Mindfulness – being here and now
Practicing mindfulness is not at all a new discovery from a few years ago. The mindfulness technique was known and highly regarded over 2,500 years ago. Mindfulness is, after all, nothing more than one of the methods to improve concentration and a form of meditation that Buddhist monks practiced. It involves shifting all your attention to one particular aspect, noticing your own emotions and breathing consciously, which in turn makes a huge difference to the type of waves that appear in the brain.
Psychological research shows that focusing on exercise simultaneously distracts you from unpleasant stimuli and pain complaints, which affects your mood and mental condition. The phenomenon of feeling detached from problems during training is the result of a decrease in prefrontal cortex activity. Practicing concentration increases the production of gamma-aminobutyric acid which inhibits excessive brain activity. It is gamma-aminobutyric acid that allows us to relax and not think about responsibilities. And mindfulness itself further affects neural network density, which translates into improved attention, focus, and awareness skills.
A harmonious duo – mindfulness and sport
Can you imagine a football player who, as he takes a penalty kick, wonders where he will go on his next vacation or tries hard to remember what he forgot to do last week. Neither can we! Such a situation is not scientifically possible. When we face a task that is responsible and important to us, we focus all our attention on the activity we are supposed to perform at that particular moment. For a football player to succeed in making an accurate shot, his attention must be sharpened to the maximum and directed to one key action. This principle applies in every sport. A growing body of scientific research supports the idea that athletes (sports enthusiasts included!) function best when their awareness is entirely focused on a particular moment.
The researchers also found that athletes who practiced mindfulness systematically outside of training were more confident, had a better ability to focus attention, and lower levels of anxiety, especially during the season.*
Train your body and concentration
If you are wondering if there is an ideal sport that will elevate your concentration levels, we hasten to answer – it is any physical activity that is regular. However, because of the special nature of yoga, it is impossible not to think of it as the first and especially worthy of mentioning.
Yoga is an extremely popular activity that teaches you to get in touch with your body, take control of it and focus on the individual asanas. By engaging in the practice of yoga, we calm our thoughts and focus on the here and now without looking ahead to the future. Yoga further supports proper brain function, prevents neurological disorders and improves communication between brain regions.
A study published in the Journal of Alzheimer found that older adults with mild cognitive impairment who practiced Kundalini yoga for one hour per week and did 15 minutes of meditation exercises per day for 12 weeks had improved memory and mood compared to a control group doing memory enhancement training (MET) consisting of one hour of mindfulness exercise per week.**
Don’t forget that any discipline is good for practicing mindfulness. The power is in focusing on the activity at hand. While running, don’t think about the projects that await you at work. Just like playing tennis, don’t think about how many things you need to do around the house before guests arrive. The most important thing is what is happening here and now.
We have made use of the following publications:
https://twojpsycholog.pl/blog/aktywnosc-fizyczna-wplyw-na-umysl-i-cialo
https://treningbiegacza.pl/artykul/uwaznosc-w-bieganiu-bieganie-w-uwaznosci
* https://gemini.pl/poradnik/artykul/mindfulness-a-sport-kiedy-moze-okazac-sie-ono-pomocne/
** https://polish.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/09/22/korzysci-jogi-dla-mozgu.aspx