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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.

Be sure to listen to or read Understanding Mindfulness: Step 3--Mindfulness and Unpleasant Emotions prior to practicing this audio exercise. This exercise is to help you develop tolerance of emotions. The audio provides guidance for being mindfully present with remorse. Feeling guilty is an uncomfortable feeling that may be necessary if you have done something wrong. In which case, feeling guilty helps you to correct behavior. However, many people feel guilt or remorse when they haven't truly done something wrong. In such a situation, it is important to learn to tolerate the discomfort rather than continuing to recreate it with irrational thoughts. The actual practice of mindfulness is to allow yourself to be fully aware of your experience when feeling remorse. It is not reasonable to create the conditions for remorse to occur. Instead, you need to be aware of when you might feel remorse so as to practice mindfully experiencing it.

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Allow yourself to fully experience the feeling of remorse. When “should of” or “could of” thoughts come to mind, let those thoughts be and just refocus on the feeling of remorse. Don't try to get rid of the feeling. Let yourself be with it. Notice how remorse feels in your body. What does it feel like? Where do you experience it? Does it feel like a heaviness or emptiness in your chest? Does it feel like a pressure in your head? Does it make your body feel heavy or tense? What is your breathing like? When thoughts about what caused the remorse come into your mind just allow yourself to refocus back to the actual sensations. Let these sensations of remorse flow over you without expectations or blame. Just feel the remorse. Let yourself “be” with the feeling however you might experience it.

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