Depression is a mood disorder characterized by the emotions of sadness, loss, anger, and or frustration. In addition, these negative emotions interfere with a person's everyday life for a significant time. Meditation and mindfulness are proven to be particularly effective treatments for alleviating depressive symptoms and preventing relapse.

Addiction is an ongoing, compulsive dependence on a behavior or substance, which usually results in negative consequences for the addict. There are two types of addictions: substance and behavioral. Meditation and mindfulness lessen addictive tendencies by increasing self-regulation and decreasing negative emotions due to stress.

Chronic pain results from an overly sensitive nervous system. Chronic pain may also lead to a mood disorder, like depression or anxiety. Addiction to pain medications is also commonplace. Patients who practice meditation and mindfulness report significant reductions in pain intensity, alleviation of the mood disorder, and reduction in opiate dependence.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a type of anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive, ongoing, and repetitious thoughts. Obsessive thoughts are followed by compulsive, sometimes highly ritualized behaviors. Meditation and mindfulness increase practitioner’s tolerance for distress by teaching participants to allow triggering thoughts and sensations to peak and pass.

Anxiety is different than normal feelings of nervousness. Symptoms may include obsessive thoughts, panic, recurring nightmares, and physical symptoms like feeling sick to your stomach, heart pounding, startling easily, and muscle tension. Studies have shown mindfulness meditation can produce long-term beneficial effects for people suffering from anxiety.

Eating disorders include food restriction, addictive overeating, and binging and purging. These patterns often arise due to unresolved emotional conflicts. People with eating disorders are overly influenced by triggers, beliefs, or emotions and lose awareness of normal eating cues. Meditation and mindfulness help to desensitize triggers, restructure beliefs, and stabilize emotions.

Trauma and/or PTSD result when an extremely disturbing event leads to long-lasting mental and emotional impairment. Upsetting, intrusive thoughts, recurring nightmares, the “blunting” of emotions, and often, marked shifts in personality typify both. Meditation and mindfulness help by facilitating post-traumatic growth, better coping and finally integration and transcendence of the trauma.

ADD and ADHD are characterized by wandering attention, impulsivity and in the latter case, hyperactivity. The problem is not an inability to pay attention, but an unconscious, wandering attention. The Skillfully Aware program helps by training participants to watch, guide, place, and hold their attention, which develops attentional stability—the ability to keep attention still.

Maybe you are having trouble sleeping, or you are coping with challenges related to stress, emotions, or urges. Maybe you are encountering difficulties at work and home. Perhaps you have even been diagnosed with a medical condition like insomnia, depression, chemical dependency, anxiety, chronic pain, OCD, or some other stress-related syndrome. If so, you are likely taking a prescription medication and or regularly hauling yourself off to see doctors in hopes of healing your problem. But here is what I have discovered in years of successful work with people just like you: the real cure isn’t in a pill or a procedure; it is within you!

You see, most of these problems occur because we’re constantly listening to what the outside world tells us what we should do. We work harder, do more, instead of listening to what our body’s inner rhythms tell us what we need to do. The noisy stress of everyday life drowns out the soft voice of our needy bodies—the need for rest, the need for peace, the need for nourishment. Then, we don’t care for ourselves, and it shows. Eventually, our body simply stops working well. Our minds race and turn negative. We can’t sleep; our stomach gets upset; we hurt, and lash out in anger. Fact is, the harmful effects of stress not only alter our health, they impact our personality and our relationships.

But by becoming skillfully aware through a daily mindfulness practice and meditation, you’ll start to listen more closely and carefully to your body—especially when you encounter stress. Then, stress won’t damage you anymore. You can overcome unhealthy urges, negative mood swings, pains, and insomnia—and you may be able to toss out those pills in favor of a healthier, happier, more aware you! You will start living a new life. Mastering this program starts with baby steps and having the faith and belief that you can get yourself to your goal. Mind training is a skill anyone can learn, and it will make you happier and, in turn, it will make our world a better, brighter place. Starting right now.