mindfulness exercises

MINDFULNESS EXERCISES THAT TREAT ANXIETY DISORDERS IN KIDS

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When you have a cut, it often bleeds. People can see the wound, and acknowledge that you are injured. Mental health is much different. It cannot be “seen” in the concrete way we are used to associating pain with.

But in its own way, mental health is very visible—it just takes knowing the signs. And while we may view physical and mental health a bit differently, one thing is for sure: Western medicine reaches for a bandage first and foremost, often in the form of antidepressants and other medications.
Kids_Meditation

Anxiety disorders plague more than one in four adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18, and are typically treated with such forms of medicine as mentioned above. What if there was another way to help them live a relatively healthy childhood without first resorting to pills?

A team of researchers from the University of Cincinnati wanted to explore alternative treatment options that focus on solutions involving the mind, instead of pharmaceuticals.

Over the course of 12 weeks, the researchers examined nine participants between the ages of 9 and 16 who were all diagnosed with anxiety disorders. Each of them underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while they practiced mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and different forms of therapeutic techniques like meditation, yoga, and learning how to pay nonjudgmental attention to one’s life.

The study’s co-author, Sian Cotton, director of the UC’s Center for Integrative Health and Wellness, noted that the anxiety of their patients was dramatically reduced following treatment. Cotton also acknowledged that the more mindfulness the participants practiced, the less anxious they reported feeling.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, provides a breakthrough for holistic treatments for such mental health issues, as it shows how mindfulness therapies may provide a treatment for childhood anxiety disorders.

“These integrative approaches expand traditional treatments and offer new strategies for coping with psychological distress,” explains Cotton.

“Mindfulness-based therapeutic interventions promote the use of meditative practices to increase present-moment awareness of conscious thoughts, feelings, and body sensations in an effort to manage negative experiences more effectively,” Cotton continues.

Many children with anxiety disorders typically have poor coping skills in the presence of stress. But 80 percent of children with diagnosed anxiety disorders and 60 percent of those diagnosed with depression do not get help. Mindfulness exercises may, indeed, be able to allow children a safe and effective way to cope, even preventing relapses of depression or anxiety.

It may also provide people reluctant to taking medications another option. “Increasingly, patients and families are asking for additional therapeutic options, in addition to traditional medication-based treatments, that have proven effectiveness for improved symptom reduction. Mindfulness-based therapies for mood disorders is one such example with promising evidence,” Cotton notes.

The 12-week experiment showed the study’s researchers that mindfulness therapy boosted neural activity in a part of the brain responsible for processing cognitive and emotion information called the cingulate. Furthermore, they found that the therapy worked to increase brain activity in the insula, which is the part of the brain that monitors how the body feels on a psychological level.

“This raises the possibility that treatment-related increases in brain activity during emotional processing may improve emotional processing in anxious youth who are at risk for developing bipolar disorder,” explains fellow co-author Dr. Jeffrey Strawn, a professor in UC’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, and the director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program. “The path from understanding the effects of psychotherapy on brain activity to the identification of treatment response is a challenging one, and will require additional studies of emotional processing circuits.”

What To Practice?

As we saw in the study, practicing meditation, yoga, or learning to be aware of what happens in your life from a non judgmental point of view (shifting your consciousness) are effective means to reduce anxiety.

Kids With Anxiety Disorders ‘Significantly’ Benefit From Mindfulness Exercises By Changing Brain Activity

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Anxiety disorders plague more than one in four adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18, and many of them are treated with antidepressants and other medications to try and help them live a relatively healthy childhood. But a team of researchers from the University of Cincinnati set out to explore other treatment options that focus more on the mind and less on pharmaceutical solutions.

Their study, published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, recruited nine participants who were diagnosed with anxiety disorders between 9 and 16 years of age. These conditions included generalized, social, and separation anxiety disorder as well as having a parent with bipolar disorder. Over the course of 12 weeks, each participant underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while they practiced mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, a wide range of theraputic techiniques that include meditation, yoga, and learning how to pay nonjudgmental attention to one’s life.

