I have been practicing mindfulness meditation for the last 14 months - 30 minutes, everyday and I have to say that it has been virtually the most important skill that I have picked up. Because it's essentailly that - a skill. I was very stressed and the anxiety started to affect virtually every aspect of my life. My family wanted me to seek professional help (take pills), but I decided to try to take care of it myself so I started reading books... a lot of books about the brain, how it works, etc. and this is how I was introduced to mindfulness. Now, 14 months later the effects are so profound that I have hard time imagining what my mind looked like before. The biggest change I have noticed is the ability to not act on thoughts and easily let them go by accepting them. Things that used to trigger me before are just thoughts now: the thought comes, I notice it and it passes. The best word that comes to mind when trying to describe the feeling is ... grounded. I feel grounded, calm.

I know it sounds cliche, but now I realize that it's true that the moment you stop fighing your thoughts and urges, they lose their power. I remember reading things again and aain and could not wrap my head about this concept before.

- Does the anxiety go away? No, but my relationship with the anxiety and stress changed.

IMHO Self-reflection and emotional intelligence are the most important skills one can develop. Because if you develop them, you stop being in your own way and sabotaging yourself and it leads to generally happier life.

This is what I did i nthe last 14 months: - Lay down, close my eyes and observe the sensetion of breathing in my belly. - In the beginning my mind was immediately distracted with thoughts. It took me sometimes a few minutes until I was able to realize that I have been distracted all along. Then I had to force myself to ignore the distrating thought and pay attention to my breathing. It was really hard in the beginning and my sessions lasted usually 15 minutes max. - But as I got better it became easier...now I have no problems to let go of a thought ... even a very emotiaonally charged one. It's like I have a switch in my head.

I have recommended mindfulness to all my friends and relatives and virtually none of them have made more than a few sessions. That makes me sad, because I can see what effects it can have, but there's nothing more than recommending that I can do - it's really a personal commitment.