Beautifulluxe

The terms mindfulness and meditation are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same. So what’s the difference? Is mindfulness the same as meditation?

There’s a disagreement in the scientific community about accurately defining meditation and mindfulness.[1] Articulating the distinctions between these concepts require thinking beyond the proverbial box. The process is similar to knitting a blanket. You start with a tangled mess of yarn. Before it’s possible to weave it into its intended, recognizable form, you must smooth out the knots and kinks into a workable media.

Thankfully, there’s a simple way to untangle the mindfulness vs. meditation debate. It starts with the mind-body connection.

Mindfulness VS Meditation What Is the Mind?

A neuroscience professor, Shonté Jovan Taylor, taught this definition:

“The mind is the intangible, limitless source that regulates the flow of information and energy within the tangible brain.”

By this explanation of the mind and without diving deep into a discussion of the cultural and religious origins of mindfulness, we can interpret mindfulness as involving both the ethereal realms of conscious and unconscious awareness and the structure and function of the physical brain.[2]

Mindfulness as a Mind-Body Integration

Now that we’ve established this, how can we decipher between mindfulness and meditation? A 2020 paper published in the Global Advances in Health and Medicine breaks it down nicely.[3]

The researchers explain the differences in terms of mind-body medicine, presenting beyond the standard binary concepts to create three categories:

Meditation – mindfulness meditation, loving-kindness meditation, transcendental meditation

Relaxation Practices – diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery

Meditative Movement Practices – yoga, tai chi, dancing, walking, cleaning

Looking at these examples, we can see that all involve an action. Similarly, Positive Psychology describes meditation as a practice or exercise– an action meant to alter or enhance one’s state of mind. In contrast, mindfulness is a quality – a way of relating to oneself and one’s environment.[4]

We can also see that mindfulness is only mentioned in the form of ‘mindfulness meditation.’ This combination of these terms can be confusing at first glance. But it helps us make a vital observation upfront.

Mindfulness is an element of meditation, but it’s also involved in non-meditative practices. It helps produce the many mental and physical benefits of meditation and relaxation, and it can also be cultivated through the act of meditation.

Meditation is an Activity, Mindfulness is a State of Being

Understanding these differences between relaxation, meditation, and mindfulness can help you find the practice best suited to you. If you want to step into more calmness, clarity, and self-actualization, there are several methods to choose from.

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in modern mindfulness practice and creator of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, describes seven key attitudes of mindfulness. It’s important to remember that these can be applied to meditation practices, but they are not restricted solely to meditation. Here are those attitudes, as well as options for specific exercises to help you get started with your mindfulness and/or meditation practice.

1. Non-Judging

Mindfulness requires attention to our inner dialogue. It moves us to disrupt our negative thought patterns. In fact, benefit-finding enhances our coping processes. This mindful attention to shifting our self-judging thoughts helps us develop more consistently positive and adaptive thoughts.[5]

Exercise: Establish Self-Accepting Thoughts

What is something you tend to say you dislike about yourself? It could be a physical aspect, something about your personality, or even an irksome habit. Write it out on a piece of paper. Then write out one way this could be viewed as a positive quirk or strength.

2. Patience

Defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset,” patience is a virtue that requires mindfulness to embody. Our culture of instant access to just about anything undermines our attempts at developing patience. We can buy, watch, and eat whatever we want, pretty much whenever we want it, at the click of a button.

Exercise: Delay Gratification

Here, we employ mindfulness to notice what we want and then resist the urge to immediately indulge ourselves. We have to be aware of the thoughts and emotions that come as a result, and this can be uncomfortable.

The good news is that cultivating patience only requires a few minutes of our day. Even 5 minutes of waiting for a thing we crave builds our tolerance and, as a result, our patience.

3. Trust

Tying into another element of patience is trust. Going deeper than surface-level gratification, we must also acknowledge and accept uncomfortable circumstances. We must trust that these are in our best interest, a manifestation of the Universe working in our favor.

Mindfulness helps us tap into this, allowing us to realize that what is meant for us will be. It just might not arrive in the manner or timeline we expect.

Exercise: Find the Message in the Mess

Make space to approach life’s seeming catastrophes with curiosity. Often, when things don’t work out according to our plans, it’s a golden learning opportunity.

Journal your honest, contemplative answers to these questions about any unwanted situation:

What can I learn from this experience?

Is this showing me the path to a better alternative I hadn’t considered before?

4. Have a Beginner’s Mind

In his book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, author Shunryu Suzuki states,

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Keeping ourselves open and receptive to new possibilities prevents us from getting stuck in a rut of “the way it’s always been.” Releasing that mindset enhances our potential for developing new skills, fostering empathy, and cultivating an enjoyable and well-rounded life.

