No time like the present
“Mindfulness teaches us to see our thoughts but not be our thoughts” says Michele Topel. A Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor at the Viva Center she is also the founder of Mindful Living in DC. This is a community-based organization dedicated to the use of mindfulness as a tool for personal and societal transformation.
The impact of mindful attention to the present moment adds Topel is that it “allows us to observe patterned recurring narratives [about self relationships the world etc.] and realize we can choose them or construct new ones.”
Michele has extensive experience as a meditation teacher having trained with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. They are two U.S. pioneers in the mindfulness movement who helped introduce Buddhist meditation to western practitioners. Brach is also a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC. In addition she has taught free classes in the area for years.
The growth in mindfulness practice in the US has been exponential over the past decade. Once the domain of yogis and alternative healers mindfulness practice has expanded. You may see it included in medical programs corporate wellness activities and increasingly psychotherapy practice. And it’s easy to see why if you look at the data.
Changing the brain’s experience
Mindfulness practice has shown to help with mental health conditions such as depression anxiety insomnia as well as physiological conditions such as pain irritable bowel syndrome and heart disease.
Research on an eight-week meditation course at Harvard University showed that participants were able to reduce reactivity to a fear response by training their brains to more effectively recall a safety memory. Through functional MRIs the study documented changes in neural activity in the brain that enable a change in response.
Michele Topel’s interest in meditation grew out of her personal experience with meditation to overcome her own addiction. Research suggests that by changing neural activity in the brain and building distress tolerance meditation can help reduce cravings and impulsivity and prevent relapse. Of her own experience using meditation during recovery Michele shares that it is instrumental in establishing stable long-term sobriety and preventing relapse as well as increasing overall levels of happiness.
