Bountiful Heart Women's Health and Fitness Expo

Bountiful Heart

in conjunction with

present a

Women’s Health and Fitness Expo

Join us for a morning of wellness workshops including a nutritionist-prepared breakfast, HIIT fitness demonstrations and life coaching tips.

Bring your trainers!

You’ll find us at the North Harbour Sailing Club at the bottom of the hill on Gourlay Ave, Balgowlah

Sunday 11^th September 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Please enrol to attend at

www.bountifulheart.com.au

or phone Louise 0414 678 943

Belinda 0413 120 768

Krys 0416 111 331

Gold coin donation to Jean Hailes' Women's Health Week is appreciated

Mindfulness meditation - how, when and why

Mindfulness meditation is something I have been aware of for some years now. Even prior to this label, it was the key objective of every ashtanga yoga class - the breath, keep focusing on the breath, move to the breath... During stressful moments in the past, I would hum a mantra over and over. It was this repetitive, almost mindless humming that would soothe my stress. 

So you might say I've toyed with mindfulness for many years now. But it was only recently that the planets aligned and I finally and completely got on the mindfulness meditation bandwagon. My sister, who has been practising diligently and happily for many years now, sent me a link to a Monash University free online course in mindfulness. 

FREE?!?!? I'm in!!

This is what I learnt during the six week course:

Much scientific research has gone into mindfulness and a coping mechanism and stress reliever. As Dr Craig Hassad explains during Week 2 of the course our active imagination has compromised our normal fight or flight response over the years. Through anxious thoughts our body has switched on this fight or flight response, even though there is no real threat. When this response is continuously and inadvertently switched on by stress and anxiety it slowly makes us sicker and sicker.

"We accelerate the hardening of the arteries so it leads to heart attacks and strokes, metabolic effects, high blood pressure, high blood glucose, high blood lipids, and so on. It also affects the ageing of the bones. It affects the ageing of the brain as well 'cause the stress chemicals are neurotoxic so they damaged brain cells over the long term, and actually, they do a thinning of the grey matter. So we don't just feel bad in the short term, it affects our health in the long term. And the areas that are most affected are the memory centre, hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, our working memory, executive functioning areas of the brain. So we actually perform poorly in the acute moment that we're actually anxious and stressed but actually, in the long term, it affects our ability to function well. So it comes with a cost. The only bit of the brain that's going to grow if we're activating it all the time is the stress centre. So it gets bigger and it gets more reactive. In a kind of way, we wire our brain for more stress." https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-performance/4/todo/5183

So that is the why. Mindfulness helps us rewire our brains to turn off that stress response and improve our immunity.

The key to the how is firstly committing to the practices. If you google "mindfulness meditation exercises" you will come up with many online audio clips for meditating to. There are also great apps. This one called Mindfulness Coach was recommended to me by a health professional. The meditations are all very short - 9 minutes approximately. Even my boys enjoy joining me for these ones. To initially get into the process of mindfulness meditation, you are usually asked to sit comfortably in a chair with your feet touching the floor. This I recommend, as lying down during the audio always ended up with me snoring blissfully! Also check out these ones of varying length by Sydney University. I try to practice first thing in the morning and last thing at night. If I'm feeling a bit wobbly I'll throw an extra one in during the day too.

When should you practice mindfulness meditation? Being mindful is encouraged in every moment and every place.  Eventually you want to bring your newfound mindfulness into every aspect of your life: listening to your family and friends, exercising, driving, making love (thinking about what you're going to have for dinner instead is not very mindful!) I have found it particularly helpful to cure my insomnia. At 3 o'clock in the morning, all these fabulous creative thoughts would keep me awake for hours. Now I can fall back asleep by simply focussing on my breath. I am sleeping better now than I have for years.

There you go. A brief explanation of mindfulness and my experiences so far.  I do notice when I haven't been practicing. I get much more irritable and flustered by the little things. Fortunately you can choose the length of your meditations, so there always the opportunity to do a quick five minute reset. Give it a go. You might actually enjoy it, let alone reap many, many health benefits. x