Exercise: Practice Seeing Everything as Though It’s for the First Time

From the perspective of neuroscience, one way to achieve this is by overcoming unconscious biases. At the top of the list, in this context, is confirmation bias – our innate tendency to seek out evidence that supports our existing views, leading our preexisting beliefs to influence which information we pay attention to.

When you notice yourself jumping to conclusions, try asking the following questions:

Do I truly understand this issue in full?

What if my thoughts about this are wrong?

Take the time to explore your answers honestly. This exercise helps us take control of our critical thinking skills, training ourselves to embody the beginner’s mind approach.

5. Non-Striving

Living in a goal and outcome-driven society can make this attitude feel extra challenging. Often, we default to engaging in activities with the sole intention of reaching a destination with little-to-no regard for all the ways we could be savoring the process of getting there.

This not only makes acceptance of ourselves and our progress conditional, but it also prevents us from noticing the golden nuggets of true happiness in our lives.

Exercise: Learn to Enjoy the Journey

One tool we can use to practice detachment from outcomes is guided meditation. It’s easy to access a variety of these through a quick search online.

Another method is to simply pay attention to the little things along the way in our journey.

What elements feel fun and fulfilling?

Which actions would you continue even if there was no “pay off” for having engaged in them?

This mindful approach helps us develop an enjoyment of the practice, embracing each individual moment as equally meaningful and valuable.

6. Acceptance

We must see things as they are. Often this can trigger an emotional response in us. Acceptance means learning to respond to our emotions without judging or trying to control the experience. We must resist our tendency to “should” all over ourselves and our lives.

This concept is sort of a mashup of previous attitudes. When we focus on how we think things “should” be, we are essentially succumbing to:

Judgment vs. Non-Judging

Frustration vs. Patience

Doubt vs. Trust

Agitation vs. Non-Striving

Exercise: Expand Your Emotional Awareness

Developing emotional awareness helps us grow emotional intelligence. Both are essential for fostering acceptance.

Again, a meditation practice dedicated to noticing our emotions can help. Likewise, taking a simple mindfulness approach to improving emotional intelligence can be extremely effective.

7. Letting Go

As mentioned before, releasing our expectations of how things “should be” can be difficult. This comes into play in the context of mindfulness vs. meditation, as well. Sometimes, the mere idea of sitting perfectly still and managing our thoughts puts our anxious minds into overdrive.

Exercise: Release Relaxation-Induced Anxiety

Many people struggle to sit still for extended periods, buckle under the pressure of rigid or formal protocols, or feel anxiety when attempting to implement a meditation practice.

For anyone who can relate, the greatest gift of mindfulness is the ability to embody it with no requirement to adhere to rigid constraints or expectations often associated with meditation.

7 Key Differences of Mindfulness vs Meditation

7 Actions

Non-judging. Shift your negative thoughts into positive ones by actively being mindful of what you think. Start by having self-accepting thoughts.

Patience. In a fast-paced world, we tend to become overly impatient. Practice delayed gratification.

Trust. There is a process, and often things go the way they should in time. Have patience and trust the process.

Have a Beginner’s Mind. Being an “expert” is crippling as we are bound by standards and protocols. Have a beginner’s mind and be open to new horizons.

Non-striving. Having a goal is important but learning to enjoy the journey gives us the opportunity of seeing the little things that bring happiness to our lives. Strive for the goal but enjoy the journey.

Acceptance. Things are often just the way there are and often there is nothing we can do. Expand your emotional awareness by accepting there are things beyond our capacity.

Letting Go. In the end, we have to let go. Things that are beyond our control are often just the way they are. Let go of the past and start opening new doors.

Which Should I Choose, Mindfulness or Meditation?

Ultimately, the answer is up to you.

Remember that, essentially, meditation is one of many methods which cultivate mindfulness. We don’t have to be formally trained, clinically supported, or immersed in disciplined practice to enjoy the perks of mindfulness.

Though mindfulness can help us deepen a meditation practice, we can cultivate mindfulness without meditation.[6]

There are many options available without the debate of mindfulness vs. meditation, and all are worth exploring, no matter your preference.

Featured photo credit: Keegan Houser via unsplash.com

Reference

[1]

^

Sage: Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation

[2]

^

Frontiers: The inevitable contrast: Conscious vs. unconscious processes in action control

[3]

^

Sage: A Perspective on the Similarities and Differences Between Mindfulness and Relaxation

[4]

^

Positive Psychology: 5 Differences Between Mindfulness and Meditation

[5]

^

Journal of Research in Personality: Does mindfulness attenuate thoughts emphasizing negativity, but not positivity?

