Some seem to believe mindfulness practice will invariably induce a sense of peace and calm. While this can be the experience for many, it is not the experience for all. At times, sitting quietly with oneself can be a difficult—even painful—experience.

Learn how the technique of mental noting unwinds anxiety, reduces our reactivity and anchors us in our calm center.

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PJ: What advice would you offer someone who works in a company that doesn’t offer mindfulness training?

The raisin exercise, where you slowly use all of your senses, one after another, to observe a raisin in great detail, from the way it feels in your hand to the way its taste bursts on your tongue.

Set a timer on your phone to remind you to meditate, or subscribe to a meditation app that sends you notifications.

The authors speculate that bringing mindful awareness to uncomfortable experiences helped people to approach situations that they would previously avoid, which fostered self-confidence and assertiveness.

If it’s appropriate, you can approach human resource or training departments to see if they have any interest in sponsoring workshops or providing a quiet place where people can go to practice mindfulness.

Rasmus Hougaard is an internationally acknowledged expert in training the mind to relaxing sounds be focused and clear at work. He is the founder of The Potential Project – a leading global provider of corporate based mindfulness solutions operating in 20 countries.

Doing this helps us become more aware of our thoughts, act more compassionately toward ourselves and others, and connect with the present moment.

A science-backed practice of nurturing positive feelings and resilience, we bring our awareness to all the good, nourishing and fulfilling elements of our life, big and small.

Loving-kindness meditation, which the GGSC’s Christine Carter explains in this post, involves extending feelings of compassion toward people, spirituality starting with yourself then branching out to someone close to you, then music to manifest to an acquaintance, then to someone giving you a hard time, then finally to all beings everywhere.

, Jared Lindahl and colleagues interviewed cem meditators about “challenging” experiences. They found that many of them experienced fear, anxiety, panic, numbness, or extreme sensitivity to light and sound that they attributed to meditation. Crucially, they found that these experiences weren’t restricted to people with “pre-existing” conditions, like trauma or mental illness; they could happen to anyone at any time. In this new domain of research, there is still a lot we do not understand. Future research needs to explore the relationship between case histories and meditation experiences, how the type of practice relates to challenging experiences, and the influence of other factors like social support. What kind of meditation is right for you? That depends. “Mindfulness” is a big umbrella that covers many different kinds of practice. A 2016 study compared four different types of meditation, and found that they each have their own unique benefits.

In fact, there has been a lot of interest in promoting mindful eating as a way to help people be more aware of what they eat, to enjoy each bite more, and even to control how much they eat. And there’s also growing interest in using the practice of mindfulness in the workplace to provide a buffer against stress.