Mindfulness

With Mrs Neville

In the past week Mrs Neville has been asked to plan and deliver a series of Mindfulness sessions for students and adults following on from her ‘Mindfulness for Wellbeing in Schools’ training and general ongoing learning linked to Mindfulness and Positive Psychology; and the development of the ‘Mindfulness on Monday’ sessions aimed sharing Mindfulness learning with the children of the school.

Mindfulness has been shown to have positive effects on many aspects of our lives when practised and included regularly in our health and wellbeing habits, but can also influence our mental wellbeing at the point of participation. These sessions will focus on aspects of stress reductions and the development of relaxation techniques, but can also have far-reaching benefits too. Research has shown that Mindfulness and Mindfulness-based meditation can:

• Improve mental health – reduce anxiety, stress, depression, decrease exhaustion and irritability with regular sessions of meditation.
• Improve memory - reaction times become faster and mental and physical stamina increases.
• Improve happiness and contentment; alongside reduce the likelihood of psychological distress.
• Improve physical health. Mindfulness can dramatically reduce pain and the emotional reaction to it. Recent trials suggest that average pain ‘unpleasantness’ levels can be reduced by 57 % while accomplished meditators report reductions of up to 93 %.
• Improve mood and quality of life in chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia and lower-back pain, IBS, and in challenging serious life-limiting medical illnesses.
• Improve working memory, creativity, attention span and reaction speeds. It also enhances mental and physical stamina and resilience.
• Improve Emotional Intelligence.
• Mindfulness has been shown to be at least as good as medication or counseling for the treatment of clinical-level depression.
• Enhance brain function - it increases grey matter in areas associated with self-awareness, empathy, self-control and attention.
• Soothes the parts of the brain that produce stress hormones and builds those areas that lift mood and promote learning.
• It even reduces some of the thinning of certain areas of the brain that naturally occurs with ageing.
• Improves the immune system.
• Meditation and mindfulness improve control of blood sugar in type II diabetes.
• Improves heart and circulation by reducing blood pressure and lowering the risk of hypertension.
• Mindfulness reduces the risks of developing and dying from cardiovascular disease and lowers its severity should it arise.

These sessions, will focused on Mindfulness Meditation as a way of reducing stress and enhancing relaxation.

Thank you so much Mrs Neville for running these session. They have helped many of the school community keep calm during a very tough time for everyone:)