Practicing mindfulness has many benefits and not just on your physical health. If anything, it benefits your mental health even more than your physical health. Acupuncture is an holistic treatment. We treat the whole person, since mental and physical health are so intimately connected. Mindfulness is another holistic practice, benefiting both physical and mental health. What can you expect if you start a mindfulness practice? Here are six of the mental benefits of mindfulness:
- Improved memory and cognition
- Reduced levels of depression and anxiety
- Lowered stress level
- Improved emotional regulation
- Decreased negative emotions
- Stronger relationships
Let’s take a brief look at each in turn:
Improved Memory and Cognition
Many of my current clients complain of problems with memory and concentration. The pandemic has had a negative impact on our thought processing abilities for various reasons. People who practice mindfulness show improved memory and stronger cognitive skills after just a few weeks of practice. They show improvements in recall, focus, processing speed, and more. Not bad for such a simple practice! I’ll be referring my clients to this series of articles and encouraging them to give mindfulness a try.
Reduced levels of Depression and Anxiety
A regular mindfulness practice can reduce the incidence of and severity of both depression and anxiety. All markers of these issues improve with a mindfulness practice. When coupled with other treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), practicing mindfulness has also been shown to reduce the recurrence of both of these issues.
Lowered Stress Levels
Stress affects you both physically and mentally. We’ve already considered the benefit of lowered stress levels on the physical body. One of the primary benefits of mindfulness is a reduction in the mental effects of stress. Overall stress levels are also lower in those who’ve been practicing mindfulness for a while.
Improved Emotional Regulation
The focus on understanding your feelings and not getting overwhelmed that is a hallmark of mindfulness helps improve overall emotional regulation in those who do it regularly. Mindfulness has been shown to physically alter the areas of the brain responsible for regulating your feelings!
Decreased Negative Emotions
The number of overall negative emotions you experience decreases when you have a mindfulness practice. This includes more than just the depression and anxiety previously mentioned; it means that anger, self-doubt, sadness, and other such emotions all decrease when you maintain a mindfulness practice.
Stronger Relationships
Our relationships with other people are an important component of our mental health. We’re social creatures through and through. You might think that something like mindfulness wouldn’t have effects that extend beyond ourselves, but you’d be wrong.
Researchers have shown that practicing mindfulness strengthens all of our personal relationships! This may be because the other benefits of mindfulness lead to more empathy and mental “space” to handle relationships but regardless, it’s a great benefit.
Don’t forget, it’s the regular, daily practice of mindfulness that leads to these mental health benefits.