Practising mindfulness
I hope you’ve all been “Liking” our new Facebook page – www.facebook.com/insideoutdruyoga if you’ve not already looked!
I don’t know about you but I am finding social media quite addictive and I love it when I get notification that I’ve been “liked”! (Or maybe I just need to get out more!?)
Apparently, though, I’m not alone in this.
Be honest now, how often do you find yourself looking at your texts, Facebook page, Twitter updates, emails?
I read an article somewhere recently that every time we get a social media message or we are “liked” we get a hit of the feel good hormone dopamine. Dopamine causes feelings of pleasure and is released by rewarding experiences, for example, food. The problem here though, is that we want more and more of that feeling, so we are increasingly looking to social media to give us those pleasure hits. So we keep on checking, hoping for our next fix. All this has the knock on affect on our capacity to focus on one thing at a time – a skill known as “mindfulness”.
The good news for we yogis is that yoga will help improve mindfulness and has even been scientifically proven to increase dopamine levels (Source: Elsevier Science BV 2002). How good is that? Yoga officially increases pleasure as well as improving focus and clarity!
And the rest of the world is now seeing the value of this too.
According to a recent NY Times article, internet giants Google are offering their employees a 7 week course in Mindfulness. Now my guess is that if a corporate giant like Google can see the value of mindfulness, they must believe there is some financial gain in it.
So why not take a leaf out of their book? Join a yoga class to learn mindfulness techniques – improve your focus, clarity and mental attitude – and set yourself apart from the crowd. Contact us now to find out how Inside Out can help you.
Anyway must dash – I’ve a busy social media life to keep up with! Take care Ix
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