Behavior changes

Meditation helps to counter our tendency to stop paying attention to new information in our environment. Other studies have found that mindfulness meditation can reduce mind-wandering and improve attention.

Larger randomized controlled trials are still needed to understand how meditation might work with other treatments to help people manage attention-deficit disorders.

Long-term, consistent meditation mindfulness changes our ability to handle stress in a better, more sustainable way.

• Practicing meditation reduces the inflammatory response in people exposed to psychological stressors.
  
• Mindfulness practices help us to be less reactive to stressors and to recover better from stress when we experience it. 
  

• Cognitive: Recognition of suffering.
• Affective: Arising of emotion.
• Intention: A desire for relief from suffering.
• Motivation: Action to remove suffering.

• Try research-tested compassion practices, like writing exercises.
• Informal compassion: Be aware of the people around you, and acknowledge the interdependence with everyone.
• Set up an intention: Find out what you want for yourself, your life, and what you have to offer the world. 
• First-hand self-knowledge: Instead of following ready-made knowledge, find out what works for you through self-examination.
• Get support: Find support in your peers, friends, and relatives, to help make compassion a habit.
• Self-compassion: Stick to the practice even when it's hard and be gentle to yourself. 

Mindful breathing can interrupt our stress and fight-or-flight reactions—meditation may “quiet” the amygdala, the area of the brain that responds to stress.

 When we multitask, our concentration levels deplete But the simple act of returning to the breath, over and over again, builds the “muscle” of attention, helping you both stay on task and recognize distractions. 

Parents' frame of mind impacts their children. Parents should not blame themselves when their children struggle.

Since parents lead by example, treating themselves with compassion and without judgment can help their children to do the same.

Many parents stop meditating once they have children. But new research suggests that even brief interventions can be helpful.

• Take two breaths of kindness wherever you are.
• Find moments of newness while engaged in your daily tasks of living.
• Bring awareness and gratitude to the everyday things you take for granted.

Less stress leads to less anxiety.

Regular meditation helps reduce anxiety and anxiety-related mental health issues like social anxiety, phobias and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

Some types of meditation can improve depression and help you maintain these benefits.

• Two studies of mindfulness meditation found decreased depression in over 4,600 adults.
• One study found that participants experienced a long-term decrease in depression.

Buddhists have meditated for literally thousands of years. Buddhists are trying to hack their own minds, to harness them.

Only in recent times have neuroscientists discovered that meditation changes the brain physically.

• Meditation improves attention. Studies show that 20 minutes a day are sufficient to get beneficial results.
• Meditation reduces stress after eight weeks of training.
• Meditation has also been shown to increase levels of empathy.
  

Although the research on yoga is still weak, based on the available findings, Yoga is probably just as good for your health as many other forms of exercise. 

It seems particularly promising for improving lower back pain and — crucially — reducing inflammation in the body.

There is no certainty whether some forms of yoga are better than others, whether yoga should be prescribed to people for various health conditions, and how yoga compares with other forms of exercise. 

There's also no good evidence behind many of the supposed health benefits of yoga, like flushing out toxins and stimulating digestion.

1. Self-Awareness: understanding of one’s emotions.
2. Self-Regulation: it frees us from being prisoners of our feelings.
3. Motivation: having an intrinsic desire to achieve things.
4. Empathy: the ability to understand emotions of other people.
5. Social Skill:  the ability to build rapport and manage relationships.

• Emotional empathy: “You feel awful? Then I feel awful too!”
• Cognitive empathy: “I understand that you are feeling awful. That must suck.”
• Compassion: “You feel awful? I feel for you. How can I help?”

Compassion is what we focus on for emotional intelligence.

Meditation is exploring. When we meditate we venture into the workings of our minds: sensations, emotions and thoughts.

Mindfulness meditation asks us to suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness, to ourselves and others.

“Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. And then I sometimes add, in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”

The goal of this technique is to achieve inner peace without concentration or effort. 

A person is assigned a mantra to repeat in a specific way. It is practiced 20 minutes twice each day while sitting comfortably with eyes closed.

It is also called visualization or guided imagery, where you form mental pictures or situations that you find relaxing.

It is commonly led by a guide, and practitioners are encouraged to use as many senses as possible to evoke calmness.