Hugh Byrne visited IMCC to talk about how mindfulness can help us break unhealthy habits, the subject of his new book, “The Here-and-Now Habit: How Mindfulness Can Help You Break Unhealthy Habits Once and for All." Filled with evidence-based techniques and the neuroscience behind them, he draws upon personal experience and that of many students to apply mindfulness practice directly to habit change. Mindfulness is a natural antidote to unconscious and automatic habits.
Hugh says: "Habits—the ways we regularly think, feel and act—flow on super-efficient pathways in the brain formed by their repetition over time. Similar to automatic reflexes, habit patterns handle nearly half of our daily activities, from brushing our teeth to driving a car. While some of these habits are necessary and helpful, some are unhealthy and even harmful."