Topic Tuesday: Special guest - Mindfulness expert & psychologist Jordan from Mindfulgym! *CLOSED*

Jordan, your reply to NikNik drew a distinction between the thought and the reaction to a thought. Do you have an example of what is a thought and what is the reaction to it?

Cheers,

Jack

Hi Kenny, thanks for your contribution and your honesty. It is very hard to maintain a mindfulness practice living a conventional western lifestyle. I would suggest try some of the Mindfulness apps;

1. smiling mind

2. mindful.org

3. the mindfulness app

4. headspace (on the go)

5. mindfulness meditation from mental workout

mythbuster mindfulness

1. mindfulness is not sitting and 'meditating' it can involve many different activities

2. don't practice mindfulness technqiues expectation, otherwise you start judging yourself and your experience

3. anybody can practice mindfulness, you don't have to sit down, your body is not too broken

4. mindfulness is religious, mindfulness has been sited in texts over 5000 years ago (before buddhism and christianity) it is therefore not a religious concept

5. mindfulness has been found to be very helpful for anybody with a mental illness, if you have a mental illness there is nothing wrong with giving some techqniues a go under supervision

Sure thing Jack

event; whilst practising a sitting meditation I started thinking about work and how much catch up work I need to do, each time I thought about work I noticed the knot in my stomach became tighter and tighter

thought; work

reaction; stomach tensing

MICBT wants you to observe the knot in your stomach and sit with that, however it may feel. CBT wants you to change the thought of work stress into something more positive.

The differences between CBT, MICBT and mindfulness sometimes seem contradictory or too similar however after some careful research I am at peace with them!

I'm not sure if you're able to answer this ... but how wide spread is mindfulness practice. Can people expect their psychologist to know about mindfulness?

You have mentioned some apps that could be helpful to practice mindfulness, do you have any other tips or suggestions on other avenues to get support in the practice of mindfulness?

We have about 5 mins left everyone - so now's the time to ask any burning questions 🙂

Hi NikNik

Most psychologists will know about mindfulness, however they have probably not had any formal training on it. In order to teach Mindfulness one must have a pretty good experience in mindfulness practice. Unfortunately there are not many people around with training. You could contact your local Buddhist centre which will have meditations and lectures. My studio, mindfulgym has a few website resources as well. Or if anyone is in Melbourne my studio is Mindfulgym look me up!

Thanks everybody who posted on the forum tonight! I had a really nice time answering your questions. Words from my mindfulness teacher to you all "practice, practice, practice all is coming!"

Hi Jordan

So would it be right to say that the skills you describe allow you to reach the mental state of mindfulness.

Could you explain a bit about the non judgement of thoughts. Mine are somewhat scattered but others are more focused. So identifying those that are negative needs some effort to identify them.

The teaching I had, now I come to think of it ,was very much about getting to a state where you are at peace with yourself. Is this really the hoped for eventual outcome.