Mindfulness is a buzz word at the moment. But what does mindfulness really mean and how can it help us all lead more fulfilled and engaged lives? I wanted to understand what the fuss is about and why mindfulness is so on-trend. Surely it is common sense? Being aware of the present moment, who doesn’t do that?
So I enrolled on the 8 week course on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction at The Mindfulness Project in London last summer. The course truly opened my eyes to the benefits and importance of mindfulness practise in increasing wellbeing, decreasing stress and ultimately feeling good.
So what is mindfulness?
The pioneer of mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn in his book Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life defines mindfulness as: “paying attention, in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally”.
I have to admit I had ideas about mindfulness but I hadn’t actually practised it consistently and so I now realise I hadn’t fully embraced the practice so as to benefit from it in my life. Of course there are many forms of meditation originating over centuries in Buddhist cultures in the east. I won’t go into detail of the history here as this is intended to be a brief overview of mindful meditation as a more secular form of meditation.
The 8 week MBSR course
The 8 week structued course consists of 2 hours a week of teaching and practice plus a full day of meditation practice. In addition there is the home practice. I was surprised when the tutor said we were to practise mindfulness meditation every day throughout the course for at least twenty minutes. We were taught that practicing mindful meditation is like learning a new skill. Just as we are not able to instantly downhill ski, or run a marathon, we are not automatically able to master the art of meditation. It takes dedication and regular practice before our brains become attuned to the practice and we begin to see any benefits.
No time to medidate
Personally I never thought I’d have time to fit yet another thing into my already crammed schedule. However, I surprised myself because by using some creativity in my day, I actually made time and committed to practice every day throughout the 8 week course.I have managed to continue my practice on most days since. It was more a case of prioritising my time to allow for this. Interestingly, I have found practising mindfulness actually allows me to have more time because it enables my feelings of stress to decline and therefore I spend less time worrying and being anxious than I would without it.
Mindfulness is easy right?
Being aware of the present moment, non-judgementally seems straight forward. However, the more we begin to pay attention to our thoughts and begin to actually practice mindful meditation, the more we might realise how much of the time our minds are engaged in either thinking about the past or planning for the future. It varies from person to person but in a life where we are constantly being bombarded with information through our handheld devices or in our chaotic and busy work lives, we are rooted in the present moment less and less.
Practising mindful meditation helps to calm the mind and build self-awareness of our emotions, thoughts and feelings. We can choose to meditate through use of guided meditations on an App such as HeadSpace or Calm or following the meditations on Spotify lead by experts such as Mark Williams or Erica Raynor Horn or self-compassion expert Kristin Neff’s meditations. Once you have become comfortable and familiar with the practices you can begin to try meditation without a guide devising your own quiet space to practice.
The science behind mindfulness
There is a huge amount of research demonstrating that practising mindfulness meditation is effective for a wide range of mental health difficulties and in treating physical health difficulties. These include treatment of pain, reducing stress, anxiety and depression and increasing wellbeing. As a result of the efficacy in the literature it has been rolled out as a practise within psychotherapy, cognitive therapy and in other therapeutic and clinical disciplines and even within schools as an educational tool.
Neuroscience has shown us that with regular mindfulness meditation practice over a sustained period there are actually structural changes which occur in the brain. Research by Hölzel et al showed that there was an increase in grey matter in the brain . This area of the brain is involved in “learning and memory processes, emotional regulation, self-referential processing and perspective taking”.
Research shows that regular meditation practice has shown to decrease brain activation in the part of the brain responsible for triggering fear in the amygdala and increase activity in the pre-frontal cortex which is the part of the brain we use to regulate our emotions. Research continues in this area but it is clear that there is enough evidence to show that regularly mindful meditation is effective in individuals.
If you are interested in the research into mindfulness a very useful resource is the Oxford Mindfulness Centre where you can find the most recent scientific studies exploring the concept as well as the experts in the field including Mark Williams.
