Stress is the modern-day equivalent to the scary monster that, when we were children, hid under our beds and kept us up at night. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, stress greatly impacts health and behaviors—in both adults and children—with individuals reporting physical and mental health-related symptoms, such as headaches or feeling anxious or depressed.
Fortunately, there’s a powerful and effective way to quiet the chaos in our lives: mindfulness.
In recent years, new evidence shows mindfulness practices and techniques can help ease stress and anxiety. A study published in “Psychiatry Research” showed anxious people who took a mindfulness course reacted to stress better and had lower hormonal and inflammatory response than those who didn’t practice mindfulness.
With these kinds of findings, it’s no wonder mindfulness is now being practiced widely. Corporations and businesses are implementing mindfulness in their company culture; schools are developing mindfulness-based curriculum; and therapists, counselors and support groups are teaching mindfulness techniques and practices to help people work their way through stressful situations.
Our children are more stressed than ever these days. Recent studies show that adolescents and young adults are five to eight times more likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression than kids who lived at the height of the Great Depression, said William Stixrud, clinical neuropsychologist and faculty member at Children’s National and the George Washington University School of Medicine, in an interview with WTOP, a radio station in Washington, D.C. He added that in the last several years, there has been a tremendous spike in anxiety disorders, depression, and chemical use in young people.
“All of these are stress-related disorders,” he said.
So what’s causing all this stress? To start, young people—and their parents—are sleeping less than they did 20 and 30 years ago. In addition, technology has created less downtime for kids, and competition generated by college admissions and the job market is soaring.
The effects of excessive stress is damaging—both in the short– and long–term—because it interferes with one’s ability to function socially, emotionally and academically.
“Stressed kids can’t learn. The brain does not focus well; it does not integrate information, it does not remember information well,” said Stixrud, co-author of “The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives.” He goes on to say that being highly stressed disrupts the architecture of the brain and places kids at a greater risk for anxiety and depression.
“And so kids who are chronically stressed are just more likely to be even more easily stressed as they get older,” Stixrud said.
According to the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, mindfulness is maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and surrounding environment, through a gentle nurturing lens.
“Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to think or feel in a given moment,” the university’s Greater Good Magazine describes. “When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.”
While mindfulness has roots in Buddhism, professor emeritus Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder and former director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, helped to bring the practice to mainstream medicine by showing mindfulness can bring improvements in both physical and psychological symptoms, as well as positive changes in health, attitudes, and behaviors:
Mindfulness improves well-being. Being mindful makes it easier to savor the pleasures in life as they occur, helps you become fully engaged in activities, and creates a greater capacity to deal with adverse events.
Mindfulness improves physical health. Scientists have discovered that mindfulness techniques help improve physical health in a number of ways. It can help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties.
Mindfulness improves mental health. In recent years, psychotherapists have turned to mindfulness meditation as an important element in the treatment of a number of problems, including: depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, couples’ conflicts, anxiety disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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By // Michelle Jacoby