Anxiety and stress have become a growing problem amongst us Brits due to longer working hours and more pressure to “have it all” than ever before. But how important is mindfulness in improving your personal and professional life? Very.
According to Psychology today, Mindfulness is one of the most important developments in mental health in the past twenty years.
Mindfulness is all all about paying more attention to the present moment – to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you. According to the NHS, Mindfulness can improve our mental wellbeing and help us enjoy life more and understand ourselves better.
Our friends at AXA PPP healthcare have come up with their top tips for mindfulness, in order to manage the hum-drum busy-ness of life, and tackle stress and anxiety in order to cope with life’s day to day pressures.
Resilience
We can all find ourselves jumping to negative thoughts. This often happens automatically and can take a toll on our mental wellbeing. Mindfulness gives us the tools to become aware of this so that we can ‘rewire’ that thinking.
Research conducted in America in 2015 also suggests that mindfulness meditation can help with sleep by supporting those who suffer from insomnia. Sleep – alongside other factors, such as building your emotional intelligence – can help you build your resilience.
Stress, depression and anxiety
A common myth about mindfulness is that it is only good for your physical health, but research suggests this underestimates the practice.
Researchers at Boston University did an analysis of 39 studies, totalling 1,140 participants, who received mindfulness-based therapy for conditions such as cancer, generalised anxiety disorder and depression. It found mindfulness to be a “promising intervention” for treating anxiety and mood problems.
A smaller, more recent study, also found that mindfulness is a helpful treatment for supporting adults who have autism spectrum disorder with anxiety and depression.
Heart health
If you want to look after your heart, maintaining a healthy blood pressure is a good place to start, The American Heart Association now recommends meditation for reducing blood pressure, after a study found that people with heart disease who practised Transcendental Meditation regularly were 48% less likely to have a heart attack, stroke or die compared with those who attended a health education class instead.
IBS
A 2015 study in America found that participating in a nine-week training programme, which included mindfulness and meditation therapy, had a “significant impact” people’s symptoms of IBS and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Managing pain
A review of 10 studies in 2011 focused on how mindfulness can help patients manage chronic pain, and the depression that often accompanies it. It found that mindfulness-based therapy could help to reduce pain symptoms and relieve depressive symptoms, but more research is needed to fully establish this.
Fibromyalgia
In 2007, researchers from Switzerland’s University of Basel Hospital discovered evidence that the mindfulness has the potential to help women who suffer from fibromyalgia, a musculoskeletal condition that causes stiff joints, pain and tenderness throughout the body.
Treating addiction
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that mindfulness is an effective tool to reduce stress. This helps people with substance addictions as it gives them a healthy coping mechanism, which can steer them away from relapse.
An interesting study by specialists at the University of Utah in 2017 backed this up. They found that mindfulness is useful in the recovery of chronic pain patients who are at risk of becoming addicted to opiates.
Improving mental function
Research conducted at the University of Massachusetts Medical School showed that after an eight-week programme, mindfulness training increased the amount of grey matter in subjects’ brains. This type of brain tissue is associated with memory, learning, the regulation of emotions and the ability to see the world from multiple perspectives.
Another review study by researchers at the University of British Colombia showed that eight separate areas of the brain had the potential to be boosted by meditation.
Boosting the immune system
A 2003 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that people who meditated produced more antibodies when given a flu vaccine compared with participants who did not.
Controlling anger
Mindfulness can help us to control our learned response, like anger. By learning how to manage these emotions, it helps us to ‘get off the train’ and can improve our relationships.