The Benefits of Mindfulness for Mental and Physical Health

The Benefits of Mindfulness for Mental and Physical Health

Mindfulness can help us to live in the present, alongside the challenges of being human and in a world of constant communication. It can have several benefits for mental and physical health that can support you as you go through cancer treatment and recovery. Let's look at three benefits mindfulness offers.

Benefit One: Improving Awareness and Concentration

There are lots of ways that we can use mindfulness to develop awareness and improve concentration. Mindfulness meditation is one way of doing this. In this type of meditation, we pay attention to the natural flow of the breath moving in and out of the body, observing the patterns and sensations it creates.

People who regularly practise mindfulness and mindfulness meditation experience an enlarging of the hippocampus – the part of the brain that contributes to memory, concentration, and emotional responses.

Slowing down and taking regular pauses in the day can also help us to:

• Notice what’s going on around us and within us

• Become aware of where our thought processes are taking us

• Tune into our five senses to catch what we might ordinarily miss

Mindfulness helps us to bring an attitude of curiosity to what we observe.

Benefit Two: Cultivating Self-Kindness and Self-Compassion

Mindfulness helps us understand ourselves better, beginning with the starting point that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

By paying attention to, and having an awareness of thoughts, we begin to appreciate that much of our internal chatter is often negatively biased.

With practice, mindfulness meditation helps us to:

• Create space between us and our thoughts

• Disentangle ourselves from the attachment to unhelpful thoughts, and those about ourselves that have an unkind tone

• Reduce stress, anxiety, rumination, and catastrophic thinking

Mindfulness also helps us to notice our emotions with practices that encourage us to look at our emotional landscape.

As humans, we often block out, resist, and push away challenging emotions, but mindfulness actively encourages us to turn towards them to gently observe what is present. Mindful acceptance is part of the ability to do this. It helps us notice what emotions are present, and with kindness and compassion for ourselves, to look at them with an attitude of befriending.

Benefit Three: Learning to Accept Our Experience

The human mind is very preoccupied with thoughts about past events and future events that haven’t happened yet. It’s a very busy place to be.

The default mode of the brain allows us to exist on autopilot, where we can multitask but not be fully present for much of what we experience.

When practised regularly, mindfulness can help us:

• Move out of autopilot
• Wake up to the present moment
• Cultivate the ability to notice and observe something as it is, without the desire to change, improve or fix anything

There is a robust body of evidence to support mindfulness and its ability as a skill that helps:

• Reduce stress, anxiety, and depression which in turn helps improve
  • sleep patterns
  • immune function
  • inflammatory markers in the body

If you’re interested in mindfulness as a way to improve physical and mental health after breast cancer, talk to a trained practitioner.