Mindfulness or being mindful is being aware of your present moment. You are not making emotional comments, judgements or criticisms. You are simply observing the moment in which you find yourself.
The ability to observe one's own internal sensations with the calm clarity of an external witness that is the most noteworthy aspect of the experience that has come to be called mindfulness or mindful awareness.
The scientifically verified effects of the use of mindfulness in treating mental health problems within mainstream Western cultural settings have potentially profound implications for how we live our daily lives.
Although some of the most straight-forward, comprehensive and refined methods of developing mindfulness have come out of the Buddhist tradition other methods with similar results have developed in the western spiritual traditions and to some extent philosophy.
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Mindfulness and OCD
Medications act on the neurochemical transmitter serotonin, which is very widespread throughout the brain, particularly in that caudate nucleus and orbital frontal cortex area. By modulating serotonin levels in the brain, the medications over a period of several months bring down the intensity of the intrusive bothersome feelings.
It is also possible to change the activity in those very same structures of the brain by learning how to redirect our attention and the way to redirect our attention is largely a function of a mental process called mindfulness.
Mindfulness
has profound philosophical significance and was first described 2500 years
ago by Gotama Buddha. It is the foundation of Buddha's philosophy and
of the practice of meditation. However, when used as a form of mental
development for something like treating OCD, it has no religious content
at all.
This is really important to stress, nothing in the use of mindfulness would ever impinge on the religious beliefs of any other religion. Even though in some sense it has what you might call a spiritual content, this is in a general sense of having the mind influence the brain.
Useful Books:
The
Mind and The Brain
Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Depression
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