Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Affirmation Mindfulness

Affirmation mindfulness is truly an amazing technique. If you suffer from disorders like anxiety, depression, poor attention span, anger, etc., you may want to pay attention (in fact everyone should, that's the purpose of mindfulness).

The Buddhists often use labeling during their meditations (such as labeling their breaths..."rising....falling"). This is kind of similar, but instead of using labeling to create a concept to view a sensory experience (which causes a person to swap back and forth from actual experience to a concept and vice versa), the purpose here is to make an affirmational word become a trigger to lock a person into a deep state of awareness. I believe the best thing is to focus, not on an interpretation of what we experience, but the sense itself. The following is the list of the affirmational words to be used...


  • "Seeing..."
  • "Smelling..."
  • "Tasting..."
  • "Hearing..."
  • "Feeling..." 
  • "Thinking..."
Basically, the point here is to be aware of the senses. We often get so wrapped up in focusing on our perceptions (a product of the imagination) that we lose touch with reality. This technique is incredibily useful for emotional disorders like anxiety, a problem caused by an overactive imagination (people with anxiety disorders are habitual when it comes to perceiving the world with concepts instead of the senses...)

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