Category: Mindfulness

Mental health can be improved on a daily basis without too much extra effort.

Taking a mindful walk lowers levels of stress, anxiety and depression.

The beauty of the activity is that many people are walking around anyway as part of their normal routine.

So it is not much of a stretch to try a little mindfulness while walking.

Being mindful while walking refers to paying attention to the present moment instead of letting the mind wander off (instructions at the end of the article).

Dr Chih-Hsiang Yang, the study’s first author, said:

“It can be difficult to ask people to spend a lot of time doing moderate or vigorous activity by going to the gym or out for a run, especially if they feel stressed.

But if they don’t need to change their everyday behavior, and can instead try to change their state of mind by becoming more mindful, they can probably see this beneficial effect.

You don’t need to exert a lot of extra effort in order to improve your wellbeing by being more mindful while you’re moving around.”

The researchers carried out one study on students who were randomly prompted to report their thoughts and feelings while moving around during the day.

The results showed that participants were less anxious and depressed when they were both more mindful and physically active.

A second study had adults engaged in outdoor mindfulness activities.

These were shown to make them feel better.

Dr Yang said:

“When people were both more mindful and more active than usual, they seem to have this extra decrease in negative affect.

Being more active in a given moment is already going to reduce negative affect, but by also being more mindful than usual at the same time, you can see this amplified affect.”

Mindful walking instructions

If you do any period of undisturbed walking during the day — at least ten or fifteen minutes — then you can do a little walking mindfulness meditation.

It’ll be easiest if done somewhere with fewer distractions, but try it anywhere and see what happens.

As when cultivating all forms of mindfulness, it’s about focusing the attention.

At first, people often concentrate on the sensation of their feet touching the ground.

You could also focus on your breath or move your attention slowly around your body, part by part.

The key, though, is to develop a sort of relaxed attention.

When your mind wanders away, bring it back gently, without judging yourself.

Related

• 16 Remarkable Effects Of Mindfulness On Body And Mind (P)

The study was published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise (Yang & Conroy, 2018).

Way of thinking may also help people over the initial aversion to exercising.

People who are naturally more ‘mindful’ are less likely to be obese.

The naturally mindful also have less abdominal fat than those of a more distracted nature.

While being naturally mindful is something that’s part of your personality, it can also be taught.

Dr Eric Loucks, who led the study, said:

“This is everyday mindfulness.

The vast majority of these people are not meditating.”

394 people in the study responded to prompts that probed how mindful they were.

For example, strongly agreeing with both of the statements below suggests low levels of natural mindfulness:

• I find it difficult to stay focused on what’s happening in the present.
• I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later.

Mindfulness may stop obesity by making people aware when they are overeating.

It may also help people over the initial aversion to exercising.

Dr Loucks said:

“That’s where the mindfulness may come in.

Being aware of each and every moment and how that’s related to what we do and how we feel.”

Other studies have also shown that greater mindfulness can improve diet and help overcome cravings.

As I wrote in a previous article on food and the mind:

“Eating is so routine that we easily zone out from the experience.

While our minds are wandering, though, our hands are shovelling it in faster and faster.

Studies have shown that people eat more when they are distracted, like when watching TV or talking with friends (Bolhuis et al., 2013).

Unfortunately when not focusing on our food, we tend to eat more and get less enjoyment from it.

This is why one approach that’s used to combat eating disorders and obesity is mindful eating.

This is taking smaller bites and paying more attention to what you are eating.

Not only do people eat less this way, but they also enjoy it more.”

The results of the current study were encouraging but natural mindfulness only had a modest link to weight.

Dr Loucks said:

“Awareness seems to be enough to have a small to medium effect.

Then there is the question of what could we do to increase it.”

Related

• Weight Loss: The 16 Best Psychological Techniques (P)
• How To Beat Food Cravings: 12 Psychology Studies Reveal All (P)

The study was published in the journal International Journal of Behavioral Medicine (Loucks et al., 2015).

The benefits are seen at a molecular level, reducing the inflammatory response.

Mind-body practices such as meditation, yoga and Tai Chi can reverse the effects of stress on our DNA.

Usually stress causes increased levels of a molecule called nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB).

This is involved in the reaction to stress and how our genes are expressed.

It also has a key role in how our bodies respond to infection.

Practices like meditation reduce the levels of this stress-related molecule.

They also lower the levels of cytokines in the body — these are linked to inflammation at the cellular level.

Dr Ivana Buric, the study’s first author, said:

“Millions of people around the world already enjoy the health benefits of mind-body interventions like yoga or meditation, but what they perhaps don’t realise is that these benefits begin at a molecular level and can change the way our genetic code goes about its business.

These activities are leaving what we call a molecular signature in our cells, which reverses the effect that stress or anxiety would have on the body by changing how our genes are expressed.

Put simply, MBIs cause the brain to steer our DNA processes along a path which improves our wellbeing.

More needs to be done to understand these effects in greater depth, for example how they compare with other healthy interventions like exercise or nutrition.

But this is an important foundation to build on to help future researchers explore the benefits of increasingly popular mind-body activities.”

For the study, researchers pulled together the results of 18 different studies on 846 people across 11 years.

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology (Buric et al., 2017).