A call for mindfulness
We’re quick to prioritize our physical health and with most people I know and work with, our mental health is an afterthought that we deal with when there’s an issue…sometimes, other times we bury the issue. Increasingly, we demand more and more from ourselves in terms of speed, responsiveness, doing more, participating in more, engaging more. And recently, the Surgeon General issued an advisory on the mental health of parents and care givers as 33% of parents and caregivers indicated they experience high levels of stress.
Do you inquire about your clients’ stress levels and sleep quality on your intake forms? I do and I recommend you do as well. Self assessment is a valuable tool and if your clients’ express high levels of stress and poor quality of sleep, it indicates they could benefit from additional referrals and that you could support them with additional efforts to support mindfulness.
Why mindfulness? To over simplify, mindfulness is training for your nervous system and mental health. And most people mistakenly confuse mindfulness for meditation. While meditation is a practice form of mindfulness, not all mindfulness training is meditation. This seems to be the biggest barrier I hear of for people practicing mindfulness. I’m frequently told that people don’t have time to meditate or do something additional, it’s not possible for somebody to sit still and in silence without thinking for prolonged periods of time, or simply that people don’t like meditating.
Enter movement professionals. If movement professionals understood the impact of mindfulness and had a variety of ways to incorporate it into movement sessions, this could be another opportunity to help our clients’ stress levels and quality of life. If we could support our clients’ improvement of sleep, quality of life, focus, and stress reduction simply by incorporating a few simple tactics, shouldn’t we?
Yes, physical exercise also helps to support mood and stress reduction. But when I see people exercising outside or in gyms, I see them plugged into TVs and headphones which is simply another form of distraction and quite the opposite of mindfulness. And, if physical exercise were enough, why are my clients who already engage in consistent physical activity still indicating higher stress levels and low quality of sleep? I am not discounting the effects of physical exercise for mental health, but proposing that there is more we can do; more we can do with what we’re already doing, not adding anything additional.
If you want to learn more or start incorporating mindfulness in your movement practice, consider joining me for my 4 hour, NPCP CEC course, Mindfulness in the Movement Setting: A Neuroscience Supported Approach. You can attend live if you’d like but every registrant receives a year of unlimited replay access along with a month of free access to the Waking Up App. More information can be found here at this link.