Visit Yourself: Meditation and Mindfulness for Stress Reduction
“Letting go of ideas of falling short, of not being enough. Just for this moment I am free of self-judgment...I allow and accept myself to be exactly as I am.”
Meditation and Mindfulness for Stress Reduction
Stress reduction, health, and peace in the present moment. These are just some of the benefits of meditation and mindfulness practices. Meditation and mindfulness have been practiced for millenia, but only in recent years has it been recognized as one of the most clinically-acclaimed practices for stress reduction.
Why reap the stress-reducing benefits of meditation? 70% of all physical and mental illnesses are directly related to stress. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).
What is mindfulness?Non-judgmental and compassionate awareness of our own internal experience of the present moment no matter what is happening--putting clothes in the dryer, running a board meeting, going on a second date.
What is meditation? The focused practice of mindfulness in the absence of activities. Although there are many meditation techniques, it often looks like setting an alarm for a period of time, sitting still, closing the eyes, and directing the attention to sounds, the breath, physical sensations, or simply the knowing of awareness. Thoughts--To Do lists, worries, fantasies--often capture the attention for periods of time. This is natural and not a problem. We will eventually and naturally wake up out of thoughts and can return to the breath or one of the other foci of attention.Watching the thoughts, themselves, is another fine meditation technique.
Supporting and Inspiring Meditation Practice
Even knowing its benefits, meditation practice often ceases without outside support. Each of Visit Yourself's messages is specially crafted to inspire and support both your meditation practice and the integration of mindfulness into everyday life. Besides providing practical "how-to" suggestions, each message is a compassionate reminder of the forgotten obvious:
- each breath is a place of refuge
- we all belong to this web of humanity
- our hearts and perspectives can expand to include all of this short and imperfect life
Scientific Research on Meditation and Mindfulness
- In the last 20 years, meditation has been studied in clinical trials as a way of reducing stress on both the mind and body. Research shows that meditation can help reduce anxiety, stress, blood pressure, chronic pain, and insomnia.
- Studies of mindfulness meditation found that it seemed to help with symptoms of anxiety. One controlled study with a group of healthy workers found more brain activity in an area linked to positive emotional states in those who meditated. The same study found that those who meditated had a better immune response to the influenza vaccine than those who did not meditate.
- A controlled study of 90 cancer patients who did mindfulness meditation for 7 weeks found those who meditated had 31% lower stress symptoms and 67% less mood disturbance than those who did not meditate. Some studies have also suggested that more meditation improves the chance of a positive outcome.
Related Links
About the Community Leader
Meet Klia Bassing
Klia Bassing, MBA/MPP is the founder and director of Visit Yourself and Visit Yourself at Work (www.VisitYourself.net), which provide meditation for stress reduction to groups and individuals.
Visit Yourself at Work's seminars and series have taken place at a number of high-stress locales, including the World Bank, the Internal Revenue Service, UBS (United Bank of Switzerland), the National Academy of Sciences, the Discovery (Channel) Communications, The Washington Post, Kaiser Permanente, Whole Foods, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Department of Justice, Fannie Mae, Georgetown Law School, and various large law firms.
Klia and Visit Yourself have been featured in publications by The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Legal Times, Law.com, the Bureau of National Affairs, Human Resource Journal of Policy and Practice, HRfocus, Contractor's Business Management Report, and the Institute of Management and Administration.
Klia's training as a meditation teacher is through the CDL Program at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is also on the teacher's council of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Before founding Visit Yourself at Work, Klia worked at the World Bank and in Latin America and the Caribbean.
