Our minds is a amazing place. We live our entire lives in it. Everything we perceive is processed through it, everything that ever happened to us is stored in it, everything we create sprouts from it. Ultimately keeping good care of your mind is a good thing, a healthy mind functions better and that will benefit us as living learning human beings. Think for a second and you will realize that your mind is thinking about many things: studying for a test, planning out the next day, worrying about your boss, finishing this blog post, etc.. This causes the mind to undergo a lot of stress that sometimes becomes unbearable. In this era of instant information many people are losing the focus on the present, things happening right now and will affect you, and are wandering into the murky depths of future or the “golden” ages of the past. Many people’s minds are deeply affected by this shift in awareness and experience high level stress that affect not only the mind, but also the body in negative ways.
Before we dive into different ways to relieve stress in the mind we must define the mind itself. The brain and the mind are two different things. The brain is the physical lump of gray matter inside our skulls. The mind is a little harder to explain, so we will make an analogy. Imagine that the brain is a computer; the physical hardware like the motherboard, processor, and memory chips. If our brains were a computer then the mind would be the software inside it. The operating system if you will, telling the computer what to do.
Many people use mediation and the idea of Zen to relax. The idea is to push thoughts out of the mind and concentrate on no thoughts only the present being. The standard image that pops into the mind is a monk in lotus position calmly breathing: in…out…in…out. Zen meditation does help ease relief, many psychologists have found an alternative now called Flow. If you play sports you will know the feeling of being in the zone, where nothing matters except for the game and your performance in it. This feeling has name coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (a mouthful right?) and now the term Flow is used to describe such feeling of concentration, when some task fills your entire mind. To compare Zen is like looking at a messy desk, or any workspace, and sweeping off the things on to the ground and sorting through them later after a breather. Flow is like choosing one of the things on the desk to finish, an assignment, or puzzle or book and become so engrossed by the task before you that you forget about everything that you should be doing.
Flow is like Zen. People have to use it the right way in order to experience benefits. Studies have shown when people are in Flow, in the zone, they have heightened perception. After completing the task they are often extremely happy and feel more successful. Flow’s addictive feeling of happiness and increase in the mind’s awareness; however, can lead to addiction to the task causing flow. This is seen in many places especially videogaming. To end, Flow like Zen is a tool to help us only if we know how to use it. It can make our better or ruin it.
Before we dive into different ways to relieve stress in the mind we must define the mind itself. The brain and the mind are two different things. The brain is the physical lump of gray matter inside our skulls. The mind is a little harder to explain, so we will make an analogy. Imagine that the brain is a computer; the physical hardware like the motherboard, processor, and memory chips. If our brains were a computer then the mind would be the software inside it. The operating system if you will, telling the computer what to do.
Many people use mediation and the idea of Zen to relax. The idea is to push thoughts out of the mind and concentrate on no thoughts only the present being. The standard image that pops into the mind is a monk in lotus position calmly breathing: in…out…in…out. Zen meditation does help ease relief, many psychologists have found an alternative now called Flow. If you play sports you will know the feeling of being in the zone, where nothing matters except for the game and your performance in it. This feeling has name coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (a mouthful right?) and now the term Flow is used to describe such feeling of concentration, when some task fills your entire mind. To compare Zen is like looking at a messy desk, or any workspace, and sweeping off the things on to the ground and sorting through them later after a breather. Flow is like choosing one of the things on the desk to finish, an assignment, or puzzle or book and become so engrossed by the task before you that you forget about everything that you should be doing.
Flow is like Zen. People have to use it the right way in order to experience benefits. Studies have shown when people are in Flow, in the zone, they have heightened perception. After completing the task they are often extremely happy and feel more successful. Flow’s addictive feeling of happiness and increase in the mind’s awareness; however, can lead to addiction to the task causing flow. This is seen in many places especially videogaming. To end, Flow like Zen is a tool to help us only if we know how to use it. It can make our better or ruin it.