5 Powerful Benefits of Mindfulness & Meditation

Not Just To Relax!

Meditation and mindfulness are not just “relaxation techniques”. Not even close!

When done according to instructions these approaches can provoke quite a lot of distress, a form of distress that can lead to radical transformation. Ultimately, these practices are a way towards a total revolution of the mind. And on the way, we pick up a whole host of benefits!

To say meditation and mindfulness are “relaxation techniques” is to drastically underestimate their true power.

The Benefits of Mindfulness

1. Increased awareness of the content of your experience

Practising mindfulness regularly can help increase your self-awareness. We set time aside to deliberately watch different aspects of our experience, like sensations, thoughts, sounds, sights, feelings, and so on. From this formal practise we begin to notice that we are more aware of these things during our day-to-day. Basically, we become more aware, generally, not just in meditation.

Becoming more aware can radically increase the possibility of change, because we can’t change that which we are unaware. For a bit more on this, have a read of another article I wrote on the importance of attention.

2. Increased control over focus

Mindfulness and meditation can be particularly useful in developing an ability to better, more consciously, control our focus.

Very often, our focus is “untamed”. It goes where it wants. One minute, we are paying attention to the TV, the next we are immersed deep into our thoughts, sometimes worrying thoughts. So much so, that we can loose connection with the world around us. And this is fine, except when we find we have little control of our focus, where we become regularly scattered or disorientated.

Certain mindfulness practices can really help us tame our focus, so that, more and more, we gain the ability to place our focus where we want, and, more and more, we gain the ability to keep our focus there, right where we want.

Like a cat when hunting, we are more able to stay on our target, unmoved by even the biggest distractions.

This can drastically improve our lives. For example, we might become better at studying, or listening to our partners, instead of drifting off, or getting lost in our thoughts.

3. Increased awareness of the fundamental truths of experience

By being able to pay attention to the content of our experience more, and being able to stay consciously aware and focused on that content for longer periods of time, we find that our experience starts to reveal the fundamental truths of itself, about how experience itself actually works.

This can, in fact, be quite a journey, and far from ”relaxing” at times. Certain parts of it may be deeply challenging, even distressing, as we are confronted by, for example, the fundamental transience of all aspects of ourselves, and our experience.

Still, recognising and reconciling ourselves to these truths can, in the longer term, be deeply grounding, and yes, calming!

4. Increased Impulse Control

Meditation and mindfulness is also, fundamentally, a practice of staying with what is, of not reacting. Japanese Zen Masters phrased this as “just sitting”, and it can be both an extraordinarily rewarding, and incredibly difficult, practice. Just watching an itch, for example, and not scratching it, can be both excruciating and fascinating, a moment requiring all kinds of skills, such as focus, determination, calm, and equanimity to survive.

This practice can then have knock-on effects on the rest of our lives, as we discover there are many other things we might best “sit with” instead of react to.

5. Increased Ability to Modify the Tone of Our Attention

Finally, meditation and mindfulness affords us the opportunity to gently calibrate the tone of our attention. This might mean, for example, welcoming unbridled joy into our hearts, or having compassion for ourselves. I talk more about this in The Importance of Attention, where I consider this to be a fundamental aspect of personal development. It’s not just what we are paying attention to, nor how much attention we are paying it, but also, the quality of our attention that matters. Certain meditation and mindfulness practices give us an opportunity to adjust this quality of attention. And this can be life-changing for many, to be able to be aware of oneself without judgement, punishment, or shame.

Recommended Books on Meditation & Mindfulness

If you find yourself more interested in mindfulness or meditation, I have curated a few books that go into more detail below.

What Next?

Of course, if you’d like to learn about or practice mindfulness or meditation, feel free to contact me. You can find out more about me here. I’d be very happy to hear from you. We could work together to develop the life-transforming skills above.

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