Mind Training Benefits Are Cumulative
Karen Verna Carlson
Spending daily time to calm mental activity is entry level mind training (a.k.a. mindfulness/present moment practice or meditation), beginning a journey that gradually gains momentum for greater and greater benefits. The past two years’ columns have been an orientation for the why’s and how’s of basic approaches to this extraordinary tool guaranteed to upgrade anyone’s quality of life (QoL). My mind is more than 30% calmer as I’ve more consistently performed daily 20-minute sessions simply counting breaths. The cumulative benefits can be so truly astonishing as to radically transform anyone’s QoL.
achieving results. However, those awareness practices have definitely enhanced my patience to let benefits show up in their own time. Similarly, your unique temperament and circumstances will manifest unique results with perfect relevance to your needs and desires. (Each of us truly is one of a kind, just like snowflakes.) My results may not interest you at all. They’re meaningful to me, just as yours will be meaningful to you. And all results will be cumulatively better and better for our collective consciousness.
Exponentially Cumulative Before I share some of my success stories, you’ll get more out of them if I start with an analogy to clarify this powerful cumulative aspect of consistent mind training. Think of being on a mountaintop and rolling a big, big snowball to release down a steep, smooth miles-long slope. With nothing to interfere with its descent, the snowball’s mass and velocity increase exponentially. So, the cumulative effects are such that when the ball is halfway down the mountain it may only be 20% its final size. The last few hundred feet could even double its size, and escalate its speed. Although this is a thought experiment, it’s mathematically verifiable. My calmer meditation-trained mind offered these Alpine snow memories from a 2-year Bavarian sojourn decades ago when I lived at the base of Germany’s 14,000-ft Zugspitze. I didn’t roll any snowballs down it then, but it’s refreshing to be thinking about snow games in July.
In the realm of mind training (or meditation or present moment awareness practice), our 21st century vocabulary is just beginning to develop. So, here’s another angle from which to consider this concept of ‘cumulative’ benefits from consistent practice. Consider meditation practice to be like setting up a consumer data base. Logging name, address, phone and product purchases is similar to building awareness through consistent mind training. Just as PCs can instantly sort thousands of data by any category once the data base is established, mind training practice activates our innate capacity for perceiving a clearer more complete picture, while simultaneously accessing detailed data for clarifying choices. Unlike a hard drive, our minds have almost limitless storage capacity. Science has revealed that humans currently use only a small percentage of our cognitive potential. Even Einstein, Stephen Hawking and other acclaimed geniuses tapped maybe 10% of their brain’s vast possibilities.
Uniquely Relevant
Gaining from Loss
Now that we’re getting on the same page in our understanding of this cumulative’ concept, I remind you that mind training does not focus on
One of my first benefits occurring several months into consistent practice was a gain in the form of a loss. In childhood, parental
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Grasp Complete Picture As Well As Details
www.livingwellmagazine.net
July 2019
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