Tim Irvine
The rise in the popularity of mindfulness has been a big help to people everywhere. With awareness of mental health issues being much greater in general, mindfulness is a tool that can help our brains manage better. At least that’s what people tell us. What does science say? In short, it’s the real deal!
At this time, there is still a lack of volume of good, credible research to concretely back up all of the benefits that are claimed. The good news is, there is solid research proving some of the claims, and there is more of this good work coming.
The most conclusive benefits have been identified across several studies. Most of those studies focus on meditation as the trait being examined. It is also the most prominent component of mindfulness practice, even though there are various styles. These styles need their own individual examination to tease out the differences between them, but in general, meditation has been shown to clearly benefit in several ways.
Improvements In Attention
If you think about our typical daily environments, they are full of literal and figurative noise. This noise is fatiguing and when coupled with the incredibly fast-paced lives we now live, our attention spans suffer. Mindfulness has been shown to sharpen our attention and focus at the moment, but also over the long term.
Increased Grey matter
This one is a physical change, but it shows itself behaviorally because the prefrontal cortex is positively affected. This part of the brain governs the emotional regulation of external stimuli, our reactions to those stimuli, as well other higher-level functions. Training our brains with mindfulness meditation increases the size of this area and others, and this allows us to manage better emotionally.
Stress Resilience
Mindfulness practices appear to decrease the activity in the amygdala. When this part of the brain is stimulated, it is done so by fearful or very stressful situations. That’s why a mindfulness practice helps reduce our responses to stress and fear. When done so over a longer period, our capacity to be resilient in stressful situations improves as well.
Reduced Anxiety
Just 8 weeks of brief, daily meditation can lower anxiety. This was found in a study that used the Trier Social Stress Test, which is an anxiety measurement tool. The really great thing in their findings was that this applied to those individuals that did not have previous experience meditating. This means that you don’t have to be a meditation guru to benefit in this way, you just need to commit for eight weeks or more.
One other consideration in this conversation is how we’ve come to this point in the first place. From an evolutionary standpoint, we would have had many situations where we were by ourselves in nature, content and performing tasks we enjoyed. This would have provided a great deal of mindful time for our brains. That’s not to say there wasn’t stress, but we certainly were not bombarded with ‘noise’, information, and people like we have in our modern society. So take this as a hint to get outside in nature and do some things you love. Meditating in nature may even compound the benefits. You will reap similar rewards to the mindfulness practice you perform in your home.
Happy brain training!!
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_state_of_mindfulness_science
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016643281830322X
https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/prefrontal-cortex
