Mindful health starts with mindfulness. What is mindfulness? It’s a style of meditation that involves intense focus on the “now.” Some examples of mindfulness exercises include breath control and body scans.
Overall, these practices have a big impact on health. Keep reading to learn about those benefits and the exercises you can do to earn them!
Mindful Health Benefits
Research shows mindfulness has many benefits. These benefits are listed below.
Lower Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
First, mindful habits reduce stress. Additionally, evidence shows mindfulness lowers anxiety and depression. These benefits are effects of neural process regulation.
Mindful-based treatments help those who’ve suffered from depression. How? It’s simple. They help by grounding them in the present. Treatments might also prevent a relapse. Mindfulness also helps patients in other ways. It helps them break free from bad thought patterns. These thoughts often drag patients into bouts of stress, anxiety, or depression.
Lower Blood Pressure
Scientific studies on this topic are rare. However, research says mindfulness, meditation, and yoga lower blood pressure. This method is called “mindfulness-based stress reduction,” or MBSR. In short, lower stress leads to lower blood pressure.
Improve Physical Health
Next, let’s discuss physical health. Undoubtedly, you are more likely to enjoy exercise and form healthy habits when you are mindful. How? Simply think about how your body works during exercise. Do this daily. Your body will thank you!
Mindfulness may also help improve the immune system. Further, mindful habits can reduce physical symptoms of stress. For instance, these include headaches and stomach pain.
Improve Sleep
Mindfulness targets repetitive negative thoughts. These bad thoughts cause sleep loss. In addition, some studies show meditation improves sleep patterns. In short, mindfulness habits improve your sleep quality.
Manage Pain
Lastly, let’s discuss pain. Without a doubt, managing pain is tough. However, mindfulness is a tool that can help. Indeed, brain imaging shows that post-meditation, there’s less activation in the brain’s pain centers. With time, you can draw attention away from pain.
Mindful Health Exercises
What does it take to learn mindfulness? What does it take to build a habit of it? What exercises are best for mindfulness practice? Find out below.
Creating Mindful Health Habits
- Learn To Be Mindful
- Learning takes time. However, resources exist to help your mindful health journey. Be careful, though! Be sure to find resources from credible places. For instance, these include medical centers or universities.
- Another option is hiring a teacher. They should be skilled in mindfulness or meditation. For example, a teacher can guide you. Critically, they can prescribe specific mindfulness exercises.
- Develop Healthy Habits
- Build your mindfulness practice into a healthy habit. It doesn’t take much! Just give it time. For starters, practice five minutes of meditation daily. Be patient. Slowly increase the time. Additionally, reserve a time of day for your practice.
- As you work on building your mindfulness, other healthy habits will thrive. Here are some examples: controlled eating, regular workouts, and staying calm in stressful times. These results await you! You can do it.
Mindful Body Scan
Body scans help you connect with your body. Further, they help you understand its needs. To practice this, lay down or sit comfortably. Then, close your eyes. Take several deep breaths. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in again. Relax.
Next, bring awareness to your feet. Carefully notice pain or other feelings. Then, keep moving your attention up your body. Move through one area at a time. Work up to your head. Once you finish, you will be more in tune with your body’s needs.
Mindful Workouts
In short, this will boost your physical exercise routine. How? By bringing appreciation and awareness. Before your workout, notice your thoughts. Simultaneously, notice your feelings. Are they negative or positive?
If you’re dreading your workout, be aware of it. Be curious. In addition, be gentle with yourself. Don’t judge. Soon, with practice, you’ll stop those thoughts. They will fade away. In their place will be feelings of hope.
During your workout, keep tabs on how your body feels. Meanwhile, thank each muscle. Thank each breath for allowing you to do this work. Thank the gym. Thank your workout buddy. Thank your water bottle. Thank your sweat. Thank the weights and the treadmill. Finally, once the workout is complete, bring awareness to each muscle group that served you. Say thank you!
In brief, you’ll be more grateful for your workouts when you notice how hard your body works. In turn, this will build a strong, healthy workout routine.
Mindful Observation
This one can be done anywhere. To be sure, it will help you appreciate your surroundings. As a result, you may even notice something new about your environment. It’s normal to be constantly on the go. Naturally, you rush around with your mind in the future. However, it’s time to slow things down. It’s time to become aware of your space.
To begin, look around. Spot any object. It could be natural or artificial. This object will be the focal point of this mindful observation exercise.
Now, watch the object for a minute or two. Then, begin to notice its details. For example, you can imagine it’s your first time seeing it. Next, consider its purpose. How was it created? What is its energy? Allow its presence to fill the space around you. Stay focused on the object as long as you can. That’s all it takes!
Mindful Breathing
The focal point is your breath. Above all, this exercise will help you relax. Also, it can be done right before bed. So, let’s start!
First, lay down or sit comfortably. Close your eyes. Then, breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Meanwhile, allow your breathing to deepen. Feel each breath in your lungs. After that, aim for each inhalation and exhalation to last about 5-8 seconds. Critically, breathe only through your nose.
Meanwhile, imagine you’re exhaling bad thoughts with each breath. Imagine you’re gaining the world’s goodness with each inhale. Pause. Reflect. Notice how your breath feels in your nasal cavity, throat, and lungs. Next, it’s time to end the exercise. Simply allow your breathing to fall back into its typical pattern. Finally, gently open your eyes to the world. All done!
Mindful Gratitude
Now, it’s time to discuss gratitude. Notably, you can blend gratitude with any of the above exercises. Moreover, evidence shows a daily gratitude practice leads to huge benefits. Simply write down five things you’re grateful for daily. It can be anything! Also, feel free to write down the same items every so often.
Take this exercise to the next level by thinking about your five items. For instance, what would life be like without them? Spend time learning about your items. Explore them. Ask yourself more questions about them. Did you list people? If so, take a few minutes to send them a kind message. Now, how easy is that?
Conclusion
In brief, mindful health has many mental and physical benefits. You can access them freely by practicing one or more simple mindfulness exercises every day. Certainly, there is a mindful health solution for everyone, from body scan meditation to mindful gratitude.
Do you already have a mindfulness practice? How has it affected your health and wellness? Let us know what it is down in the comments!
