ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on using mindfulness meditation to enhance well-being. Developing mindfulness skills helps address tendencies to ruminate about past difficulties and worry about future challenges, both of which reduce well-being. Mindfulness, in contrast, increases well-being and has a positive impact on physical and mental health. Mindfulness involves paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, without judgement to our immediate sensory experience with an attitude of curiosity and compassion. A distinction is made between the doing and being modes. The doing mode is useful for solving external practical problems, whereas the being mode, cultivated through mindfulness meditation, is useful for addressing internal emotional problems. An eight-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy programme is described with exercises to help introduce mindfulness into day-to-day life and break habits that may be barriers to becoming more mindful.
