Articles this week on the benefits of mindfulness

I have a bit more to do with regards to looking into mindfulness fully, as while I have done it myself and taken classes before, I will need to immerse myself in all the information on it so I can make something that properly reflects everything that it is about.  Ruby Wax's article for The Independent, which is nice and current as it was published 2 days ago, had some great points on both the scientific aspects and the emotional.  She explains in a very straightforward way the way in which mindfulness helps improve the way in which we deal with stress.

  "When you're knee deep in stress and those thoughts are berating you, it's because a part of our brain called the amygdala is activated.  It blasts those fight or flight hormones to get you ready to rumble or run.  With mindfulness you practice taking your focus to one of your senses…And as soon as you send you attention to a physical sensation, another region of the brain is activated: the insula.
As soon as you focus on that sense, the amgydala automatically calm down, the stress hormones shut off, your heart becomes slower and steadier, your blood pressure lowers.  You've cooled your engine. Basically, you can't be thinking and sensing at the same time, it's one or the other.  Just like getting in a car and trying to be in two gears - it just won't drive.  It's the repetition of going from thoughts to a single sense that actually thickens and strengthens the insula." (Wax, 2015)

Wax also has some reflections on how we as people deal with stress and why practising mindfulness should help.  "The conflict isn't so much out there; it's in us.  We live in a state of conflict; our minds are blasted with up to the minute global atrocities, busy beyond the speed of light, and magazines and newspapers constantly tell us that we're not successful/famous/thin enough…That's another reason I thought I'd check out mindfulness.  It has the best results in preventing relapse after having three or more episodes of depression, and I was on episode about 36.  It doesn't prevent a disease but, if you can calm your mind enough, you can see it coming in the early stages, before it takes you hostage." (Wax, 2015)

Another great source of information is this School of Life talk by Mark Williams, who is a lead researcher at Oxford Mindfuless Centre and has published several books on the subject.  In the video below, he leads into the subject very well, focusing more on the benefits of the practice rather than the how-to of it.  He uses a lot of scenarios that people can identify with, usually about thinking "What if?" or thinking ahead when we are supposed to be enjoying something we are doing.  Overall, he manages to implicitly explain how mindfulness can be part of our contemporary society's "toolbox" to manage our stress and anxieties.  This video is almost an hour long but is a really good listen should you choose to do so!

References:

Williams, Mark. 2014.  Mark Williams on Mindfulness. [online] Available at:
https://vimeo.com/24884903
[Accessed 15th January 2015]

Wax, Ruby. 2015.  The Independent Online. "Burnt Out and Depressed: I Lost My Mind Seven Years Ago But Mindfulness Helped Me Recover It." [online] Available at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/burnt-out-and-depressed-i-lost-my-mind-seven-years-ago-but-mindfulness-helped-me-recover-it-9975113.html
[Accessed 15th January 2015]