Mindfulness

Overview: A detailed explanation of the various components of Wisercise and how they work together to provide a life-long urban health fitness training system.

Mindfulness: Harness the Power of The Mind-Body Connection with the practice of Mindfulness. Free yourself from mechanical, conditioned ways of thinking and living which may be harmful to yourself or others.

Breathing: Ageing and the pressures of modern daily life will cause you to change the way you breathe. This article introduces a technique of deep breathing called the Complete Breath and highlights its role in maintaining good health and quality of life.

Posture: Many of the muscles used for breathing are also used for postural alignment. Good posture will improve your breathing and balance in addition to preventing falls and injuries. Learn how to fine-tune your posture for best results.

Stretching: Stretching is an extremely versatile and accomodating form of movement used by physiotherapists, athletes, ballet dancers, pugilists and the military. It is not only a bookend to vigorous exercise but a beneficial exercise in itself!

Aerobic Exercise: Add Years to Life & Life to Years with a traditional, easy-to-do exercise form that positively affects the years of life after age 40, lengthening life while postponing and compacting end-of-life disability.

Inside Aerobics: Find out what happens to you when you exercise aerobically and the benefits to your heart, brain and vital organs.

Best Aerobic Exercise: Researchers have found Walking to be the best aerobic exercise for daily health and wellness maintenance due to its accessibility, lowest injury rate of any exercise form and ability to reduce risk of premature death, dementia and other diseases.

Quickstep Overview: An overview of the Quickstep aerobic briskwalking technique. What is it? How can it benefit you?

Inside Quickstep: An inside look at Quickstep. Find out about Walking Mechanics, Tensegrity, Core Muscles and Balance and how to make these work together to make Quickstep go.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of being in the moment, maintaining an awareness of your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and the surrounding environment, without judging them nor believing that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment.

"For clinical purposes, mindfulness can be considered a distinct state of consciousness distinguished from the ordinary consciousness of everyday living.

In general, a mindful state of consciousness is characterized by awareness turned inward toward present felt experience. It is passive, though alert, open, curious, and exploratory. It seeks to simply be aware of what is, as opposed to attempting to do or confirm anything."

Gregory J. Johanson,
PhD
Director, Hakomi therapy & mindfulness.

Mindfulness is thought to be inherent and that people can develop it with training and practice.1.2

As you practice Mindfulness you become more aware of the spaces between your thoughts and your actions and give yourself a newfound ability to deliberately and consciously place attention where and when you choose.

Furthermore, when you notice your mind wandering, the act of refocusing your mind strengthens your resilience and resolve.

When you pay attention in this way, you become fully aware of yourself and empower yourself to consciously make wise choices and take control of the changes that ensue from moment-to-moment.

The Happiness of Mindfulness

A study 3 conducted by Psychologists Daniel T. Gilbert and Matthew A. Killingsworth of Harvard University shows that what makes people happy has far less to do with what they are doing and significantly more to do with whether their attention is fully present in the moment.

The 2,250 subjects in this study ranging in age from 18 to 88, came from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and occupations.

Those who focused on their present moment experience were significantly happier than people whose minds wandered away from the moment.

While it was shown that people whose minds wandered to happy thoughts were slightly better off than those whose minds wandered to worries or regrets, they were still not as happy as the people who kept their minds firmly involved in the moment.

Even if the activity at hand was considered unpleasant, people were still happier when they engaged their attention fully in the now.

The researchers say that unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn’t going on around them.

People spend much of their time contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all.

Indeed, mind-wandering appears to be the human brain’s default mode of operation.

"A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

“Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities."

“The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost."

"Many philosophical and religious traditions recognise this and teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment. Practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and to ‘be here now,’ These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

Daniel T. Gilbert,
PhD
Harvard University,
Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology.

Matthew A. Killingsworth,
PhD
University of California, San Francisco,

With Mindfulness, you can learn to use your thoughts to influence your body’s physical responses.

We all have this innate ability.

What we have to do is figure out how to use it to our advantage.

The Mind-Body Connection

Mind-Body Connection is a term coined by William H. Poteat. It is also the study 4 of how a person’s thoughts and emotions affect their physical well-being.

Today, scientists agree that there is a powerful Mind-Body Connection through which emotional, mental, social, spiritual and behavioral factors directly affect your health.

They speculate that even disorders, such as autism may have a biological basis.5

The Mind-Body Connection is not just a theory.6 It occurs on both a physical and chemical level.

The Mind is responsible for processing feelings and emotions and the resulting attitudes and actions. It also holds the power of imagination, recognition and appreciation.

Different mental states can positively or negatively affect biological functioning.

This happens because the nervous system, endocrine system and immune system all share a common chemical language that allows for constant communication between the Mind and the Body through messengers like hormones and neurotransmitters.

Neurological pathways connect parts of the brain that process emotions with the spinal cord, cardiovascular system, musculoskeletal system and gastrointestinal tract. These connections allows major life events, stressors, or emotions to trigger physical symptoms.

