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Mindfulness is often hardest for people who grew up with their emotions unseen.

Noticing and naming your feelings is a skill you can learn at any age, even if no one taught you.

As you learn to feel again, you also become able to see and answer your own children's feelings.

Quite some years ago, a colleague dragged me to a mindfulness training for mental health professionals. At that time, mindfulness was not considered a fully valid concept in psychology.

As a psychologist who valued science, I viewed it as nothing other than new age, mystical hippy nonsense. I anticipated a flaky conference, and I was not disappointed. At one point, they had us all stand up and mill about aimlessly while humming for 20 minutes. Then we had to ask and answer some very personal questions with the strangers next to us.

Ugh. Not my cup of tea.

Fast forward to today, where mindfulness and science have met and married. And oh, what a glorious union it is! Mindfulness studies have been pouring from many researchers for over a decade. And the meaning of mindfulness has matured from simply "being in the moment" to a richer, more complex definition.

Mindfulness is being aware of what you are doing, experiencing, and feeling in the moment.

Here is a brief list of just a few of the benefits of mindfulness that research has documented in recent years:

It helps you sleep better.

It reduces your stress levels.

It actually changes the structure of your brain, for the better.

Why Mindfulness Is Hard After Childhood........

© Psychology Today