Finally, mindfulness seems to increase concentration and focus. Research looking specifically at mindfulness in the workplace is relatively new. But there’s good reason to think it makes employees more satisfied and less stressed. A 2014 study of employees at the Dow Chemical Company, for instance, showed that mindfulness training increased vigor, lowered stress, and gave employees a greater sense of resiliency. Preliminary studies suggest that a program in mindfulness also can increase productivity and reduce the number of sick days.

The body is a wonderful touchstone for meditation. Use it to help guide your attention inward and to train it to notice what’s right happening in the moment.

Bring your attention to the sensation of air moving into and out of your body. On the inhale, notice it traveling into your nose, your throat, down into your lungs. Notice the rise in your chest and belly. On the exhale, notice how the air leaves your body.

Mindfulness can help combat bias: Even a brief mindfulness training can reduce our implicit biases and the biased language we use. One way this works, researchers have found, is by attenuating the cognitive biases that contribute to prejudice.

You’ll want to fidget. You’ll want to shift around in your seat. You’ll notice weird twinges and feel itchy in the strangest of places. stress relief You’ll be bored and wonder how much time is left until you can stop. You’ll daydream. You’ll think about all the other things you need to attend to.

Overall, these findings suggest that mindfulness meditation can have disease-fighting powers through our immune response. Mindfulness may reduce cell aging

Then, they were given the Stroop test—a test that measures attention and emotional control—while having their brains monitored by electroencephalography. Those undergoing breath training had significantly better attention on the Stroop test and more activation in an area of the brain associated with attention than those in the active control group.

That said, some types of meditation, including guided meditation and yoga nidra, are often done lying down. You’re less likely to drift into sleep when following someone’s meditation voice.

Not bad for a few minutes of sitting in silence, right? And it just gets better from here. Read on to learn more about meditation and how to start meditating yourself.

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To start, aim for three meditation sessions per week, and increase that number over time. As you begin relaxing sounds to notice its effects in your life, you’ll look for any opportunity to meditate!

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that cultivates mindfulness. It’s sometimes described as a workout that strengthens your mindfulness muscle.

According to neuroscience research, mindfulness practices dampen activity in our amygdala and increase the connections between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Both of these parts of the brain help us to be less reactive to stressors and to recover better from stress when we experience it. As Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson write in their new book,