Mindfulness & Meditation
The origins.
In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts to treat the chronically ill.
Mindfulness practices were inspired mainly by teachings from the Eastern World, particularly from Buddhist traditions.
A quote from headspace.com
So the difference is actually very simple between mindfulness and meditation.
According to certain eastern philosophies the mind has the ability to be free. But to do that we need to train it. To train the mind you need a good teacher and good methods. Different cultures developed different methods and in China we have great traditions of this. China is truly an amazing country with a rich history and culture in self-development.
Tai Chi
To train your mind you first need to be able to see what is going on inside it. You need to become aware, or one can say be mindful, of the myriads of thoughts that go through your head each day.
Once you recognize this using simple methods you can create distance between you and your thoughts. This is very exciting, creating distance, because until now you may have thought, you are your thoughts, you are your feelings.
In this regard I am going to disagree with the famous Latin saying, Cogito ergo sum, which means “I think therefor I am”. In the 18th century the Romantic movement change this statement into “I feel therefor I am”. As much as I love this era, I still need to disagree.
You are neither your thoughts nor your feelings.
Once you train yourself in creating this distance you will realize thoughts and feelings come and go exactly the same way regardless whether or not you engage in them. This is their nature and they will continue doing so. You can relax.
How funny is that?
To answer the question we posed in the title, meditation or mindfulness: you will first need to see the situation for what it is. And mindfulness means you are aware of what is happening inside you. Once that is done you can start working with your mind and that is called meditation. And the difficulty of meditation lies in its simplicity, but more about that later on.
Try mindfulness for ten days and see if it will change your idea about it.
Here are some awesome apps that will give you a chance to try mindfulness for free:
Smiling minds: https://www.smilingmind.com.au/smiling-mind-app
Headspace: www.headspace.com
