Month: November 2019

Many patients and oncology professionals never think to use meditation for nausea…

but did you know that clinical studies have shown that meditation reduces nausea?

It can be a useful addition to other anti-nausea treatments prescribed by your oncology team.

Two meditation techniques that have been shown to be helpful are:

• guided imagery
• and progressive relaxation.

Guided imagery is a type of meditation that uses all 5 senses to create positive mental pictures in the mind. Progressive relaxations are those meditations in which the awareness is moved through the body allowing each part to relax. Typically, you are guided to tense and relax different muscle groups while attending to the differences in sensation.

You can find several progressive relaxations on my website: https://www.jointhecircleofhope.com/meditations.

Try adding these techniques to your other nausea treatments and let me know what you think!

Nonjudgment in mindfulness meditation is one of the three main principles. When you practice mindfulness meditation, you develop your ability to:

• remain with the present moment,
• cultivate an attitude of nonjudgment,
• and foster an attitude of acceptance. 

Today, let’s dive in to a more in-depth discussion of nonjudgment.

What exactly is this skill? 

Every experience we have is filtered by the mind. The human mind is constantly judging things, labeling each experience as “good” or “bad” or “neutral”, labeling each emotion as “good” or “bad” or “neutral”. Naturally the mind seeks to increase the good and move away from the bad. The mind tends to ignore neutral things altogether. 

Mindfulness meditation teaches us to turn off the egoic judging mind and just observe. When you step back into an observer role, you notice the moment’s experience for what it is without giving it a label. 

You learn to simply take note of thoughts and feelings that arise without assigning any meaning.

Judgment is suspended.

This pause in judgment trains your mind to act less and be present more. By simply being present in this moment, you realize that this moment is whole as is. You welcome a deep sense of gratitude for the gift of being in your life, right here, right now.

For guided meditations to start or continue your practice and improve your skill of nonjudgment, check out my website at http://www.jointhecircleofhope.com/meditations.