How mindfulness affects the brain?

The practices from mindfulness are a means to condition or recondition your brain.  Conditioning is a way to train your brain to think a certain way; this can take much time and practice, but you can train your brain to work better for you with consistency.  For example, if you have been conditioned from your past life experiences to worry/prepare yourself for anticipated stress, this can lead to high amounts of anxiety.  Embracing and practicing the concepts of mindfulness will help to recondition your brain to help reduce/minimize the anxiety that you may want to address.  Here are a few core principles of mindfulness that can have a positive effect on your brain:

1. Living in the present moment: one of the most basic practices of mindfulness is to be present-centered.  There are many challenges associated with this practice as we live fast and are constantly moving towards a future-oriented one.  That future-oriented thinking, without even fully realizing it, can be a major contribution to anxiety symptoms.  The future is unknown, so naturally, there will be some worrying and anxiety associated with this.  The saying “stop to smell the roses” goes with being in the present moment; you can really enjoy the present if you take the time to live in it, as opposed to using the present moment for the sole purpose of getting to a future.  Granted, this takes much practice, and there will certainly be a time where you need to make plans, like paying bills or scheduling an appointment; however, the purpose of this in mindfulness is to do your best to live in the moment possible.  Thus, training your brain to not worry about the future quite as much. 
2. Non-judgmental: Another key principle of mindfulness is to embrace the use of non-judgment, which can be helpful if you notice that your brain tends to be overly critical to yourself or others.  Take a moment to reflect on how your environment or culture may influence this; sometimes, our outside world will impose these judgments on how we “should” be or act or look.  These types of judgments can come from our family, friends, social media, etc.  The frequent criticism that we impose on ourselves leads our brain to go to automatic negative thoughts, which contributes to significant symptoms of depression.  By practicing the concept of non-judgment and avoiding works like “right,” “wrong,” “good,” or “bad,” you can train your brain to be more compassionate, and those automatic negative thoughts will be less frequent. 

Focusing on these two key principles of mindfulness can provide a good foundation for training your brain to process information in a less harmful way, thus giving you more peace and harmony.  Keep in mind that this is a practice that takes much time and effort to apply before you start to notice the changes in your brain.  But the time will be worth the investment in the long run.