Mindfulness is the practice of increasing your awareness to your surroundings and feelings in any given moment. It teaches you to pay attention to your own body and anything you can see, smell, hear, touch or taste. Mindfulness can help you to look after your mental health and manage your emotions.
While mindfulness has gained popularity in recent years, it isn’t a new concept or a wellness fad. It’s been around in South-East Asia for generations and is now taught in hospitals to patients with a range of conditions, from mental health issues to neurological disorders.
What can mindfulness help with?
Mindfulness can be used by anyone but it is particularly helpful for people who struggle with mental health such as stress and anxiety or a neurological condition and even dementia.
Meditation has been found to increase the brain’s neuroplasticity, which is its ability to adapt and learn new things. A 2018 study by Maastricht University and King’s College London found that mindfulness can decrease anxiety in people with dementia and even improve their memory, while a 2016 study by UCLA found that people who meditate regularly slow the rate that their brain ages.
Mindfulness can help with:
- Managing emotions
- Feeling dissociated
- Burnout and stress
- Feeling anxious
- Low self-esteem
- Concentration
- Memory
The mindful attitude for mental health
Mindfulness can be practised in any situation, whether it be reacting to an emotion, speaking to someone or worrying about something. You don’t have to stand there and meditate while listening to somebody you find irritating, but you can remember and use the mindful attitude.
The mindful attitude is:
- Patient – being patient with yourself and others.
- Non-judgemental – avoiding the urge to judge or criticise yourself or others, you never know what someone else is going through.
- Non-striving – being open to changing things about yourself but not feeling that it is urgent because there is something wrong with you as you are.
- Accepting – accepting things as they are right here, right now. This doesn’t mean you have to like something or should never try to change it but seeing a situation for what it is. For example, you might be trying to get fit but one day feel too ill to go to the gym. Rather than being stressed and feeling guilty that you aren’t sticking to your training schedule, or forcing yourself to go, you could accept that you need a day off and get back to it when you feel better.
- Trusting – learning to trust yourself and taking responsibility for yourself.
- Fresh – looking at situations and opportunities with fresh eyes, rather than being influenced by past thoughts. Just because you didn’t enjoy something once, doesn’t mean you never will. For example, you might have hated swimming at school, but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it now.
- Able to let go – this means letting go of both good and bad memories and allowing yourself to be in the present. Just as dwelling on an unpleasant memory can be harmful, so too can nostalgically clinging to a good one, such as wishing you were with a previous love interest rather than embracing your new partner or starting to date again. It’s about letting go of the ‘what if’s.
You can use the mindful attitude during positive experiences as well as negative ones, to help you to savour the moment.
Mindfulness meditation techniques for mental health
Mindfulness is a skill that you get better at the more you practise. It’s best to practise mindfulness meditation at least once a day, even if it’s only for five minutes. Over a few weeks, you’ll become more in tune to how your mind works, notice patterns in your thinking and improve your ability to re-focus when your mind is distracted.
There are plenty of meditation techniques that you can learn, but here are a few to begin with.
Body scan meditation
The body scan is a meditation in which you focus on sensations in your body. The aim is to be aware of your body, the individual sensations and to be able to focus your attention on different parts of the body. This can then help you to focus your attention on feelings and sensations in your day-to-day life.
To perform a body scan meditation:
- Lie down in a comfortable position. You can close your eyes, but you don’t have to.
- Focus on your breathing, paying attention to each inhale and exhale.
- Slowly focus on the sensations in each part of your body individually, starting with your belly, then each leg and foot, then moving onto your chest, arms, hands and head. It could be any sensation you feel, from the temperature to an itch to hair prickling.
- Once you have scanned your whole body, go back to focusing on your breathing until you’re ready to finish.
Mindful walking
Mindful walking, like the body scan, is the practice of being aware of your body and the information you receive from your senses. It’s best to practise the body scan a few times first, then you’ll be ready to add mindful walking. It’s a good step in learning to be mindful as you go about your day.
You may wish to practise mindful walking in private to begin with, or go straight into trying it outdoors. It’s also a good alternative to the body scan if you can often fall asleep during that meditation.
To perform mindful walking:
- Get into a relaxed, standing position, ready to walk. Try not to focus your gaze on anything particular, just look ahead. Start to think about the sensations you can feel.
- Begin to walk slowly, thinking about the sensations in your feet and legs as you do so. Let your mind follow the pressure from your heels to the balls of your feet as you walk. Notice if your arms swing at all, and how your shoulders and elbows feel as they do so.
- Continue to walk for ten to fifteen minutes, or longer if you want to, all the while concentrating on how different parts of your body feel. If you are pacing, think about which muscles and joints are used as you turn. If you mind wanders, refocus your attention to your body.
- Once you’re comfortable with this meditation, you can practise different speeds and environments, and try to incorporate it when you’re out and about.
Mindful thinking
Mindfulness teaches you to notice thoughts that you regularly have that regularly lead to certain actions. For example, you might regularly have thoughts that others think you look ugly, and in response avoid social situations or even going out. Mindfulness emphasises that thoughts are not facts.
Try to identify a few thoughts you often have that lead to actions that you would like to change. Then explore how you could react to the thoughts differently. Ways to do this include:
- Ask yourself what you would say to someone else who had these thoughts. This can give you perspective on how others really think, if that is something you’re anxious about, or the true severity of a situation.
- Notice which emotions accompany these thoughts. Often there is an emotion that comes first, such as the thought “I’m not good enough at my job” could be more likely to enter your mind when you’re feeling stressed.
- View the thought as a thought that will pass, rather than an enduring fact. A negative thought can be as fleeting as any other sensation, like an itch. It is not necessarily a true indication of reality.