Mindfulness: a meditation adjusted to the accelerated times of capitalism

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With stress in the office and lack of time, cultivating mindfulness is an option to harmonize life and focus better on emotions

The way of life of being hyperproductive, typical of the economic system and capitalist ideology, makes us live with an accelerated pace of life, always fulfilling extra work, working hours that go until night and a need to always be in motion. Even if this type of worker is more optimal for the system, our body and mind may not process it in the best way.

Leer en español: Mindfulness: una meditación ajustada a los tiempos acelerados del capitalismo

For this reason, health problems such as burnout, depression, anxiety or extreme stress have become common in the offices of the largest companies. It is important, then, to ask what solutions are there to deal with this labor rhythm.

One of the tools that have become popular in recent years is to cultivate mindfulness, a type of meditation, heir to Buddhism, which can be practiced in a short time and adjusts to office hours. Here at LatinAmerican Post we tell you a little more so you can start to get to know her.

What is mindfulness?

The definition given by the Reverend Zen Takafumi Kawakami, in his TED talk, about this type of meditation is that "it is a practice and way of thinking that helps us to be present with our experience in a non-judgmental way". However, what does it mean 'to be present'?

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As Kawakami explains, most of the time our mind is located in the past or in the future, remembering or planning. This causes us to stop being aware of our environment and how our body and mind interacts with it since physically we are in one space, but mentally in another.

Thus, being present would mean paying attention to your surroundings and how your body feels the outside, which translates to the internal reaction of your body to the outside. For this reason, the mindfulness meditation consists of breathing and feeling your breath, how with it you begin to feel your surroundings more clearly, which would mean experiencing the present.

Benefits of mindfulness

In his TED talk, Andrés Martín, founder of the Esmindfulness institute and doctor of psychology, explains the benefits of mindfulness. These are :

1. Improve attention
2. Reduce errors
3. Increase empathy.
4. Improve emotion management.

The fourth point is key in the sense that it helps to have a healthier mind. As Martín explains, in broad strokes, the operation that our mind performs, in terms of the level of energy in relation to the degree of pleasure, can be summarized in four states:

1. Excitation: pleasant feeling with a high level of energy.
2. Anxiety: unpleasant feeling with a high level of energy.
3. Boredom: unpleasant feeling with a low level of energy.
4. Relaxation: pleasant feeling with a low energy level.

Beyond which one or another state is better, our mind should always be in constant movement among them, because the problems arise when only it stays fixed in some. Precisely the balance between those states is what Martin calls the optimal zone, a point of harmony between the four states that gives you more control of the emotional states of your mind and also a greater observation of them.

LatinAmerican Post | Juan Gabriel Bocanegra

Translated from "Mindfulness: una meditación ajustada a los tiempos acelerados del capitalismo"