Monday, July 4, 2011

Loving-Kindness/Mental Workout

My experience with the Loving-Kindness exercise was a little bit weird.  The first part made me feel really good inside and it allowed me to be in a very calm place.  I had a difficult time taking in the suffering of strangers.  I think this part was difficult because I am not really aware of any suffering going on with the strangers my loved ones are surrounded by.  I know this part was basically to assume any suffering they could be dealing with but it was hard for me to do this.  I wouldn’t necessary say I can recommend this entire exercise to others because I wasn’t comfortable with the entire exercise.  I would recommend certain parts of the exercise. 
The concept of “Mental Workout” is to open your mind.  Mental workouts help to open our minds to things deeper than what we see in front of us.  By doing mental workouts a person will be able to have a calm state of mind free of worry and stress.  It is important for everyone to practice mental workouts because this will help them to live a healthy a life.  Research studies and personal reports show that mental training can transform the mind by reducing disturbing emotions that cause anger, hatred, fear, worry, confusion, and doubt while enhancing positive emotions such as patience, loving-kindness, openness, acceptance, and happiness (Dacher, 2006).

Carletta MzOpulent

3 comments:

  1. Carletta,
    I am a fan of mental work outs. My doctor turned them on to me when I was very sick and stressed that they would help distract me from the pain. So add distraction to the list of positives! Mental work outs also helped me to maintain an optimistic outlook on my situation which I believe in the end is what got me through it. How do you plan on mentally working out?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Carletta,

    I believe that it would take some time get yourself used to doing the exercises on a regular basis. Especially if you have a lot of distractions such as family, work and life in general, but I will say that it is a good exercise for any stress relieving program.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The suffering part was a bit strange but I guess this was to get us to think about others. I enjoy the first path listening to the water was very relaxing I can practice this exercise more often I think it will help me on days when I am stress.

    ReplyDelete