[6]

^

BMC Psychology: Mindfulness-based positive psychology interventions: a systematic review

The post Mindfulness VS Meditation: 7 Key Differences appeared first on Lifehack.

Mindfulness VS Meditation: 7 Key Differences Understanding the differences between mindfulness and meditation helps us choose the best method for ourselves. Here's how.

You don’t have to look very far to find a bunch of overrated, gimmicky nonsense.

From fitness to society. The world is full of bullsh*t.

But, it’s not all bad.

There are quite a few underrated things that often get criminally overlooked.

So I decided, why not play a little game of under or overrated to settle the score and clear the air? Tune in to find out my thoughts on everything from tartufo to kettlebells and much more.

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Podcast Addict, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castbox, or your favorite podcast platform.

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If you liked that, I’ve got plenty more for ya…

For even more great listening check out:

45 Quick Lessons From My 45 Years Alive

How to Always Be “On”

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The post Underrated/Overrated – Squats, Frequency, Kettlebells, Fasting & More – Episode 454 appeared first on Jason Ferruggia.

Underrated/Overrated - Squats, Frequency, Kettlebells, Fasting & More You don't have to look very far to find a bunch of overrated, gimmicky nonsense. Tune in for this round of underrated/overrated to get my thoughts on everything from tartufo to kettlebells.

Clean eating is necessary to remain healthy, prevent diseases as well as for faster recovery from illness. Many of the illnesses can be managed by only lifestyle change or diet intervention. But there are few illnesses that need a surgical correction like for atherosclerosis or an artery block. Here is an Indian diet plan for …

The post Indian Diet Plan for Bypass Patient | Maintaining Heart Health (What to eat After 20 days of Surgery) appeared first on Dietburrp.

Indian Diet Plan for Bypass Patient | Maintaining Heart Health (What to eat After 20 days of Surgery) - Dietburrp Indian diet plan for bypass patient helps in maintaining heart health. How to look after heart health after stent placement or bypass surgery.

Joe’s Perspective: High school is supposed to be fun, not endured. It’s also supposed to be innocent fun. Part of that fun is having an engaged and spirited student section. It brings most of the students together for a common cause. And, no, your team doesn’t have to be great for the students to show this kind of spirit. It makes me sad that my daughter goes to home football games and only about 50 students are attending, and they are not sitting together to cheer on the team. I know all that she is missing out on.

When I was in high school, we had hundreds of kids in the student section. We didn’t wait for the cheerleaders to initiate a cheer, we made up our own cheers. At basketball games, we would collectively bring over 100 rolls of toilet paper and throw it on the court after our team scored their first point. We brought newspapers and pretended to read it when the opposing team was introduced, and yell, “Who cares.” It was goofy and childish, but it is some of my best memories from high school. I think our football team was 3-6 my senior year and our basketball team was just over .500. And yet, we had the best student section.

Every high school student should be able to experience this type of energy. It is a bonding experience. The popular kids standing right beside the skateboarders and the brainiacs. Below I am providing a couple of random videos from high school student sections across the country. In both videos, I have no idea what they are saying and doing, but I know they are having fun. My wish for you is that you will find ways to bring this type of energy to your high school. It doesn’t start with the administration or the parents, it can only start with you. Students set the tone and you establish traditions for younger students to follow when they get to high school.

Your Turn: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your student section at your school? What can you do to build student spirit?

The post The Importance of High School Spirit appeared first on Character and Leadership.

The Importance of High School Spirit - Character and Leadership Joe’s Perspective: High school is supposed to be fun, not endured. It’s also supposed to be innocent fun. Part of that fun is having an engaged and spirited student section. It brings most of the students together for a common cause. And, no, your team doesn’t have to be great for the students...

Progressive overload is the key to getting the results you desire in the gym and actually changing your physique.

But what exactly does that mean?

And what’s the best way to go about it?

I’ve got you covered on all of that, and much more, in today’s Q&A.

Questions answered include:

What’s the foundation for successful training? [2:51]

Should your training method be based on your chronological or training age? [12:49]

How can you ensure you’re avoiding injuries and not crushing your CNS? [13:55]

Are protein and carbs necessary post-workout? [17:13]

Should you manipulate carbs and fats on cardio days? [20:10]

Is it possible to build bigger delts without destroying your joints? [22:20]

What to do if you can’t front squat? [26:37]

My Top-5 wrestlers of all-time? [27:35]

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Podcast Addict, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castbox, or your favorite podcast platform.

