Being Mindful: Understanding Mindfulness and its Importance for our Mental Health

We are at the day and age where mental health concerns are on the rise, and it is progressively more common for people to experience some or the other type of mental health related issues. One of the reasons for this could be that more people are aware about mental health and the various resources about psychology. But another worrying reason could be lifestyle related stressors because of work stress, isolation (due to poor work-life balance), societal pressure from a young age to perform better in schools and then college and then work; additionally increased cost of living adds to the stress. To bridge the gap between different mental health needs of people and the interventions available to manage them, researchers have been working relentlessly to find effective ways to help people to work through their mental health needs. One of the popular tools used by therapists is mindfulness-based practices. This begs the question….

What is Mindfulness and what are mindfulness-based practices?

Mindfulness is understood as a state of finding the middle ground between self-awareness and self-criticism, i.e., it is a state of being aware of one’s experiences in the here-and-now but observing things without any judgement. This includes observing one’s thoughts, emotions, sensations, physical states, consciousness and the surroundings. Mindfulness encourages one to be open, curious and embracing of these experiences.

So, mindfulness, as proposed by Bishop and his colleagues, has at least two components –

·       The ability to regulate attention by oneself

·       Being able to be present in the current moment and observe oneself non-judgmentally, with curiosity and openness.

Mindfulness Based Practices or Interventions (MBI) is based upon the principals of mindfulness which are in turn based in Eastern traditions like Buddhism. 

Two of the most popular techniques of Mindfulness based practices are MBSR (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction) and MBCT (Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy). The former (MBSR) was the earliest group-level intervention that centered around mindfulness meditation spread across 8 weeks where 2 to 2.5 hours are dedicated to different kinds of meditative practices like mindfulness meditation, yoga-based practices, mindful body scans (here people are asked to observe how each muscle groups feel observe their breathing and their thoughts non-judgmentally). It has been found to be effective when reducing anxiety and in a research, the result of effectiveness was seen as being comparable to CBT. But Mindfulness-based psychotherapy has developed extensively. MBSR, which started as a therapy for chronic pain has helped people work through anxiety and stress. This has helped in the development of MBCT, which incorporates the practices of MBSR and combines them with cognitive theories and cognitive behavioral therapy. In a therapeutic setup these interventions focus on training a person to shift their attention to the present and non-judgmentally observe themselves and their environment.

So then….

What are the reasons that mindfulness based therapy is effective?

Mindfulness meditation has been researched since the 60’s in some or the other capacity and the findings have been promising for the psychological wellbeing for many people. Some people who have a tendency to be mindful as they go about their life, have been known to be more empathetic, agreeable, responsible, optimistic and have higher self esteem among many other characteristics. They also seem to experience less absent-mindedness, depression, difficulties in emotion regulation, avoidance tendency, reactive thinking among other things. Some people experienced lower degrees of negative automatic thoughts and were also able to let go of them (and not ruminate) in situations where they did get such thoughts.

Different brain scans have showed that people who are consistent about mindfulness-based practices, beside mentioning better psychological health, also show physical changes in the brain. They showed a more active prefrontal cortex (important for thinking, decision making, problem-solving etc.) and less activation of the bilateral amygdala (amygdala plays an integral role in assessing threats, memory, learning, survival, fear and anger based emotions- people with anxiety disorders, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder show that in these situations the amygdala is affected) this means that people would be able to regulate their emotions better. Overall this indicated a person’s ability to understand their situation better, label what they are feeling and let go of negative self-talk.

Research has also shown that people who practice mindfulness based meditation have more thickness in brain areas related to being aware of their own bodily sensations like breathing, understand different sensations they experience better, attention and overall awareness. So, it is safe to say that mindfulness can be effective not only subjectively but there have been other behavioral and objective measures to attest to that too.