You may have experienced this aspect of the Mind-Body Connection when you are nervous and feel “butterflies in your stomach”, or when you are under intense stress and your heart feels like it is “pounding out of your chest.”

These interconnecting systems which establish the Mind-Body Connection, influence the maintenance of health as well as the development of disease.

Scientists report that stress, anxiety and depression can trigger increased stress hormones which suppress the immune system and set the stage for the development of infections and disease.7

“Inflammatory hormones are elevated in persons diagnosed with depression.”

"The causal role that inflammation plays in producing depression and anxiety has many implications. Many reports of depression preceding dementia, heart disease, strokes, cancer have been published in samples of persons who were not taking antidepressants. The common factor in all of these conditions is inflammatory processes."

(Read the full article here).

Jill L. Littrell,
PhD, MSSW, LCSW
Associate Professor of Psychopathology
at Georgia State University

Conversely, a pilot study 8 on people with severe depression found that just 30 minutes of treadmill walking for 10 consecutive days was “sufficient to produce a clinically relevant and statistically significant reduction in depression."9

And, a notable study 10 in the Journal of Physical Therapy Science shows that aerobic exercise can help people feel less stressed by reducing levels of the body’s natural stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.

When applied to normal health-enhancing exercise, the Mind-Body Connection gives you the innate ability to use your Mind to positively influence your Body’s responses to a greater or lesser extent and turn any exercise into a Mind Body Exercise.

Mind-Body Exercise

A Mind-Body exercise is any physical exercise that combines physical movement with a heightened awareness of the body
in the present moment.

It is the nature of the mind to get distracted and wander off on its own. Through its meanderings, awareness progresses from the superficial level of the mind to the deeper, expansive experience of consciousness.

The intention of Mind-Body Exercise is three-fold:

To comply with the natural tendency of your mind while

Training your attention systems to become increasingly aware of your mental landscape at any given moment so as to

Provide high quality, superior physical training for your body.

You can turn any physical activity into a Mind-Body Exercise by consciously and deliberately Focusing your Attention on the various inter-related aspects of that physical activity in turn.

This is called Attentional Control, a phrase that refers to your ability to concentrate on what you're doing in the present moment.

“The ability to control thought processes, to concentrate on a task is almost universally recognized as the most important key to effective performance in sport."

Robert M. Nideffer,
PhD,
Sports Psychologist,
Founder of Enhanced Performance Systems,
Author.

Attentional Control gives you access to and control over your mental, physical and emotional responses to the actvity.

Control of these responses will invariably have a positive effect upon your quality of movement.

Attentional Control works very much like a muscle. Continuously strengthen it and it grows. Don’t use it and it will atrophy.

Things you could Focus your Attention on while exercising

Your Posture

Posture affects your breathing and every move you make.

Correct posture will ensure that your body is functioning optimally throughout its movements.

Through correct posture you create the optimal spinal alignment for physical activity.

Without proper spinal position you upset your body’s power chain and interfere with the natural flow of energy and information through your nervous system.

Poor posture will increase the likelihood of you sustaining an injury.

The Way You Breathe

Your brain requires 25 percent of your body's total oxygen consumption in order to function optimally.

Deep and even breathing efficiently infuses your body and your brain with the oxygen they need to function well under physical exertion.

The repetitive inflow and outflow of your breath creates a rhythm that will help "anchor" you in the present moment.

The breathing rhythm also serves as a bridge between your mind and body.

The more deeply you breathe, the stronger that connection becomes.

How You're Treating Your Body

"No pain, no gain" is an often heard exercise motto that promises greater value rewards for the price of hard and even painful work.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

It is an antiquated and outdated catchphrase made prominent in the early 1980s via Jane Fonda aerobic workout videos.

In these videos, Fonda uses the phrase to urge viewers to exercise beyond the point of reasonably acceptable physical stress as a necessary means to achieving their fitness goals.

This is a harmful myth that is deeply ingrained in modern fitness culture.

Many people still approach exercise with the "no pain, no gain" mind-set. They suffer through a workout on pure grit ignoring aches and objections from their body under the mistaken belief that they must hurt to be healthy.

Is pain, or forcing through pain, necessary for improved fitness and health?

Absolutely not!

Ignoring signs of distress from your body sets the stage for potentially serious injuries.

Exercise that is done correctly, in moderation and with Mindfulness, makes for a rewarding experience.

The time you spend exercising is gone forever.

You owe it to yourself to ensure that every workout leaves you with a sense of accomplishment and time well spent.

The more Mindful you are, the greater the range and quality of benefits from your chosen activity.

“Our bodies are made to move to feel good. So, cultivating a love of movement can help you get beyond the concept of physical fitness as separate from mental fitness and toward a lifelong program of good health through mind and body fitness.”

Louise L. Chang,
MD
Adjunct assistant professor of medicine at
Emory University,
Attending physician at
Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.