The healing benefits of mindfulness training for a wide variety of chronic medical and psychiatric disorders has been proven by researchers for decades. Most medical schools are sponsoring mindfulness research at this time. If you want to review some of these studies, a bibliography is at the end of this document. Mindfulness may be a bridge point between the healing arts and spirituality. The medical and psychospiritual aspects, including recent brain scan and neuroscience studies on mindfulness, are summarized in Awaken Your Godly Brain.
Every Sunday evening at 7 PM, Dr. Gant provides a one-hour mindfulness training. Everyone is invited. There is no charge. To enter the group, simply call 712-770-4340 and when prompted, enter the code 566853# (pound). You do not have to participate in the group discussion about mindfulness practice and can just listen. The basic protocol is a mindfulness sitting for about 30 minutes followed by a discussion.
Amassed scientific studies strongly suggest that mindfulness training can improve depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and other mental disorders, expand memory, lessen attention deficit disorder, greatly decrease the discomfort of chronic pain syndromes, abolish fatigue, disappear cravings for drugs, tobacco, alcohol and sugar, eliminate allergies and improve the outcomes for just about any common medical problem including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders and cancer. Mindfulness training can help you live today, in the “now,” and experience more joy, less stress and burnout.
Mindfulness is a unique faculty of consciousness which is totally distinct from cognition (thinking), imagery (picturing), emotions (feelings), kinesthetic (muscle movement/behavior), intuition or sensation (the 5 senses). Mindfulness is not meditation although it is often described as a type of meditation. Mindfulness is not a religion despite the fact that various religious paths employ mindfulness exercises. Mindfulness is not sensory awareness, stress reduction or relaxation training. Mindfulness is actually a clinical term used by researchers (see references below) and healthcare providers who incorporate mindfulness-based therapies and psychotherapies into their clinical work. Mindfulness is conferred mostly by our “executive function” or prefrontal cortex of our brain, so we are all anatomically designed to awaken this faculty.
Most people have some prefrontal cortex activity and they use some mindfulness to function and get by in life, but the faculty of mindfulness can be greatly enhanced through training and regular practice. Mindfulness training and practice enhances the benefits, insights and experiences of all spiritual and religious paths and is a good warm-up to prayer, contemplation, the martial arts, and yoga. Mindfulness training enhances the benefits of all healthcare treatment and can be used by all healthcare practitioners to improve outcomes for the care they provide. In these Mindfulness and Healing groups, Dr. Gant will introduce participants to various clinical methods of mindfulness enhancement which he has found to be useful over the last 50 years in treating his patients.
75 Mindfulness References
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