Different mindfulness practices to try out

Here are different mindfulness techniques that many practitioners use (but please don’t push yourself if these techniques make you feel overwhelmed or anxious and discontinue immediately)

1. Body Scan: This technique can be used as part of a meditation where a person either sits or lies down and then gradually focuses on their body from toes to head or the other way around. The key is to only observe the emotions and sensations that arise as we “scan” ourselves but not try to judge or change those emotions immediately.
2. Slow Breathing: Our anxious thoughts and feelings can make us feel overwhelmed and not breathe steadily. This is a simple technique of closing our eyes and slowly breathing in and out and to shift the focus from the thoughts and become mindful of our breathing.
3. 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique- This technique is meant to help slow us down by focusing more on at least five things we can see around us, four things we can hear in our surroundings, at three things we can touch in our surroundings, maybe two things we can taste (or genuinely take time to enjoy eating) and one thing we can smell that makes us calm. We don’t have to follow the sequence exactly and change how much/how long we focus on each of the senses (people who like collecting fragrances might find themselves enjoying using that to calm them).
4. Walking meditation: This is another way to practice mindfulness. It is similar to sitting meditations but we can slowly walk for 10-15 minutes and focus on the sensations of walking (our feet touching the ground) and how we use our body to move and how we are breathing during the walk etc. i.e., being mindful of the here and now as we walk.

One common thread that ties the above mentioned techniques are the tendency to focus on something without focusing on changing as and when we are doing the technique. So, it can include our senses, our surrounding our interests, even our thoughts. 

Does it work for everyone?

While research has shown mindfulness activities to be effective, it can do a lot of harm too. Just like we are cautious about side effects when we take medication, we also have to know mindfulness activities might backfire.

Author of the book, The Body Keeps a Score, Bessel Van der Kolk mentioned that people who have been subjected to trauma (people with PTSD or CPTSD) have a difficulty being connected to their emotions. In such scenarios, mindfulness exercises can compel them to focus on their emotions and sensations in silence which arise from their trauma- this can be extremely upsetting and re-traumatize many people. Having a other tools and methods to manage these sensations might help with not feeling overwhelmed but many times these additional techniques are not used liberally either.

Some people have experienced mindfulness practices can bring up paranoia, mania or bring to surface vulnerability of bipolar conditions and feelings of confusion (this is not true for all though); adding to the previous paragraph, these practices can essentially bring back repressed traumatic memories for some people with PTSD too. This might also happen because research doesnot highlight the negative or adverse effects of mindfulness based practices as they highlight the positives (especially among people with stress-related or mood disorders or schizophrenic spectrum disorders).  This almost creates a halo effect and people might push themselves too much with mindfulness meditations or other techniques.

But that doesnot mean that we can deny the positive effects mindfulness has had for so many people. With any method we use to manage our emotions, thoughts or behavior we may need to always take steps that are challenging but not push ourselves to make fast changes. And for many people for whom mindfulness practices don’t work, there are other techniques that can be more beneficial – some people finding somatic techniques effective, some others find emdr really effective, others might find educating themselves about their symptoms while maintaining a steady daily routine much more calming and medications are an options for many too.

 Links for resources referred in the article:

 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5679245/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3679190/#:~:text=These%20studies%20found%20that%20extensive,in%20brain%20areas%20involved%20in

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7566741/

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ailsa-Parsons/publication/355332059_Reflections_on_Offering_a_Therapeutic_Creative_Arts_Intervention_With_Cult_Survivors_A_Collective_Biography/links/633727e29cb4fe44f3ef482f/Reflections-on-Offering-a-Therapeutic-Creative-Arts-Intervention-With-Cult-Survivors-A-Collective-Biography.pdf #page=23

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/mindfulness-exercises/art-20046356

https://www.wisebrain.org/papers/DefiningMindfulness.pdf

Image Credit: Freepik- https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/cartoon-business-people-meditating-illustration_13297260.htm #query=meditation%20cartoon&position=3&from_view=keyword&track=ais_hybrid&uuid=3aa36d2a-89b2-4233-8ee1-e99137a5f4b9

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