Here, we explain what mindfulness is and how it can help you take control of
the stressors in your life.
Most of us spend a large proportion of our waking hours (47 per cent, according to one study) engaged in what psychologists call ‘mind wandering’. We’re running on autopilot while daydreaming or caught up in thoughts about the past or future, whether it’s replaying an argument or planning what to make for dinner.
The practice of mindfulness is essentially the opposite: consciously turning our attention to whatever we’re doing, thinking or feeling at a particular moment. It’s important to do this neutrally, without judgement, noticing thoughts or sensations with detached interest before letting them go.
You’re not alone if you find practising mindfulness irksome or difficult. In one study, 67 per cent of men and 25 per cent of women chose to administer painful electric shocks to themselves rather than try to cope with being left alone with their throughts.
But masters of mindfulness suggest that if we practise regularly, we gain more control over our conscious minds, which in turn reduces our stress. They say we really can learn to live in the present and avoid getting stuck in memories of the past or concerns about the future. Research is finally catching up with these long-held beliefs – and revealing even more benefits.
One way to study the effects is by scanning and examining people’s brains while they meditate. In some of the earliest research of this type, conducted on Buddhist monks who had spent tens of thousands of hours meditating, scientists observed high levels of activity in brain areas that control focus and positive emotions. It wasn’t clear whether such effects were attainable for the rest of us, however, so Sara Lazar, a Harvard University neuroscientist, pioneered a different approach.
In two published studies, she asked volunteers with little or no experience with meditation to take an eight-week mindfulness course.
Lazar and her co-authors surprised the scientific community by showing that mindfulness didn’t just alter the volunteers’ brain activity to become more monk-like while they meditated, it also changed the physical structure of their brains. Compared with a control group, people who took the course felt less stressed. Their brains were larger in areas that affect learning, memory and emotion and smaller in the area that governs response to threat. This is the opposite of what happens to the brain of a person who is chronically stressed.
Together with other studies carried out since, the results suggest that mindfulness training can help repair the damage done by stress, reshaping the brain in a way that makes us better able to regulate our emotions and be more resilient to stress in the future.
Mounting new evidence also shows that mindfulness training can ease physical symptoms such as pain and fatigue. In one of the largest mindfulness studies ever conducted, for example, 61 per cent of patients with chronic pain who received mindfulness training said their pain improved and the improvements lasted at least a year.
These findings raise an intriguing possibility. Stress creates a cascade of physiological changes (known as the fight-or-flight response) that trigger inflammation, the body’s first line of defence against infection and injury.
Heightened inflammation can be lifesaving in an emergency – but if it’s caused by chronic stress, inflammation can make wounds heal more slowly, worsen autoimmune diseases and increase susceptibility to infection. Chronic inflammation is also linked to some cancers and faster cell ageing.
In the US and Europe, about a third of people have dangerously high inflammation levels due to poor diet, excess body weight as well as Added stress only compounds the problem.
So can stress-busting mindfulness stop us from becoming ill in the first place? The research in this area is more preliminary, but there is some tantalising evidence to support the idea. A 2012 study of 154 people found that, compared with a control group, volunteers who practised mindfulness had fewer colds, and when they did get sick, their symptoms were less severe and didn’t last as long. Several recent studies have also found that mindfulness training reduces markers of inflammation in the blood and boosts activity of an enzyme called telomerase, which slows cell-ageing.
We don’t have the full picture yet, and we know mindfulness doesn’t appeal to everyone. Neither is it the only evidence-based way to reduce stress; physical exercise and cognitive behaviour therapy have similar effects, while strong social connections are associated with a lower risk of stress-related disease in the long term. But so far it looks like mindfulness does help to reverse not just the psychological consequences of stress but the physical ones, too.
Which leaves one last question: how much mindfulness meditation do we need to do? Some studies have seen small, brief effects on mood and pain after as little as five to 10 minutes per day for three or four days.
The effects of lengthier mindfulness courses seem to be more significant and longer lasting. Rather than seeing mindfulness as a miracle cure, then, think of it as a lifestyle change like exercise or healthy eating. The more you do, the greater the impact, and the benefits last as long as you keep practising.
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