In this article you will read about the Mindful Wellness approach for healing including how mindfullness was introduced as a healing modality in Western clinical settings by Jon Kabat-Zinn as a tool to minimize stress and reframe self-concept. You will also read about how you can bring the key tools of mindfullness to serve your wellness.
Life can be challenging for us all.
Have you noticed how feeling difficult emotions like guilt, shame and grief can affect your energy and vitality? Perhaps you have experienced stress and noticed how it affects your mood or even leads to anxiety and depression. More so, you notice your sleep, ability to concentrate or even connect with others is not what it used to be. You wish for yourself the capacity to move beyond these challenges, but more and more, you find yourself in a negative loop of spiralling thoughts and emotions.
You notice your mental and physical health declining.
What if there was a natural way that you could manage your health and wellness?
What if the healer is inside you?
What is Mindful Wellness
Mindful Wellness is the ability to uncover the body’s healing capacity and healing through mindfulness tools.
Living in the Now
Mindful Wellness is a key set of practices incorporating the principles of Mindfullness or “living in the now” including: non-judgement, acceptance, passivity, living in the moment, attention, responsiveness, nonengagement.
Mindfulness is not simply for the ill. It can benefit anyone having to cope with the demands of modern life. It helps people to build resilience and can especially be helpful in key periods of life including transitions like: starting a family, life-work balance, aging and career change.
Everyday Mindfulness Practices
Meditation and Mindful Movement Exercises like Yoga, Pilates, Martial Arts are just some ways to incorporate mindfulness for wellness. Mindful wellness also includes key mindset practices like gratitude, self- compassion, mindful eating and our relationships with space and persons.
The Mind Body Connection
The Key to Mindful Wellness, as a paradigm of healing is the Mind-Body Connection. Our Minds serve a signicant role to our health and wellbeing. We can train our minds to minimize and control stress and we can also use the mind to shift our focus from the negative towards the positive.
We can free ourselves from the debilitating thoughts and feelings linked with illness.
The Roots of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Since the late 20th Century, Buddhist-based mindfulness became more popular and researched as a healing modality. The belief is that people can attain relief from their pain and distress and prevent stress related illness through mindful practice.
The Modern Approach of Mindfulness as a modality for healing stems from the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. His approach to stress reduction, was later coined Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction or MBSR.
Stress reduction programs developed in the 1970’s by Jon Kabat-Zinn, brought the spotlight onto new ways to manage chronic and medical and psychological conditions from heart problems to panic attacks. Kabat-Zinn had the insights of his two disciplines; he was both a molecular scientist and a meditation practitioner.
The program brought the healing practice rooted in Buddhism as a new secular approach and become complimentary practice used by practitioners like psychotherapists and other health care professionals.
MBSR tackles both the problems of modern life along with age old problems of low-self esteem created by negative thoughts. It is these thoughts that trap people in a vicious cycle, and so often leads to ill health and disease.
MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) has shown to halve the recurrence of depression in patients who suffer three or more depression episodes. It is clear that by shifting focus away from the negative to the positive we can minimize fnegative thoughts and feelings that are linked to disease and ill health.
To learn more about MBSR as a thereapeutic modality, take a look at Jon Kabat Zinn’s training here.
How Can I Practice Mindful Wellness
Mindful Wellness can be practiced by everyone. Mindful Movement Exercises and Activities are just some of the ways that we can strengthen our bodies, become more aware of our emotions, calm our nervous systems, relax and bring ourselves into the present moment. Meditation allows us to shift into deeper states of consciousness. Different types of meditation can support our mind with concentration, relaxation and visualization or insight-based inner reflection. MBSR Therapies have the capacities to shift our mindsets from negative to positive. These are just some of the tools of Mindful Wellness.
Mindful Living and Care
Mindfulness as a vehicle to bring wellness to our lives can be applied into everyday activities like gratitude, self-compassion, the way that we care for ourselves and even in the way that we care for our homes and belongings. By incorporating these practices daily, Mindful Living becomes a way of being. This is how we care for our selves; our health reaps the benefits.
Embrace a New Paradigm for Health
At the end of the day, Mindful Wellness is a paradigm shift in how we view wellness and health in our lives. By managing our own stress, we can minimize many dis-eases affecting us in the modern world. Ultimately, we we live happier as a result. One of the benefits of this paradigm of wellness is that we all have the capacity to learn these tools; sometimes with some useful guides to light our path. Healing is in our hands.
To learn more about Mindful Movement Exercises read Do Calm’s Article Feel Good Today with these 7 Mindful Movement Medicines. Do Calm also offers a Mindful Movement Activity quiz to help you best determine the Mindful Exercise most suitable for your Personality. You can read all about the results in the article The Best Mindful Movement Activity for your Personality.
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