That's the potential of meditation, of mindfulness.

I took the same concept of mindfulness, because, why did I bring meditation into the Indian prison?

Based on a lot of evidence for mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, very strong for our well being.

Next Saturday, set a day aside, design yourself a beautiful day, and use savoring and mindfulness to enhance those pleasures.

Of course, mental exercises must be honed to develop particular skills and behaviors mindfulness practice alone is not adequate to improve, say, socio cognitive skills. And lasting changes occur only after a prolonged period of regular training.

As our understanding of depression grows and we see that it is a recurring problem, the emphasis is shifting from cure to prevention. Mindfulness based approaches have already proven that they will play an enormously important role in this.

When is the last time you did absolutely nothing for 10 whole minutes? Not texting, talking or even thinking? Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe describes the transformative power of doing just that Refreshing your mind for 10 minutes a day, simply by being mindful and experiencing the present moment.

The first life is the pleasant life and it's simply, as best we can find it, it's having as many of the pleasures as you can, as much positive emotion as you can, and learning the skills savoring, mindfulness that amplify them, that stretch them over time and space.

And just to sample the kind of interventions that we find have an effect, when we teach people about the pleasant life, how to have more pleasure in your life, one of your assignments is to take the mindfulness skills, the savoring skills, and you're assigned to design a beautiful day.

Based on Jon Kabat Zinn s Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) combines modern cognitive behavioral therapy with meditation practices to help people become more aware of the present moment, including getting in touch with moment to moment changes in the mind and body (see www.mbct.co.uk).

In weekly classes (the atmosphere is that of a class, rather than a therapy group), and by listening to CD s or tapes at home during the week, participants learn the practice of mindfulness meditation. The classes also include basic education about our moods, and several exercises from cognitive therapy that show the links between thinking and feeling and how participants can best look after themselves when a crisis threatens to overwhelm them.