Aware - Daniel Siegel - Book Summary

Book Summary:

An in depth look at the neuroscientific evidence behind meditation and its impact on your happiness as well as your physical and mental health.

As we’ve seen again and again, what you do with your mind changes your body, including your brain.

If we aren’t currently distracted by everyday life then we tend to dwell on problems and worries.
Recent studies show that people who practice mediation experience numerous positive benefits including but not limited to: better immune function, can help your blood pressure, help your mind to self-regulate and deal better with new and unfamiliar situations.
A regular mediation practice can help you learn how to better focus your mind on the tasks you want it focused on a help to reduce it wandering during your work.
A mindfulness practice is about training your mind to work in ways that it usually doesn’t in everyday life.
There are 3 key parts to a successful mindfulness practice, they are: focused attention, open awareness and intention.
Focused attention: the ability to maintain constant focus on a specific task or objective.
Open awareness: tuning into your environment and being open and aware of everything that’s going on around you.
Intention: cultivating a positive compassionate attitude towards the world and yourself.
Understand that attention can be directed and focused, meditation can help with this.
Compassion can also be good for your mind and body. Learn to identify with and help others to ease their own suffering. Empathy comes before compassion but it’s not enough to simply identify. We also need to actually help others who are in pain.

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