Dr Dan Siegel the author of The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being, started research on the relationship between mindfulness and its impact on our lives some years ago.
He was working in a field called interpersonal neurobiology, which is a long phrase for simply observing how we can understand well-being and mental health, and how relationships and the brain interact in fundamental ways to help us to build mental well-being.
As he delved deeper into the complexities of the brain and its connection to mindfulness his research led further to a book published called The Developing Mind.
This book relates to how we as kids are shaped by our parents; from this book emerged a parenting book called Parenting from the Insight Out. In the parenting book he said he and his co-author used “…. mindfulness as a basic idea on parents being intentional and awake and conscientious in their parenting.” If indeed we are influenced by our parents, it’s only obvious that our approach to money, business and relationships will all be affected.
After many people had read the parenting book, some of the parents asked him when he was going to teach them mindfulness or meditation. Of course he was not a meditator but he was genuine and did not pretend to know something about which he had no experience. “There are plenty of those people around,” he said who give opinions about everything and know nothing and neither have they had any experience whatever in the fields about which they are talking.
He was honest alright, and when the people said to him that mindfulness and mindfulness meditation have some very distinct similarity, he admitted that he didn’t know and was unfamiliar with mindfulness meditation.
He was also embarrassed when the people would start explaining to him that it’s a practice that’s been around for 2500 years and that there is recent science out of which he was unaware showing that in fact it improves all sorts of aspects of well-being, not just a healthy approach to making money, living your life and enhancing your relationships.
It is wonderful that people like Dr Dan Siegel are around and not only that, are truly genuine people. It is also wonderful because some people will not go near meditation until it is proven to be beneficial for them according to mainstream, which it is now of course.
It is never too late to come to meditation or mindfulness and the good thing is we are all beginners, whether we have been at it for decades or not.
Try to find out about this aspect of life before it’s too late.
Image Credit: Unsplash.com-Kalen Emsley
Chris Borrett