Stress, anxiety, and other emotional sickness are serious threats to human health. In fact, according to a study, approximately 20 percent of young adults across the globe suffer from depression before the age of 18.
While scientists and medical practitioners continue to invent medications and other methods for treating depression in young adults, psychotherapy has long been efficient in treating a low to moderate level of depression.
Emotional ailments are equally rampant in other age groups. Even veteran mediators and those who practice inner peace get their share of this natural human experience.
However, what makes them better is how they handle emotional sickness, and the effective strategies they employ to significantly improve their emotional health. One of these easy and effective strategies is mindfulness-based stress reduction.
What is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction(MBSR)?
MBSR, also known as mindfulness-based stress reduction, is an effective strategy that combines mindfulness meditation, yoga, and body awareness to minimize stress symptoms and significantly improve your health.
It’s an easy-to-do and efficient exercise that you can do at your convenience, unlike following a regular prescription and pushing pills down your throat every day.
MBSR is an eight-week program that helps you practice the use of mindfulness to reduce the risk of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms such as insomnia, nausea, tense muscles, quick heartbeat, and even loss of sexual interest.
Aside from these physical symptoms of stress that it helps you manage, it’s also efficient in minimizing mental symptoms of stress such as:
- Forgetfulness or difficulty in learning
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Frustration
- Nervous habits
- Unnecessary anger
- Suicidal thought
- Difficulty in concentration
These symptoms are evidence of how much emotional illnesses are threats to the healthy lifestyle you desire.
This is why Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1970s, developed mindfulness-based stress reduction as a technique to manage stress.
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn Invention of MBSR as a Stress Management Technique
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn initially developed mindfulness-based stress reduction as a treatment for stress in the early 1970s, at Massachusetts medical center University.
However, it soon became an effective treatment for other health disorders like skin diseases, hypertension, skin diseases, and even diabetes.
These health problems are inevitable, we will always experience some of them.
Nevertheless, we can either succumb to such a health disorder and let it eat us up, or choose to reinforce our minds and boost our self-healing capabilities. This is where MBSR comes into play.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction is a program that helps you practice the art of mindfulness and is taught by certified instructors.
According to Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, MBSR is focused on mindfulness, which he called “moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness”.
Benefits of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Here’s a deeper insight into the vital benefits of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction to your health as shown by studies and scientific investigations:
It relieves pain
According to a study in 2010, mindfulness-based stress reduction may be an efficient strategy to help people improve their well-being and relieve them of pain, especially those suffering from serious pain.
Researchers also found out that people suffering from arthritis usually have the most significant improvement as regards their health, after undergoing the mindfulness-based stress reduction exercise.
This is a significant improvement compared to people suffering from migraines or serious headaches. Nevertheless, it helps relieve the pain.
It helps you sleep better
Unlike taking drugs and expecting an almost immediate effect, especially when it comes to sleeplessness (insomnia), MBSR works a bit differently.
In a report published in 2017, a study has shown that mindfulness-based stress reduction can be an efficient therapy to help people minimize the possibility of sleeplessness and its factors like worrying and anxiety.
As much there isn’t sufficient evidence that MBSR may improve sleep duration or quality, it’s an effective strategy for treating the factors causing your inability to sleep. In all, you get to sleep better.
It helps reduce stress
You’re most likely to suffer from headaches/migraines, high blood pressure, inability to sleep, and even lose interest in sex when you’re stressed. Some other obvious symptoms include anxiety, worrying, and panic attacks.
However, in 2009, scientists were able, to sum up, several studies on mindfulness-based stress reduction. The studies revealed that MBSR is an efficient therapy and treatment to help minimize symptoms of stress such as anxiety.
It helps you gain a deeper sense of calmness, thereby reducing negative emotional arousal that can cause stress. It’s also efficient for helping you relax tense muscles.
It prevents depression
Depression is a common emotional illness among young adults around the world. Some of its most visible symptoms are casually low mood, low energy, weight loss, difficulty in sleeping, suicidal thoughts, and destructive behavior.
Research has shown that MBSR can be an effective treatment for depression. The mindfulness approach can also prevent other symptoms, such as suicidal thoughts.
Mindfulness helps such individuals restructure the pattern of their mind while reducing the possibility of suicidal actions or negative thoughts about themselves. A study revealed that MBSR is an efficient antidepressant therapy.
It helps Intellectual improvement
Aside from the obvious improvements to human health, mindfulness-based therapy also improves your overall intellectual functionality as a human.
Research has shown that MBSR also has cognitive benefits. A study even found out that 4 meditation sessions can lead to improvement in mood, a retentive memory, and verbal fluency. It is said to also benefit your overall executive functionalities and visual processing.
Final thought on MBSR
Stress and other emotional illnesses are inevitable, so much that it’s sometimes overwhelming and uneasy.
As much as there are different approaches to deal with stress, like choosing to stick to only pills as a method of treatment, mindfulness-based stress reduction is an efficient treatment that benefits you more.
Mindfulness meditation does not only improve your health, it also minimizes the possibility of stress symptoms in the future while it endows you with inner peace.
As it’s also efficient in improving your heart health and blood pressure, your Intellectual functionalities also improve.
Since you won’t be shoving pills down your throat daily, there’s a lot of benefits to your health, and you’ve got nothing to lose, why not give it a try?
