of these activities are stimulating to the brain or the body rather than quieting.

What is Deep Meditative Relaxation?

When I refer to deep meditative relaxation, I mean the type that allows our brain to enter an "alpha" state for a period of time. An "alpha" state refers to our brain waves as measured by an EEG. When (non-invasive) electrodes are attached to our heads to measure our brain waves, we find several different types occur depending upon our degree of wakefulness.

The normal state of wakefulness in which we are fully aware and active is shown as "beta" waves. Beta waves on the EEG are very active, not very uniform, and not deep are slow. This makes sense as it is showing that the brain is active which includes thinking as well as physical activity which the brain must direct. So, most of the statements above can be described by a "beta wave state."

When we fall asleep our brain slows down, and the brain waves become deeper, slower, and more rhythmic as we progress through the deeper stages of sleep including theta and delta brain waves. However, when we cycle back into dream sleep or "REM" sleep then our brain approaches the wakeful state of the beta waves because our brain is active during dream sleep.

For most people who don't practice deep meditative relaxation, these are the primary brain waves that they experience. However, with deep relaxation, meditation, hypnosis, and mindfulness people experience the alpha brain wave state as well as the theta brain wave state (Chiesa, 2009; Lagopoulos et al, 2009) which have been shown to have significant health benefits. READ MORE