“I learned Vedic meditation to help with many of the issues listed and it has been wonderful. Amongst other things, meditation enables me to let things go rather than brooding on them (e.g. bad reviews, anxiety, etc). It has also helped with my headaches, which were as a result of tension in my neck from sitting at a screen. Finally, it has improved my ability to concentrate so that I can achieve much more in a shorter period of time.”
Imogen Clark, The Healthy Writer survey
What is mindfulness?
Jon Kabat-Zinn has offered this definition: “mindfulness is a moment to moment awareness that is cultivated by purposefully paying attention to the present experience, with a non-judgmental attitude.”
For something that promises so much it is devastatingly simple.
We just need to live in the moment.
Like any discussion around habits, it quickly becomes clear that most of us go through life with the autopilot taking care of all the navigation. Mindfulness, paying attention, is often sorely lacking. One of the key aspects of mindfulness is that it can change your relationship with negative thoughts. All the emotional reactivity that goes with those thoughts is reduced and you can do some ‘cognitive appraisal.’ That can then change your perception of events, hopefully in a more positive way.
A million ways to be mindful
I should highlight that mindfulness does not necessarily mean meditation. There are varieties of mindfulness that encompass meditation, but it is not a requirement.
Mindfulness meditation itself originates from Buddhist practices. This origin in a religion may be uncomfortable for some people, but you would be hard-pressed to spot them when it comes to the daily practice of being mindful. Some activities like yoga and tai chi also include mindfulness and meditation into their practice.
There is no right way to be mindful: it is a personal process.
It is also possible to bring mindfulness into your daily life without any significant changes to your lifestyle. Many mindfulness exercises come back to breathing, and it’s a very efficient way to draw in your attention and focus.
You can be mindful anywhere.
It could be while sitting in traffic and rather than stressing out about a situation you can’t control, you just take a few breaths. It might be while standing outside waiting for a bus, or on a short walk to collect the kids from school.
Some mindfulness exercises will encourage you to be more aware of the world around you. The feeling of warmth on your skin from the sun or the wind ruffling your hair. Other exercises encourage you to be aware of your own body, perhaps the tension across your neck and shoulders, or the pressure where you are clamping your jaw and grinding your teeth. Usually there is one simple aspect to concentrate on.
It is generally about living in the moment more. It encourages you not to wish your life away, appreciate the things that are in front of you now and limit your view for a few moments.
The neuroscience of mindfulness
There is plenty of emerging evidence on what goes on inside that 3lb of brain locked up inside its bony crate when we indulge in a little mindfulness.
In 2010, Yi-Yuan Tang and his colleagues published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. It is just three pages long but it was significant. It was the first paper to show that even brief meditation practices could change the structure of the brain.
They found that it took at least six hours, but no more than 11 hours, of practice to start to see changes in a part of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex. This helps regulate your emotions and behaviors as well as manage cravings. Mindfulness can change how your brain works in just a few hours.
There is good evidence for the usefulness of mindfulness in a whole array of conditions. These include fatigue, chronic pain, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and insomnia. And there is also evidence that mindfulness can be effective for chronic low back pain.
Mindfulness is proving to be a remarkable tonic for modern life and its stresses. If they could, the public health people would be putting mindfulness in the water.
Is mindfulness just the latest fad?
There is good evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness. It is not simply a flaky, New Age, on-trend, whack-jobbery intervention for the terminally gullible.
As the evidence has emerged, it has entered the mainstream and is treated quite seriously by healthcare professionals. We are likely to see a lot more mindfulness-based interventions as they make their way into daily medical practice. And, there seems little reason to wait for your healthcare professional to tell you to be more mindful. It is a process you can start straight away.
You can start right now. Try this simple breathing exercise.
Learning to breathe
There are lots of variations on these types of exercises. This is just one example of a simple breathing exercise.
It is not specifically a ‘mindful’ thing, but it can be used as part of that. It can be particularly helpful for people who are anxious, and exercises like these can be used to manage panic-related symptoms. It only needs to be done for two or three minutes but a daily practice can be very effective.
- Breathe slowly in through the nose and out through the mouth. Try to establish a steady rhythm. It can help to count as you breathe in for ‘one, two’ then relax as you breathe out for ‘one, two, three, four.’
- Place a hand on your tummy just below the ribs. When you breathe in, you should feel your tummy rise. This is because your diaphragm, the muscle sitting under your lungs, should be pushing down as your lungs expand.
- As you breathe out your tummy should fall again.
- If you are tense or anxious your breathing might be shallow, and at first your abdomen won’t move or it will go in the opposite direction. You might be using the muscles in your upper chest to breathe.
- Concentrate on breaths in for a count of two and slow breaths out for a count of four. (The exact numbers don’t matter and some breathing exercises will make inspiration and expiration match.)
- Relax those muscles across the chest and shoulders.
And that’s it. It is a remarkably effective and simple exercise. It can also be very useful to do before any kind of public speaking, to try to settle that anxiety and tension you can feel beforehand.
Questions:
- How do you feel about mindfulness? Is it something you would like to incorporate into your routine?
- Do you feel like life is flashing by in a rush? Could you benefit from some moments of calm and mindfulness?
- How could you make mindfulness fit into your daily life? As a minute or two between writing sessions? Or as part of a session such as yoga?
- Do you ever feel tense and anxious or struggle with your breathing? Have you tried some simple breathing exercises?
Resources:
- Mindfulness for Busy People – Dr Michael Sinclair and Josie Seydel