“These integrative approaches expand traditional treatments and offer new strategies for coping with psychological distress,” said the study’s co-author Sian Cotton, director of the UC’s Center for Integrative Health and Wellness, in a statement. “Mindfulness-based therapeutic interventions promote the use of meditative practices to increase present-moment awareness of conscious thoughts, feelings, and body sensations in an effort to manage negative experiences more effectively.”

Yoga TreatmentYoga TreatmentYoga TreatmentMindfulness therapies may provide a treatment for childhood anxiety disorders.

Children who are at a high risk for bipolar disorder or other anxiety disorders, such as the participants, often have poor coping skills when confronted by stress, and only a lucky few get help. According to theAnxiety and Depression Association of America, 80 percent of children with a diagnosed anxiety disorder and 60 percent of those diagnosed with depression do not receive treatment. Some mental health professionals have suggested that mindfulness exercises can help bridge the treatment gap, and there is some encouraging, if early, evidence showing that these techniques can be used to prevent relapses of depression or anxiety.

Cotton noted the anxiety of their patients was significantly reduced following treatment, and the more mindfulness they practiced, the less anxious they felt. Both findings reaffirm the potential that mindfulness therapy could bring to the table. If nothing else, it might allow people who would be reluctant to take medication more treatments to choose from. “Increasingly, patients and families are asking for additional therapeutic options, in addition to traditional medication-based treatments, that have proven effectiveness for improved symptom reduction. Mindfulness-based therapies for mood disorders is one such example with promising evidence,” said Cotton, adding the university is both studying and implenting these therapies.

After the 12-week experiment, Cotton and his colleagues found mindfulness therapy increased neural activity in a part of the brain that plays in a role in processing cognitive and emotion information known as the cingulate. The therapy was also able to increase brain activity in the insula, a part of the brain that helps monitor how the body feels psychologically.

“This raises the possibility that treatment-related increases in brain activity during emotional processing may improve emotional processing in anxious youth who are at risk for developing bipolar disorder,” said fellow co-author Dr. Jeffrey Strawn, a professor in UC’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, as well as director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program, in a statement. “The path from understanding the effects of psychotherapy on brain activity to the identification of treatment response is a challenging one, and will require additional studies of emotional processing circuits.”

How Meditation Changes Your Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains

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Do you struggle, like me, with monkey-mind? Is your brain also a little unsettled, restless, capricious, whimsical, fanciful, inconstant, confused, indecisive, or uncontrollable? That’s the definition of “monkey mind” I’ve been given!

If you need more motivation to take up this transformative practice, neuroscience research has shown that meditation and mindfulness training can cause neuroplastic changes to the gray matter of your brain.

A group of Harvard neuroscientists interested in mindfulness meditation have reported that brain structures change after only eight weeks of meditation practice.

Sara Lazar, Ph.D., the study’s senior author, said in a press release,

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day.”

To test their idea the neuroscientists enrolled 16 people in an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course. The course promised to improve participants’ mindfulness and well-being, and reduce their levels of stress.

Everyone received audio recordings containing 45-minute guided mindfulness exercises (body scan, yoga, and sitting meditation) that they were instructed to practice daily at home. And to facilitate the integration of mindfulness into daily life, they were also taught to practice mindfulness informally in everyday activities such as eating, walking, washing the dishes, taking a shower, and so on. On average, the meditation group participants spent an average of 27 minutes a day practicing some form of mindfulness.

Magnetic resonance images (MRI scans) of everyone’s brains were taken before and after they completed the meditation training, and a control group of people who didn’t do any mindfulness training also had their brains scanned.

After completing the mindfulness course, all participants reported significant improvement in measures of mindfulness, such as “acting with awareness” and “non-judging.”

What was startling was that the MRI scans showed that mindfulness groups increased gray matter concentration within the left hippocampus, the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporo-parietal junction, and the cerebellum. Brain regions involved in learning and memory, emotion regulation, sense of self, and perspective taking!

Britta Hölzel, the lead author on the paper says,

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life.”

Sarah Lazar also noted,

“This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”