Here’s three minutes of info you can slam right into your brain. It covers many of the benefits that have been talked about on this site and more. I’ll let this one speak for itself.
Stress is inevitable, and at times desirable. Psychologists have distinguished between good stress and bad stress calling the former “Eustress”, and the latter “Distress”. In their article on the subject, Psycholgists Harry Mills, Ph.D., Natalie Reiss, Ph.D. and Mark Dombeck, Ph.D. define stress as “body’s response to changes that create taxing demands”.
According to a report from the American Institute of Stress, a non-profit dedicated to research and education on the subject, 35 percent of Americans say their jobs are harming their physical or emotional health.
But when stress gets to the point where it is harming your health, it is time to intervene. Unfortunately, in the United States, more than one out of three of us report that stress from work is hurting us. “According to a report from the American Institute of Stress, a non-profit dedicated to research and education on the subject, 35 percent of Americans say their jobs are harming their physical or emotional health.” –cbsnews.com
As the number of workers who report this problem rises, fortunately, the number of companies that are responding is rising as well. Many Fortune 500 companies like Proctor and Gamble, General Mills, and Google are now offering free mindfulness meditation training in an effort to help their staff with this growing problem. Mindfulness is fundamentally an attitude of remembering to be in the present moment. Being pulled away by worry about the future, or guilt about the past are the triggers that cause the stress response.
By cultivating a mindset that returns to the present moment, people can mitigate much of the unnecessary punishment their own minds are causing them. In this article by CBS news, the authors say mindfulness meditation “melts away” work related stress. Perhaps by addressing stress first, many of the other illnesses we encounter can be stopped in their tracks before they, too, become another source of stress. We can trigger an upward spiral of health just by being here, now.
“There is a growing evidence base for a wide range of psychological therapies that can help in the management of stress and mood disorders; including mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.” – Jenny Edwards, MHF Chief Executive
In Johnathan Owens article in The Independent he says that The United Kingdom is recognizing the growing role that issues like stress, anxiety, and depression are having. These elements are part of the growing mental health crisis that is costing the UK over £100bn per year. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) for staving off depression, but only a handful of clinical commissioning groups make it available in their area, says the MHF.
The call is to make this kind of treatment/training available at the first line of help. The General Practitioner is functionally equivalent to the primary care physician role we have in the United states.
This blog has tried to focus on the science behind the claims of mindfulness and mindfulness meditation. But as in any scientific area, it is important to occasionally step back and ask questions about the research. This is still a fairly new area of research, but it is growing rapidly. This article from ABC looks at some of the research and asks the question “Is mindfulness actually good for you?” It’s a good read.
