How to be mindful & why you should try it.

28 Mar

There are blurred images of leaves in the foreground of the photo. Past the foliage is a blonde woman wearing red lipstick and gold earrings, she is looking thoughtful.

Don’t have time for mindfulness?

It’s possible to bring mindfulness into your daily life without making big changes. You can be mindful by noticing your breathing and body sensations at different times during the day.

When life offers you a natural pause – such as waiting for a meeting, or in a queue, bring your attention to your breathing. Is it deep or shallow? Where is the sensation strongest? You could also bring awareness to your breathing and body sensations when carrying out activities, like having a hot drink, noticing how the cup feels in your hands and savouring the aroma before sipping slowly.

Notice your breathing and posture when you’re having conversations and interacting with others. Does it change at different times of day?

You could also make a change to your usual routine to get yourself out of autopilot. This could include changing where you eat lunch, sitting in a different place at meetings or taking a different route home. This article from mindful has some great tips for bringing mindfulness into everyday activities. Read more here.

But what does it mean to step out of autopilot?

What happens when we can step back from our troubles and reactivity Mindfulness is often promoted as a way of moving back from worry, rumination and reacting to what’s going on around us, but without experiencing it for yourself it all sounds a bit vague and woolly.

Some say it’s all ‘hippy nonsense’ or about having a ‘Pollyanna’ attitude to everything – which isn’t a good thing either.

It isn’t a way of ‘letting everything go over your head’ but a way of seeing things as they really are, accepting what’s going on around us, and having the space to make choices that support our wellbeing.

But what does ‘seeing things as they really are’ mean? And if life is a bit pants right know, why would we want to? If we try to stay mindfully in the present moment, aren’t we just ignoring our problems? There is an excellent article from Everyday Mindfulness by Sam Weston which explains how this isn’t the case and just how fulfilling waking up to your life can be. Sound interesting? Click here to read it.

Do you find it hard to ask for help? You’re not alone.

Lots of people find asking for help and receiving help difficult and uncomfortable. We don’t want to put people out or be a burden. If you’re usually self sufficient and manage things on your own, receiving help can bring other difficult emotions. Such as feeling like a failure.

Also, if you’re used to doing everything for yourself, you probably come across as very self sufficient and good at coping, so it’s harder for people to notice if you’re struggling unless you ask.

Our ability to ask for and receive help can be linked to childhood attachments, but like all behaviours, they can be unlearned. Doing it all yourself can be overwhelming.

Just because behaving in a certain way helped you in the past doesn’t mean it will always work. There can come a point when some behaviours no longer serve you. If you’re burning yourself out, becoming stressed and anxious, going it alone isn’t working anymore.

But asking for help takes courage. And changing a learned behaviour isn’t easy.

Learn to pay less attention to the inner voice that says accepting help is selfish, means you’re failing or will have bad consequences. It will feel awkward or difficult at first, not because it’s wrong but is something new. Start small if you must. Learning to accept help can grow friendships and build trust. It can enrich and deepen relationships with those who care about you as well as improving your wellbeing - Click here for the full article

So, does all this mindfulness stuff really work?

And does it really reduce stress?

Many studies to find out how helpful mindfulness is dependent on the participants reflections, or self assessment questionnaires given after the course ends. Whilst individual accounts are very important, they are difficult to scientifically prove and easy to argue against.

‘Maybe their stress wasn’t as bad as mine.’ ‘Maybe it just works for some people’ ‘you have to have a certain personality for this sort of thing’ ‘people lie on questionnaires – they didn’t want to disappoint the teacher’

Therefore, studies such as the one below is so important.

The Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig measured the amount of cortisol (the stress hormone) in hair over a nine-month period to measure how effective mental trainings such as mindfulness, are for chronic stress.

Participants were given different trainings, either attention and mindfulness, socio-affective skills which include compassion and gratitude, or socio-cognitive skills – how we understand, reflect, or react to ourselves and others.

In Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) courses, all these areas are included, but this study separated them to see if one part was more beneficial than others.

The training lasted for 9 months, however after just 6 months of training, the amount of cortisol in participants hair had reduced by an average of 25%.

A different study by the ReSource project measured acute stress levels of participants in a stressful job interview by measuring cortisol levels in saliva. Participants who had been on the trainings released up to 51% less cortisol than participants who had not been on the trainings.

The different forms of training gave similar outcomes showing that they all help to reduce stress levels however the research showed that training sustained over a long time made a big difference in reducing chronic stress and improves how we cope with stressful situations.

So, if you only take one practice away from an MBCT course, stick with it.

Sue Brackstone