Hic et Nunc

Mindfulness, walking meditation, awareness, transcendental meditation, … are some of the words used to describe different shades of a centuries-old practice.

Within the Mediterranean culture, the Latin poet Oratio often mentioned the words hic et nunc, highlighting the preciousness of now, in the awareness that the present moment is the only dimension when we truly live. Great is the attention that many ancient philosophies dedicated to the here and now concept and to the listening that leads us to the awareness of our deeper self. The meditation that calms the mind, relieving from the load of intellectualization and continuous effort of the logic thinking analysis that brings us to brood over the past and to anticipate scenarios and expectations about the future, driving us away from the present moment.

That supports us in going back to ourselves and to our interior resources, to align with an open and judgment-free state of consciousness, that helps us to detach from an outside world so overloaded with inputs to often become alienating.

A lot of literature is available for those who want to collect more inspirations and get closer to this practice.

A lot of guided meditations and meditation groups, that during the pandemic move from the ones in presence to the virtual ones.

A lot of scientific research, that thanks to more and more sophisticated neuroimaging techniques, such as the functional MRI, is documenting the beneficial effects on the body and its physiology.

As the psychiatrist, psychotherapist and counsellor Erica Francesca Poli writes in her book “Anatomia della Guarigione, I sette principi della Nuova Medicina Integrata (Anatomy of Healing, The Seven Principles of New Integrated Medicine): “[…] The functions performed by the prefrontal cortex extend thus from neurovegetative regulation, to emotional syntonization capabilities, including regulation of the emotional experiences, feedback and resilience to stress flexibility, empathy, insights, intuition, modulation of fear and even ethics and morality.

It goes without saying that the more this area is developed, the more we gain emotional balance and wellbeing.

The extraordinary fact is that we are not born naturally with an already active and shaped prefrontal cortex: it is also subject to and benefit of the mechanism of neuroplasticity, that means it can be shaped through experience.

It has been observed that the prefrontal cortex develops and strengthens in these activities: in the meditation, after a psychotherapy with main focus on restoring the emotional dimension and on creating self-awareness, through visualizations, body work practices and also thanks to safe affective attachment relationships”.

A practice with an ancient history, that we are discovering again, studying, integrating in our lives and adapting to our times, with the desire, also ancient, to know ourselves and just be.

 

LIBRI CONSIGLIATI

“Infinite Awareness – The Awakening of a scientific mind” by the neuroscientist Marjorie Hines Wollacott

“The quiet mind” di John Earl Coleman

 

Photo credits: Stefano Butturini