Everyday Mindfulness and Activities for Mental Wellbeing

• Publication year: 2019
• Author: By Gayani Weerasinghe

Everyday Mindfulness and Activities for Mental Wellbeing

By Gayani Weerasinghe

Gayani R. Weerasinghe, Esq.,

M.A. is a transactional attorney practicing intellectual property and business/corporate law, including working with entrepreneurs and start-ups on their patents, trademarks, copyrights, protection of trade secrets, and compliance training of employees. Before coming to law, she spent 13 years doing biomedical research, including co-authoring a dozen publications of original research in peer-reviewed scientific journals. She is also a mindfulness and personal development coach, assisting businesses and other professionals in navigating their goals and objectives and setting new ones. For more information, please visit, www.feel-mindfulabundance.com or her LinkedIn profile at, https://www.linkedin.com/in/gayani-r-weerasinghe-esq-222bab7.

As a busy professional, the last thing we want to hear is to add another thing to our growing "to-do-list." When you hear someone talk about the benefits of mindfulness, you may think, "I simply don't have the time." Maybe you envision one day when you are retired, having the luxury of practicing mindfulness or taking up yoga or meditating while sitting on a beach somewhere remote.

However, I am here to share with you that you don't have to set aside extra time to practice mindfulness, you can and you already are doing things that are part of mindfulness practice and all you need is to fine-tune a little to change or adjust your habits to obtain the benefits. Mindfulness is not just setting time aside for meditating, although, if you can, it will offer excellent health benefits. Mindfulness can be a part of your self-care routine, as I will share some tips at the end to incorporate both mindfulness and activities to add as part of your total mental wellbeing. In this article, I will discuss the science behind mindfulness, why it matters to attorneys and other professionals, and provide quick tips to bring this practice into your daily activities.

What is mindfulness? For this article, I will adopt the definition provided by Cleveland Clinic's Center For Functional Medicine, "mindfulness is the practice of bringing one's complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis."¹ It can something as easy as taking a minute to take three deep breaths to reset yourself between tasks or being intentional with what you are doing and actively engaging in your thoughts and being aware of the present moment with compassion and non-judgment. Mindfulness can take many shapes and forms. To cultivate mindfulness, you most often require training your mind to be aware of your thought patterns, stop ruminating on past events, stop creating its own narrative, and become more conscious about your own feelings. Mindfulness is a practice and even small changes to our daily routine and habits can bring positive outcomes and benefits far greater for our long-term wellbeing.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SCIENCE BEHIND MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness is often discussed in relation to meditation and a myriad of studies in recent years have come to reveal evidence of how this practice can be beneficial to us. These benefits include both physical and mental conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and post-traumatic stress disorder.² The Cleveland Clinic's "Functioning for Life Mindfulness" program is offered in conjunction with other clinical inventions to help patients in their long-term objectives, including help gain focus, enhance self motivation, boost working memory, improve energy levels, develop good habits, lower emotional reactivity, improve cognitive flexibility, self-regulation, provide better relationship satisfaction, and manage emotions that interfere with progress towards healthy habits.³

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Although, a lot more expansive research studies on the benefits of mindfulness are in the beginning stages and further studies are needed to confirm results, leading research institutions such as National Institutes of Health, Harvard University, Stanford University, Cleveland Clinic, and others have expanded their ongoing research studies to dig deeper into the subject and have incorporated it into treatment modules of certain diseases as discussed below.⁴

For example, in one study that examined the brain scans of eighteen participants enrolled in an 8 week mindfulness-based stress reduction program, seventeen participants in the control group demonstrated statistically significant increases in gray matter concentration in the left hippocampus, the area of the brain involved in learning, memory, and emotional control, compared to the control group with no significant changes.⁵ Both the mindfulness participant group and the control group (a group that did not perform the mindfulness exercises) were comprised of ages 25 to 55-year-olds, with a mean age of 38/39 respectively, almost an even split of males and females, and composition of similar ethnicities.⁶ The mindfulness group participated in eight weekly group meetings lasting 2.5...