hey there everybody and welcome to today's presentation on eight plus benefits of mindfulness
I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes so let's start out by defining what mindfulness actually is
mindfulness simply means observing and becoming aware of the present moment without attachment or
judgment if not necessarily meditation now mindfulness is involved in meditation but
meditation is not always involved in mindfulness inner awareness or inner mindfulness is awareness
of your thoughts your needs your feelings and your Sensations outer awareness or outer mindfulness
is awareness of your environment that is your environment you know where you are right now
very specifically very close to you the room the building Etc and for some people also the
community and maybe even the country where they're at being mindful of what's going on
around you so mindfulness again is just a getting out of autopilot getting out of monkey mind where
you're thinking about 17 different things at once and becoming aware of the present moment
so what are the benefits of mindfulness oh my gosh I was on PubMed this morning when I was
putting together this presentation and there are so many wonderful articles that I will be
covering in the upcoming days on the benefits of mindfulness we're really making a lot of strides
in our understanding of how mindfulness can actually help us rewire the brain and improve
the body remember that things like stress being stressed changes the way your brain is wired
if you will if you are frequently stressed we actually see reductions in certain areas of the
brain and increases in volume in other areas and in the body when you're stressed we see changes
in the gut microbiome and remember the gut is the factory where a lot of your neurotransmitters and
hormones are actually produced so if that fat Factory is not healthy then we've got a problem
so mindfulness can help us become aware of and address our feelings thoughts and needs before
they become a crisis think about how many times you've been on autopilot and you've
ignored the fact that you were getting burned out or you've ignored the fact that you're starting
to get sick or you've ignored the fact you know you can see where I'm going with this
and until it became a crisis until you were burned out until you were had strep throat until you were
instead of being a little bit irritated you were enraged mindfulness encourages us to become aware
of those Sensations and those thoughts and those feelings when they first start become aware of
our warning signs if you will of different things so we can respond to them before they
become an issue my grandmother always used to say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure mindfulness can help us address our stress schema to reduce unnecessary HPA axis activation
Now by addressing our feelings thoughts and needs when before they become a crisis
okay that's great that's super helpful at reducing unnecessary HPA axis activation
but we also have schema or shortcuts in our brain that help us predict what may be getting ready to
occur a lot of times our schema are out of date or not a hundred percent accurate for the current
context so it's important to recognize that and mindfulness can help us reprogram those schema
so instead of saying every time I have to get a shot it's going to hurt which means that every
time I've got to go into the doctor to get a shot I'm going to get stressed out we can change that
schema hopefully with positive experiences to say sometimes when I get a shot it hurts for
example and so that therefore the event of getting a shot does not automatically trigger the HPA axis
related Fallout when your HPA Axis or your stress response system is regularly triggered
remember I said it Alters the way the the structure of the brain it Alters your gut
microbiome it also impacts your sleep when you're stressed out you don't sleep as well
when your HPA axis is regularly activated it also contributes to suppressed immunity and increased
inflammation and pain none of those are things that we want so mindfulness can actually help us
physically feel better by helping us reduce our stress levels and addressing problems
before they become mountains mindfulness also has been shown to improve people's sense of
safety and personal empowerment when you are going along throughout your day and it feels
like these waves of emotion hit you from quote out of the blue or Cravings hit you from out of
the blue it can feel very disquieting it can feel very um uncomfortable because you don't
feel safe kind of in your own body it's like oh my gosh all of a sudden I had this tsunami of anger
by becoming more mindful people are away are able to become more aware of their early warning signs
and take steps to address them which gives them a greater sense of confidence and confidence
another benefit of mindfulness is it improves the strength of the executive
control Network or your wise mind your higher order thinking and it reduces the activation
of the default mode Network or autopilot and the default mode Network amygdala connection
a lot of people when they're under stress especially if they're they've been under
chronic stress or they have something like cptsd their default mode Network or their
autopilot and their amygdala which is Their Fear processing processing area of their brain are
really tightly connected and they talk all the time so the executive control network has a hard
time getting in on the conversation and saying hey guys let's step away from a motion-based
reasoning and focus on fact-based reasoning with mindfulness people are intentionally overriding
that default mode Network and engaging the executive control Network switching
from emotion-based reaction to fact-based thought-based proaction if you will I guess
mindfulness has also been shown to help people more easily change habits and behaviors well think
about it a habit is something you typically do on autopilot if you are more frequently intentionally
engaging your executive control Network turning off autopilot you're less likely to engage in
Mindless Behaviors mindfulness has also been shown to improve Relationships by recognizing
the reciprocal impact of you on other people and other people on you and this is part of emotional
intelligence and they've actually started to see that there is a very strong connection between
people who are highly Mindful and people who have high emotional intelligence because those
people are aware of their feelings thoughts and needs in the moment and they're aware of
other people they can empathize well another study also indicated that people who are more
mindful are more able to empathize they are able to observe non-judgmentally and without
reaction what's going on in the situation and then respond from that point instead of getting
defensive or reacting impulsively so that is another benefit and that study actually was done
on Physicians and uh other Behavioral Health clinicians so I thought that was kind of cool
number seven mindfulness helps us improve our communication through observing when
we're mindful we're observing what's going on we're not reacting we're not
um in a flood of adrenaline we're observing what's going on we're stepping back and we're describing
it like a fly on the wall or a scientist and we're being non-reactive we are non-judgmentally
accepting the present moment as it is it is what it is and finally mindfulness has been shown to
help people prevent relapse and this is not just addiction this is relapse into any other behavior
that you've changed it's re preventing relapse into anxiety to depression so there's a lot of
benefits that we're finding and two strategies that have used mindfulness to help people prevent
relapse or prevent recurrences of mental illnesses include mindfulness-based relapse prevention
and mindfulness oriented recovery enhancement or more so we'll be talking more about those
strategies in the upcoming days and weeks but I think it's really important to recognize that
mindfulness-based interventions are being used more and more in mental health as well as physical
health there are many many many articles out there on the ways in which mindfulness is beneficial in
helping people reduce pain and deal with cancer but those kind of are things that we talked about
here helping people reduce their stress and focus on the present moment can be extremely liberating
for a lot of people that are struggling with issues like chronic depression chronic pain
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mindfulness means simply becoming non-judgmentally aware of your feelings thoughts and needs
and the environment in the present moment looking around and Wednesday we're actually
going to talk about contextual mindfulness and contextual cognitive behavioral therapy
but I'm getting ahead of myself mindfulness provides information that can help you use
your energy to more purposefully work toward your rich and meaningful life as you define it
it encourages you to stop get off autopilot and say what is the best way to use my energy to work
towards those things that are important and let go of those things that just aren't worth my energy
upcoming videos in this this week and in upcoming weeks will provide
activities to help you become more Mindful and discuss those current research studies