what is it and how does it treat sz
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Mindfulness is a meditation technique that helps and trains you to become more aware of each passing moment. Meditation can calm anxiety etc. Here watch the video in this link to see a neuroscientist prove the benefits of meditation.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness guru, defines mindfulness: Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.
My definition: Knowing what’s on your mind.
Does it treat schizophrenia? I don’t believe so.
Does it treat schizoaffective disorder and bipolar 1? Yes.
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Mindfulness is mindfulness meditation and it is concentrating on your natural breaths going in and out, in and out, over a selected number of minutes. It works better on mood symptoms than it does on schizophrenia symptoms, although I have noticed that ever since I began my meditation practice of 15 minutes of meditation twice a day, everyday, I have not been paranoid or had any mindreading at all. So, it must work on psychosis as well as on mood swings.
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Just be careful, it shouldn’t feel forced. Every time I’ve tried to force it I ended up feeling shitty after a couple days. Us szs I think are in a meditative state naturally, no effort required. I think a better approach then following your breath (which can’t not be forced) is just to deal with ambiguity/not knowing, and not run from or try to fix discomfort.
Maybe meditation is better for sza’s , bipolar’s, depressive’s, and neurotic’s.
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I tried your way of meditating. Instead of counting each out breath for 15 minutes, I decided to just passively notice my belly filling and emptying of air, for 15 minutes, without any counting. This was altogether a much more enjoyable experience and a lot less work. It felt much more natural. Thanks.
Nice. yes it should feel natural, trying to force oneself to focus on or count the breath does the opposite of what meditation is meant to do, which is to let go, and you can’t let go by forcing yourself to let go.
The moment before letting go of something, there might be some fear that we become conscious of, and that’s when we feel we have resist/attempt to fix/do something about the fear, which makes it harder for us to let go of it.
The point is to allow experiences to be there without needing to do anything about them, that’s when emotional progress happens the fastest ironically. I don’t feel the need to set aside time for meditation as I find being active doing things more helpful because its easier to deal with the fear/ambiguity/not knowing when you’re doing something. Our minds sort of find it easier finding excuses to trigger our fears when we are active and getting more stimulation, which is an opportunity for us to work through them and help to lessen their hold over us.
it’s helpful also to understand that when we’re aware of a fear, it was already there before that and that’s the moment it’s letting go by coming to the surface into our conscious minds, providing we don’t resist too hard.
My psychosis was a frantic attempt to fix everything internally, which definitely had me more anxious, confused, and psychotic.