Hi everyone this is savvy psychologist I'm Dr Ellen Hendrickson and every week I'll help

you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

Mindfulness is everywhere these days.

Mindfulness headlines like Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, or The Medicine of the Moment are trumpeted

from Grocery Store Checkout Stands, right next to celebrity gossip and thinner thighs.

And in many ways this is a good thing.

Mindfulness is improving lives the world over.

Recent studies have found that mindfulness benefits everyone

from emergency room nurses to law students waiting for their bar exam

results to pregnant women and the latter to the too shabby. But as the mindfulness movement gets bigger and more unwieldy, myths and misinformation

have mysteriously appeared like sweets in the grocery cart when shopping with a toddler.

Therefore, this week we'll tackle the five biggest myths of mindfulness.

And we'll get right into it with myth number one. Mindfulness is meditation. Now the two terms

mindfulness and meditation often get thrown around interchangeably. So let's define

each. Mindfulness is an awareness. It's pay an attention on purpose in the present moment without judgment.

You don't need a meditation cushion or even more than a split second to be mindful.

Dr. John Cabot Zen, one of the first American mindfulness researchers, likens mindfulness to being behind a waterfall.

You're not under the waterfall caught in the swirl and pounding of thoughts, emotions, and

sensations, nor are you trying to stop or change them.

Instead, you're behind the cascade, observing all that's happening without evaluation.

Meditation, by contrast, is a practice and mindfulness meditation in particular has all the

awareness that is mindfulness but sustained so rather than just checking in

...