Sometimes it takes hardship to get to know yourself in a real way, and within a coherent framework.  I got lost in a relationship but now I am stronger, more self assured, and have improved insight.

I am proud of my new found knowledge about myself through mindfulness mediation and writing.  I have a gift now to share to other women; helping them to achieve more healthier relationships, self-respect, confidence and boundaries.

With mindfulness meditation, you can re-wiring your brain.  You can literally change and grow neural connections which support finding and creating better relationships. It is possible for your brain to become more like those who grew up knowing how to love and be loved in healthy, sustainable ways.

We are all not so fortunate to grow up with healthy, attuned attachments. Childhood attachment is the emotional bond that typically forms between infant and caregiver, usually a parent.  It stimulates brain growth, affects personality development and a lifelong ability to form stable relationships. Neuroscientists now believe that attachment is such a primal need that there are networks of neurons in the brain dedicated to it, and the process of forming lasting bonds is powered in part by the hormone oxytocin.

Even though we may not have had childhood attachment, we can re-wire our brains for better relationships.  Mindfulness mediation can help with the nine essential characteristics for healthy relationships.

1. Better management of your body’s reactions; stress and anger management.

2. Emotional resiliency; regulating your emotions and restoring an unpleasant mood back to baseline with ease and efficiency.

3. Better, more adaptable, agreeable communication.

Mindfulness meditation helps you to be a more attuned communicator and it can be contagious to loved one as well. Good communication entails listening and understanding without distortion, and responding in a way contingent upon your partners needs instead of your own inner filters and desires.

4. Response flexibility.

Mindfulness meditation improves response flexibility and creates an emotional regulator where space and time allow careful thought for a more positive mindful, conscious response instead of just crying whenever receiving criticism or blaming others and yelling when you feel ashamed.

5. Improved empathy.

Mindfulness meditation improves the ability to identify with and understand somebody else’s feelings or difficulties but without losing your awareness of your own state of mind.  It’s the ability to separate a desire to support and feel affinity with but still remaining constant in your state of mind; without their solemn mood affecting yours.

6. Improved insight (self-knowing).

Mediation practice improves self awareness within a logically and aesthetically consistent credible and harmonious whole.  Mediating and writing regularly allows us to practice our ability to notice what our brain is thinking.  An increased knowledge and capacity to tell the difference between momentary and ever-changing events, and who we really are is achieved.

7. Better modulation of fear.

Mindfulness mediation allows you to soothe your feelings and be more comfortable when you’re afraid.  You are able to regulate things which once scared you (He’s going to leave me; I’m not enough for her).  It’s important in relationships to have ready access to being able to calm yourself when you’re anxious, so that your reactions and interactions aren’t overrun by your fight-flight-freeze response.  Once you are not as reactive to emotional fear, you change your entire experience of being in an adult-to-adult relationship.

8. Enhanced intuition.

There’s actually increasing neurochemical and cellular evidence of a second brain in our viscera; internal abdominal and intestinal organs. Our viscera, and the rest of our body – our muscles, eyes, ears, skin, and so on – are telling us something. If we pay attention to the messages our body is telling us, the mindfulness practice enhances the ability to be attuned to yourself, and what you unconsciously know – what we can refer to as “intuition.”  Becoming emotionally aware and act rationally and logically in conjunction with our body enhances your ability to be in conscious relationships with yourself and with others.

9. Increased morality.

Evidence shows that when people learn to meditate and practice regularly, their perceptions of their place in the world begins to shift – something corroborated by family members. They become more broadly compassionate, more likely to act on their highest principles, and demonstrate greater interest in the social good – what can very reasonably seen as living with higher morals. It’s like having a healthier relationship with your whole community, not just the people closest to you.

Try mediating for twenty minutes and open your mind to your thoughts, feelings and emotions.  Pay attention what is consistent and what fades.  Learn about who you are and the goals you want to achieve. Spend another twenty minutes and write down what you have learned.  Keep a journal and awaken yourself to a whole new awareness and brighter self.