Mindfulness
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a Western, secular approach to ancient meditation practice. It is a systematic approach to meditation and can be viewed as a powerful 'tool' for Westerners who demand an 'evidence base' for any intervention they are considering. There is an unfortunate misconception amongst various groups that Mindfulness and meditation are at odds with organised religions. This is not the case and is one of the reasons Mindfulness has been developed: to allow all individuals to experience some of its benefits.
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Is there an evidence base to support it?
The University of California Los Angeles is a centre of Mindfulness research https://www.uclahealth.org/marc/ as is the University of Bangor https://www.bangor.ac.uk/mindfulness/
Mindfulness has been used with great effect to alleviate anxiety and depression and has been widely researched in this area. However, there is compelling research demonstrating its ability to support physical health: reducing
“Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.” – Sylvia Boorstein
Why I use Mindfulness and how I use it with patients
I had practised Buddhist meditation for a number of years and enjoyed it on many levels, finding it particularly helpful for increasing my levels of calm. When I first tried Mindfulness, to be honest, I missed the Buddhist teachings, the mantras and the Eastern esoterica. However, I soon began to appreciate theI had been practising Mindfulness for a few years and had become struck by the fact that more and more of my patients seemed to be experiencing symptoms relating to a sympathetic nervous system dominance - in lay terms, being overly 'revved' a lot of the time and struggling to switch off. These patients might have walked through the door of my clinic with any number of conditions, but especially depression, anxiety, hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue and chronic fatigue-type conditions. What became apparent, during the consultation, was that their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) was out of balance and was a significant factor in their dis-ease. These patients would be 'on the go' all the time, get all their validation form their achievements and would inevitably neglect real relaxation. The difficulty with this is that that describes so many of us! Because of my own experience, I became quite militant about encouraging 'active' relaxation in many of my patients and explaining that, in our society, really unhealthy levels of activity and achievement are encouraged and are completely normalised so that we need to truly value quiet, down-time and actively schedule it, because otherwise, for many of us, it just won't happen. It really is of primary importance as so many conditions are driven by HPA axis dysfunction.
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I run a Zoom Mindfulness session at 8pm on Mondays (cost £5) - if you'd like to attend please email me.
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