Introduction to Mindfulness

 This episode will introduce you to mindfulness. I'll provide clarity on what mindfulness is and where the concept comes from, review the mental health benefits, and give you practical advice and suggestions for getting started.

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Articles referenced:
BMC Pregnancy 2019: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31601170/
Arch of WMH: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30982086/
Meta-analysis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27182732/
Midwifery 2018: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30099285/

Transcript

0:31

Welcome my listener friends to this fourth episode of the women's wellness psychiatry podcast. In this episode, we'll dive into mindfulness it's benefits for mental health and wellness and how you can get started. Let's begin by looking at the definition of mindfulness. Mindfulness is defined as the awareness that comes from paying attention to the present on purpose and without judgment. Where does this concept come from? So it's been around for a very, very long time. And it's foundations have both religious and spiritual backgrounds from Hinduism and Buddhism and yoga. And it really was brought from the east to the west by Jon Kabat Zinn. He is a scientist and. He is from the university of Massachusetts, which incidentally is actually my Alma mater. And he is the founder of mindfulness based stress reduction. Which he began in 1979. He had a number of Buddhist teachers. And he created this mindfulness based stress reduction program and brought the concept of mindfulness from the east to the west. His research really focused on using mindfulness in various kinds of clinical settings and in stressful situations, such as breast cancer. And he trained many, many individuals of various backgrounds from judges to CEOs, to patients, to clinicians. His famous mindfulness exercise was known as the raisin exercise and it's used to the stay in mindfulness based stress reduction courses. And I'm going to share with you a little bit more about the reason exercise and how to modify that to perhaps fit your own needs towards the end of this podcast episode. First, I want to take a few moments to go over the benefits of mindfulness so that you can become more aware. Of its importance and why I'm even talking about it. There's a lot of data on the benefits of mindfulness. And I want to focus specifically on the data that looks at women and particularly women in various kinds of perinatal and postpartum circumstances. So I want to share with you a few different research studies that really speak to the benefits of mindfulness. There's a couple of different types of research studies that look at this. There's the research studies that are aggregates of other research data. So basically large compiling studies. Called meta analyses that look at a whole bunch of smaller studies and put them together to better understand what the global picture is. For these kinds of data. And then there's other kinds of research studies, which are known as randomized clinical trials. Where they take a group of women and they sort them into groups who do, and don't do mindfulness based courses. And then look at the outcomes. So there's a number of studies in each of those two categories. There was an interesting study in 2018 in the archives of women's mental health. That was a meta analysis of a large number of studies that looked at mind, body interventions and mindfulness in fertility patients, and actually found that it was helpful for treating anxiety and depression. There was another meta analysis in 2016 that reviewed a number of different studies and aggregated them. And they found. In their research that quote participants reported benefiting from connecting with others in a group setting from learning to stay in the present moment. Learning to regulate negative responses to challenging situations and becoming more accepting of current experiences and quote. They found that there was better data actually, for those with clinically significant symptoms compared to those who didn't have clinically significant symptoms. And they found that those individuals showed an improvement in depression, anxiety, and stress scores before and after the interventions. So that's great that a number of these large aggregates of studies have found the benefits of mindfulness in very specific. Uh, female populations. There's also a few smaller studies that looked specifically at sorting women into interventions. So. Uh, back in. 2018. There was an online mindfulness class, which was actually a really interesting one because it specifically looked at online mindfulness, which in today's day and age is really helpful to know since so much of the different kinds of treatments that we offer are now online. And it basically found that. The online mindfulness course was helpful, but the tricky thing was that many individuals unfortunately dropped out. And part of that was attributed to the fact that this was an online class rather than one that had live engagement. And interventions. So there was a couple of studies, more recent to that. There was one in 2019. That was a randomized controlled trial that was published in the BMC pregnancy journal. Which looked at a number of women in the second trimester, and they were sorted into those that did receive the mindfulness treatment and those that didn't those that did went through eight weeks of three hour sessions. Plus an entire day of silent meditation. And they were measured according to their levels of stress and depression. Both at the start as well as three months postpartum. So at the start was in that second trimester and then three months postpartum and they measured stress and depression. And for the clinicians out there listening to this, they measured those using the. Um, a stress scale and the Edinburgh postnatal depression scale. And they actually found a significant difference between those two groups of women. Those that went through that program and those that did not. And similarly in 2020, there was a randomized trial that was published in the archives of women's mental health. That looked at women who were anywhere from one to six months. Of gestation. And who met criteria for an anxiety or depression disorder. And they went through eight weeks of two hour sessions and they were measured at one month to show improvement. So I think it's great to see that there's a number of different ways to apply mindfulness. And when you look at. The outcomes at one month. Or several months postpartum, you're still seeing the benefits of mindfulness. Whether it's mindfulness-based stress reduction, which is the kind of the original type of mindfulness classes that were created by Jon Kabat-Zinn. So many years ago, or whether it's an offshoot of that these