Dr. Florian Ruths believes that when Mindfulness Meditation is practiced properly, in a clinical setting, it can benefit the practitioners in three ways.
First, “it teaches us to immerse ourselves deeper in the present rather than worry about things we can’t control in the future- will I have a job? Will I be ok in five years’ time?- or dwell on something in the past that we can’t handle either,” he says.
Second, he explains that it “teaches us something about the validity of thoughts and emotions. When we are in a difficult state we believe several things: it will never end, it says something about us being flawed, and we need to get out of it now. Mindfulness helps us see that emotions change and that if I have a though, it is not necessarily the reality, it is just a thought.”
Third, “mindfulness is an act of kindness, of compassion. It teaches us about directing the capacity for compassion that we all have at ourselves. That in itself is something new.”