Much of our work with organizations and individuals centers around the development of what we call "mind fitness." Mind fitness means having a mind that's fit for action and insight. At the heart and core of this kind of mind-body-spirit training is the practice of "mindful presence" -- the essential key to mind fitness.
In future blog posts, we'll introduce and invite you to explore the various disciplines of mind fitness. While all of these are vital to success, foremost and foundational among them is the discipline of mindful presence, so we'll begin here. This discipline is developed through the cultivation of mindfulness and the mastery of attention. Research shows that daily practice of mindfulness creates measurable changes in brain function associated with decreases in our vulnerability to stress and distress, increases our enjoyment of the moment, improves health and performance, increases our happiness, improves emotional intelligence and deepens the wisdom, confidence and courage we bring to life -- and work!
The cultivation of mindfulness is essentially the practice of presence, deep listening and awareness. Mindfulness enables you to wake up and be more fully present to what is really going on in your inner and outer worlds, and to the stream of moment-to-moment change. Mindfulness offers you greater choice and the capacity to live-on-purpose as an alternative to living a reactionary life dominated by mindless habit and out of control reactivity.
The practice of mindfulness also provides a powerful tool to discover the true depth and dimension of our experience. As we see more clearly and understand more deeply, our insight grows and opens new dimensions of freedom, health and change resilience in our lives. Mindfulness is the basis of wisdom, appreciation and gratitude. Its essence is deep listening, an open, non-judgmental yet discerning quality of attentiveness that embraces every fleeting experience with acceptance, investigation and non-attachment.
To experience mindfulness in this moment:
If you are like most people you have dozens, if not hundreds, of interactions with people in an average day. One powerful strategy for practicing mindfulness is to set the intention to engage in a significant number of daily interactions as opportunities to practice "mindful dialogue." This involves being vividly mindful of what you see, hear or sense from the people you are talking with, while simultaneously being mindful of the flow of your own inner personal experiences as you are engaged in that dialogue.
Your practice of mindfulness can take two basic forms:
Once you understand how to practice the discipline of mindful presence you can never say, "I don't have time to meditate," because mindfulness can be activated in virtually every situation and activity of your complex and busy life. This means that every activity and encounter offers you the opportunity to develop and strengthen your mind fitness.
As you cultivate this quality of mindful presence, you'll begin to realize that you are part of a vast community of people in all walks of life and arenas of work who are engaged in this practice. Hundreds of studies have demonstrated the clinical and performance enhancing benefits of the mind fitness practice of mindfulness.
Over the past 20 years, the discipline of mindfulness meditation has become an integral element in the success path of leaders from many disciplines. In our own work, we've taught mindfulness as a core success strategy to thousands of leaders in hundreds of organizations around the globe. In our work with the largest, most successful division of Hewlett-Packard, mindfulness was one of the core values held by senior leaders as a key to their success.
During the once secret "Ultimate Warrior Training Program" (aka Jedi Warrior) that we co-designed and led for the U.S. Army Green Berets, we guided two A-Teams of Special Forces troops on an intensive 30-day silent mindfulness retreat called "The Encampment," which equipped them with skills to succeed on a series of missions that no other teams had ever succeeded in before. One of our teams was later selected as the most outstanding team in the NATO games. This program was described by leaders at West Point Military Academy as "the most exquisite orchestration of human technology we have ever seen."
At Google, we teach a course called "The Meditation and Mindfulness Laboratory" for leaders and software engineers seeking to de-bug and reengineer their own personal operating systems. At M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center and dozens of other leading medical centers and medical schools, we've also taught mindfulness disciplines to hundreds of physicians, nurses, faculty and administrators, and many of them have fully integrated these methods into their daily lives and work. Surgeons who train in mindfulness make fewer mistakes and have better surgical outcomes. In medicine, mindfulness also offers relief from a myriad of stress-related maladies and speeds recovery time.
The practice of mindful presence has also been a vital success strategy in our mentoring of numerous world class and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes who have stretched the envelope of success to new proportions. Just imagine what will be possible for you as you develop greater mindful presence and mind fitness in your own life.
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Elizabeth Cunningham: Longing for Silence and Solitude
Mind Fitness Training Institute: Stress Resilience and Performance ...
Mind and Body Fitness for Lifelong Good Health and Well-Being
The door was still there, the door was called "doing" - they do - I do.
One day I realized that this door was made up, and, that nothing was actually between me and my Inner Peace but a "Belief" - or a - "Thought" - It was all made up.
For days all I did was laugh at this and how funny I have been acting all depressed and angry at times in my life. Today there is no door and there is no doing. Today there is just Inner Peace - Always.
This insight saved my life - I hope it helps you as well.
hugs...
There is only one of the six which attracts true Presence with the correct third force, that of regeneration, that is the appearence of the Self in this moment. the Self is the most essential part of you and can only make contact with this plane by efforts to remember your Self, over and over again. The other five processes seek success on a different, more mundane levels.
You must begin to wish to know and Be your Self to be be able to know who to Remember when you try to Remember your Self. The third force of trying to Remember your Self, just for the sake of being You,must be Primary before anthing else.We should try to bring Presence to all the events of our lives. Presence which is Mindfullness, which is Self Awareness. or Consciousness is the beginning of the appearance of your eternal essence which needs be taught to arise with true esoteric principles. It is one thing to be successful, but not having the play of being so is the same
" Seek that things should be as they are and you will have a tranquil flow of life" Epictitus
For my own situation, I was asthmatic from infancy - hardly a case of mental distress causing it - and it's revived to a degree since I had acute bronchitis a year ago (picked up at work). Now I've been happier and more content in the last few years than at any other time in a generally unruffled life, so the theory about mental distress or whatever really doesn't apply. :)
http://twi-ny.com/blog/2011/07/18/inner-course-panties-for-diamonds-a-psychodramatic-audition-for-love-in-the-age-of-abandonment/