days it's called mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which has definitely also been studied in pregnant patients and has shown to be valuable. So lots of different studies, that's just a sampling. That have demonstrated a benefit of mindfulness. In women for managing stress, depression, anxiety in pregnancy postpartum, and those going through fertility treatment. No, that's just the sampling of studies I wanted to share with you. There's a lots and lots of other data that look at the benefits of mindfulness for depression and anxiety in much broader populations. So in populations that include both men and women and those who are unrelated to the reproductive cycle as well. So lots of data out there. If you look for it. So now that we understand that there's a lot of benefit to mindfulness, where do we begin? One thing I want to emphasize. Is that mindfulness is not the same as meditation. I think that's something that a lot of people. Get a little bit intimidated by they think of mindfulness and they think of, you know, sitting quietly in a meditative place, or maybe even one of those silent retreats where you meditate all day for days on end. And that's not necessarily the same as mindfulness. If you remember the original definition. It really is defined as paying attention. Being present in the moment. And being nonjudgmental. That part's really oftentimes the most challenging you have to be an observer, but a nonjudgmental observer. And so any number of things can actually be done mindfully. Um, you can walk mindfully, you can eat mindfully. There's an entire body of literature out there on mindful eating. There's a lot of different things that you can do mindfully. And the point is that it keeps you in the present moment. And takes you away from that judgmental. Internal voice that so many of us have being present in the moment means that you're not thinking about future anxieties or worries. And you're also not thinking about past regrets or things that can lead to depression. You're really present in the moment that you're in. And the nonjudgmental piece allows you to just be open to wherever your mind goes. It doesn't mean that you have to have a blank mind. You're actually supposed to be having all kinds of different thoughts. But you're just watching them like a casual observer without any kind of judgment. And so here's an exercise that I want you to try to, to just get into the idea of mindfulness. If you recall. Uh, at the start of this episode, I mentioned the raisin exercise. That was the classic exercise that, um, John Kabat-Zinn created for official. MBSR mindfulness-based stress reduction classes. That involved, basically taking a reason. And very mindfully observing it's taste. It's smell. It's texture. And doing all of that in a very mindful way. I think that's sometimes a little bit challenging because number one, Not a lot of people eat raisins anymore. And that's why I've decided to kind of share this alternative way of engaging in mindfulness, because you don't need to go find a reason and you don't need to go find the time to eat a reason. I like to begin mindfulness. With brushing your teeth because that's something that all of us do hopefully on a daily basis and hopefully more than once a day. So since you're already doing it, what if you were to do. Brushing your teeth in a mindful way. So, what you would do is basically for that two minute window. You ask yourself a number of questions and answer them as you go. So the questions that you can ask yourself would be things like. What does this toothpaste smell like? What is it like to feel the bristles on my teeth? What is it like to smell the toothpaste, to taste the toothpaste? What is the texture? You basically, you're using all of your different senses. What do you see in the mirror when you're brushing your teeth? What do you taste? Smell? See, touch feel. And all of those things, all of those questions that you're answering. You're answering with whatever comes to mind in a very nonjudgmental way. There's no right or wrong. There's no right or wrong way to taste the toothpaste. There's no right or wrong way to smell it. There's no right or wrong way to feel the texture. Uh, the temperature, the color, any of those kinds of things. So being really mindful, engaging all of your senses, really focusing, maybe on the census that don't get as much tension. We often focus so much on the sense of sight. And often on the sense of sound. But less so on the census of taste and smell and feel. So really allowing those senses to come forward as you answer those questions. And spending the entire one to two minutes that you're brushing your teeth, answering those questions. You might answer them more than once. You might answer them once as you're doing your lower teeth. And again, as you're doing your upper teeth, And what will happen oftentimes is that your mind will wander. This is one of those activities that because you do it so often. Most of the time, your mind wanders when you're doing it. If you're not doing it while also on your phone. And so your mind will wander to your to-do list. Your mind will wander to the things that maybe you forgot your mind will wander to all of your worries. And your job is to very gently. Just bring your mind back into the present moment, the same way that you would kind of gently coax a puppy that seems to have wandered off back. Into the sidewalk. You really want to coax your brain back into the present. You're not doing it with any kind of negative intensity. You're not belittling belittling your brain. You're rigid. Really just kind of gently tugging it back into the present in a nonjudgmental way and resuming answering those questions. So it's a short one to two minute mindfulness exercise that I think is a really great way to start with mindfulness. And then from there you can really build, you can build by using any number of all of the different apps that are out there that help teach mindfulness. Um, you can certainly join some of the MBSR mindfulness based stress reduction classes that are out there. There's a lot of directions that you can take mindfulness. And I think it's a really great treatment option for managing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. So I hope that this episode has helped you recognize the benefits of mindfulness and giving you some ideas for how to begin to incorporate it into your world in order to realize those positives for yourself. Thanks for joining me for this week's episode. As you know, my goal is to bring you the most helpful content that moves you towards emotional wellbeing. If you have ideas and suggestions and questions, I'd love to hear those feel free, to make a comment. And I always appreciate a rating that will help others find this valuable content as well. I'm looking forward to connecting with you next week.