This episode is brought to you by:

BiOptimizers: Want an all-in-one solution to improve your mood, stress levels, and overall health and vitality? Your answer lies at magbreakthrough.com/jay and be sure to use coupon code JAY10.

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What’s the secret to getting fit when you’re busy AF?

For even more great listening check out:

Doing THIS Is Wrecking Your Shoulders

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Thank you for tuning in and subscribing. I appreciate every one of you that takes the time to listen.

Could I ask you a huge favor? Can you take two seconds to leave us a 5 star review on iTunes?

Or, if you have two minutes to spare, a written review would be even better and so greatly appreciated.

Don’t know how to leave a review? Click HERE

Questions? Shoot them my way at [email protected]

The post What Is Progressive Overload and Why Should You Care? – Episode 453 appeared first on Jason Ferruggia.

What Is Progressive Overload and Why Should You Care? Progressive overload is the key to getting the results you desire in the gym and actually changing your physique. But what exactly does that mean?

Have you also asked what is a good formula for a healthy eating schedule? Or what habits can people do to lose weight?

How do you make sure that you’re eating efficiently without overthinking, over-planing, or over-analyzing food?

You must have realized by now that along with a busy schedule, all the complicated concepts, thoughts, and rules on eating have created anxiety, wasted a lot of time, taken away a lot of joy, and made it more difficult for you to get fit.

Ultimately, you just want to have a simple life where things land in place peacefully. You may have a busy life, but you can still have a healthy eating schedule. Let’s start with believing.

How to Set a Healthy Eating Schedule 1. Believe It’s Simple

If you’ve been spending hours thinking about your diet, researching how you can maintain a target weight, and planning your day-by-day, believing that a good eating schedule is a simple matter.

It’s because you’ve experienced it differently for a long time. Many people think eating healthy is a challenge, only to realize they can just sit back and let it cruise while getting much better results.

Overcomplicating eating only leads to stress. This unnecessary stress works against you both physically and mentally.

Physical

Chronic stress negatively affects your hormones, making you prone to overeating junk food which creates more stress and anxiety.[1]

Stress also slows down your metabolism, interrupts your sleep, and over time, leads to chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation has been proven by science to be at the core of almost every single chronic disease, including:

Diabetes

Heart diseases

Obesity

Emotional

Stress about food deprives you of lots of joy and isolates you from social interactions. It can lead to a mental downward spiral, creating more severe eating problems such as:

Food obsession[2]

Eating disorders

So it doesn’t serve you to consider eating complicated in any way, and more importantly, it’s not even true.

If you believe food is your enemy (which is why you have to think critically and plan meticulously to prevent it from harming you), let’s just bust the myth right now by looking at how many people in this world can have an easy and almost care-free life of eating while being fit.

You’ve seen them around, men and women in fitted jeans or sundresses who care about neither the ice cream nor the scale numbers. It happens a lot. You just need to know how to do it intuitively.

But if you choose to believe it’s difficult to eat well, you’re only setting yourself up for a lot of frustration. Beliefs always come before actions.

2. Simplify Eating and Be Flexible

Now that you know the first step is to believe, let’s take that into action to have a good eating schedule.

Routine

If you’ve ever wondered how to eat healthy on a budget and busy schedule, there are plenty of ways to go about it. No matter what routine you set out to take, always prioritize flexibility and make things as easy as possible.

For instance, any program that requires you to spend hours in the kitchen preparing for a meal sets you up for failure, especially if you must work almost 12 hours daily.

If you’ve tried it but failed, remember that it’s not you’re lacking self-discipline or willpower. It’s simply because this mechanism isn’t designed for busy career women who are stretched thin to juggle work, kids, and endless household matters.

Eating out doesn’t contradict healthy eating as long as you’re making good choices.

Meal kits are always great if you want to share some great kitchen fun with your family.

If you have more time and passion for home cooking, explore and reserve a few simple, delicious, 30-minute recipes of your choice. Then turn the jazz music on while cooking the enjoyable meals.

After all, a satisfying meal is not only a tastebud experience but also a mood journey. Go for ease and happiness, and time will fly.

Your Food Choices

If you believe food is your enemy, then you’ll find your choices very limited and feel deprived.

However, establishing healthy eating habits requires open-mindedness and even appreciation of lots of food. This relaxed feeling is also the key to not wasting time overcalculating and overthinking about food.

Here’s a false belief about food that the majority of Americans seem to be buying: “Carbs are the reason for fat gain”

This robust claim in the Western Fad Diet Industry is one of the silliest things you can hear. Just consider how many people in the world’s slimmest and longest-living countries, including Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, and Italy are treating rice, vermicelli, pasta, and noodles as their staple food and eat a substantial amount of them in almost every meal.

