Here’s the Science

Did you know that Mindfulness isn’t just about dealing with stress? Mindfulness literally rewires your brain.

You can actually extinguish unhelpful synaptic connections and increase your grey matter and create new connections in new areas of the brain. Scientists call this neuro-plasticity, your brain is not fixed or static it is ever changing and you can consciously change your brain and take control of how your mind works. Mindfulness actually goes way beyond what research has discovered but here’s what is known so far. 

Mindfulness increases the grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a structure located deep inside the forehead, behind the brain’s frontal lobe. The ACC is associated with self-regulation, meaning the ability to purposefully direct attention and behaviour, suppress inappropriate knee-jerk responses, and switch strategies flexibly. Mindfulness develops an area of the brain associated with emotions and emotional regulation. It doesn’t stop you feeling emotions, but gives you the mental space to deal with them in a healthy way, it won’t protect you from the up’s and down and the challenges of life but it will develop areas of the brain so that you can deal with them effectively and make clear choices rather than being prone to reaction. In addition to self-regulation, the ACC is associated with learning from past experience to support optimal decision-making. Scientists point out that the ACC may be particularly important in the face of uncertain and fast-changing conditions.

The hippocampus, is another region of the brain that’s showed increased amounts of grey matter in the brains of our mindfulness practitioners. This seahorse-shaped area is buried inside the temple on each side of the brain and is part of the limbic system, a set of inner structures associated with emotion and memory. It is covered in receptors for the stress hormone cortisol, and studies have shown that it can be damaged by chronic stress, contributing to a harmful spiral in the body. Indeed, people with stress-related disorders like depression and PTSD tend to have a smaller hippocampus. All of this points to the importance of this brain area in resilience and dealing with stress

These findings are just the beginning of the story. Neuroscientists have also shown that practising mindfulness affects brain areas related to perception, body awareness, pain tolerance, emotion regulation, introspection, complex thinking, insight, emotional intelligence and our sense of self.

In short, Mindfulness makes you resilient, helps you overcome negative emotions, deal with stress, helps you to override dysfunctional thinking patterns; Mindfulness helps you to make clear rational decisions and puts you back in control of your life, whatever it throws at you.