Mindfulness or Mindful Awareness is the practice of learning to pay attention to our experience, both in the body and the mind in a focused, non-judgmental, objective way while being able to stay calm and unconcerned about all our experiences.
Recent research has shown that Mindfulness allows us to understand and know ourselves in a more accepting way (see Carlson, 2013). It has also been shown that Mindfulness helps to disconnect the part of our brain that ruminates (Brewer et.al., 2011) – the part of our brain that activates to cause us suffering.
In other words, when it is learned correctly the practice of mindfulness can help us to change the thoughts we have about our experiences, to be less reactive andmore in control of our emotions and less focused on the past and the future. When we know ourselves well, can be less judgmental about our experiences, more in control of our emotions, and less invested in what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow we become more calm and content in the here and now.
There are several types of Therapy that use Mindfulness practice for example, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness Integrated Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.