So you need to let go of the limiting beliefs that produce overthinking. Allow freedom and joy first, then you can ask yourself this question: “What really satisfies me?”

If you like salmon, go for it. If you like braised lamb, add it to your recipe list and enjoy it with family. Just make sure for every meal, you also have a good amount of vegetables and fruits to pair with the meat because you need to ensure a great variety of nutrition to maintain the smooth functioning of various organs of your body.

Be flexible and open-minded. Eating is supposed to be a physically and emotionally joyous journey.

3. Let Your Body Do Its Job

99% of people think “calorie-in-calorie-out” is the key to losing weight. If you are one of them and have been dieting for years but still find yourself stuck with the extra 30 or 50 pounds, have you ever questioned that belief at all?

In fact, weight loss isn’t your willpower’s job but your body’s. Simply put, your body will lose weight organically for you if it’s properly:

Nourished

Metabolically optimized

Hormonally efficient

All of these require very balanced eating and mood.

The Right Diet

Any restriction-based diets harm these functions by under-serving the body and producing stress. This takes away the body’s ability to properly operate itself and weight sticking around is just a byproduct of that.

Meanwhile, if you’ve been depriving yourself for a long time, you can adopt the pattern of ‘automated’ weight gain just because your body is forced into the mode of fat retention, hormonal imbalance, and creating psychological hunger and sugar cravings by secreting stress hormones.[3]

Your original appetite setting and sense of hunger could become blurry, and you no longer have “stop eating at the right time” as an instinct.

And you could wonder, “how could that be possible?” Easy, chronic inflammation, for example, can cause any of the above.

If you are under all the influences because it’s a part of your body’s programming, a physical effort through dieting and exercising is minuscule. But when your body becomes optimized and efficient nutritionally, hormonally, metabolically, and digestively, you’ll find weight loss a natural side effect of that healing process.

So Where Does This Lead To?

There’s no real healthy eating time schedule. When your body operates well, your ability to eat the right amount of food and the right types of food, intuitively, is an instinct. Just like how your brain automatically knows how far your two feet need to be from each other when you walk so that one won’t step on the other.

You certainly never need to count how many seconds you’ve inhaled just to make sure you’ve got the right amount of oxygen.

Your body, including the brain, is a very smart system with a built-in instinct. Eating well without spending time counting and overthinking should be the same.

That instinct could be inactive or dormant from being suppressed for too long.

Hitting Home Run

If you have children, you might have observed a few traits regarding how the babies and young toddlers eat such as:

They don’t need to count calories to know if they’ve had too much or too little food.

They stop eating when their body is satisfied and got enough, and you can’t make them eat one more bite.

They don’t have those cravings for fattening, sugary, and heavily processed food.

They don’t have pre-conditioned false, limiting beliefs and fears about food.

They don’t become overweight just by eating all kinds of food normally and satisfyingly.

This simple phenomenon requires the body’s key senses to systematically work together.

Appetite

Tastebuds

Hunger signals

Metabolic systems

Digestive systems

It’s just a default thing.

Healthy Eating Schedule And Habits For Busy People

3 Actions

Believe it’s simple: It may be challenging to think but maintaining a healthy diet is simple. This eliminates stress which causes physical and emotional changes that can lead to bad habits.

Simplify eating and being flexible: Eating from different means from time to time is fine. There’s no perfect routine and source of food you eat. Instead, allow yourself to be flexible and eat your food unsparingly as long as you are making the right choices.

Let your body do its job: Diet is your body’s job, not your willpower. As long you’re nourished, eating a balanced diet, and happy about what you eat, you should be fine.

To Sum It Up

The only reason you feel insecure about food, overeating, obsessing with diet, and having all these cravings is that this default set-up is on pause.

That’s why you are over-spending so much time and energy on eating. It’s also why you can’t eat well intuitively yet.

But once that instinct is restored, you’ll master eating well to fitness, find it stress-free and easy-breezy, and have plenty of time for pursuing your passion and interests in life.

Featured photo credit: Farhad Ibrahimzade via unsplash.com

Reference

[1]

^

National Library of Medicine: Stress and hormones

[2]

^

Rise Lean: What Are Food Obsession Symptoms?

[3]

^

Harvard University: Ask the Brain: Why Do We Crave Sugar When We’re Stressed?

The post Healthy Eating Schedule and Habits for Busy People appeared first on Lifehack.

Healthy Eating Schedule and Habits for Busy People The key to eating well intuitively while losing weight sustainably is easy to do that you can do it at home while eating your favorite food.