Feeling Stuck? Mindfulness can help.

Do you ever feel like there's one aspect of your life that you keep getting stuck on? Maybe something in your marriage or relationship, your physical self-confidence, ability to receive, or a work issue like perfectionism? Something that influences you perhaps in just one sphere, or perhaps in many, but regardless, has that sense like, "if only I could resolve this, life would be so much better!"

In my own journey with mindfulness and yoga, I've found that even these core issues I'd come to take for granted can be altered. I informally call this integration, because I believe, like many other mental health people, that healing involves bringing to light aspects of ourselves that are broken, orphaned and abandoned, and re-uniting them with the more nurturing side of ourselves. (I also borrow the term integration from Daniel J. Siegel's book The Mindful Therapist (2010). According to Siegel, engaging with a mindful therapist, and/or having a mindfulness practice of your own, can help integrate neural synapses in the brain, helping with brain functioning and mental health.

The fact that parts of your life feel stuck, could mean that your brain is stuck - there may be aspects of your brain that function separately when they should function together. Research is beginning to show that mindfulness can help to integrate the disparate parts of the brain. This is another level at which emotional transformation is a process of brain change, and we can begin it anytime.

For me, this inspires yet more respect for the process of personal growth. When I think about my own and others' growth, I feel excited, in awe, and patient, trusting that the process has its own hidden timing. We are trained to think that it's possible to transform ourselves by sheer mental effort. But in reality, transformation belongs to the body, of which the brain is decidedly a part. The brain functions together with the entire nervous system, which controls your gut reactions to everything from stress to caffeine to sex.

Research is beginning to stand by that belief, long-held by many, that the brain can be changed by mindfulness. By training ourselves to notice things without reacting, we can learn to live from a less reactive, more responsive, and open-minded place. Mindfulness is a powerful tool. It may just help you move that mountain that's been in your way.