Improving Health Through Mindfulness

Stressors are common when managing chronic health issues. Managing these issues while undergoing transplantation may further contribute to psychological stress and impact quality of life.  Mindfulness, a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, can assist in improving your overall health and quality of life while helping you deal with stress throughout the transplant experience.

The first line of defense against emotional stress is convincing the body to relax again and improving your psychological flexibility.  Mindfulness helps our reaction to stress by helping our nervous system reset itself while also allowing one to become an “objective observer” by enabling you to turn your attention inwards, viewing thoughts in a nonjudgmental way.   

When we are stressed, our sympathetic nervous system, the “fight or flight” system, allows the body to function under stress by releasing hormones called adrenaline and cortisol.  These stress hormones cause the heart to beat faster, breathing to increase, and blood sugar levels to rise. Mindfulness practices can assist in developing a healthier stress response by allowing our parasympathetic system, commonly referred to as the “rest and digest” system, to reassert itself bringing the body back to a state of balance.

Mindfulness practices have been shown to decrease depressive symptoms, improve general health and quality of life, decrease burnout, and facilitate adaptive responses to daily stressors.  Some mindfulness based interventions include breathing techniques, mindfulness meditation, mantras, body scans, and Hatha Yoga.  

Mindful breathing is an excellent way to improve focus, expand awareness, and engage in the world around you and can be practiced anytime and anywhere.  Some examples are counting each breath you take, silently saying the number as you exhale or balloon belly breathing, which involves imagining a balloon inside your abdomen that gradually expands as you breathe in and deflates as you breathe out.

Mindfulness Meditation raises awareness of the present moment while allowing observation of how one thinks. Mantras: a sound, word, or phrase can be used as a tool to improve concentration during meditation. Additionally, body scans, a type of meditation, can also be beneficial when experiencing stress. This practice involves paying attention to parts of the body and bodily sensations in a gradual sequence from head to toe.

Hatha Yoga, one of the many variations of yoga, is a more physical type of yoga that unites the body, mind, and breath.  This practice focuses on breath control exercises followed by yoga postures and ends in a resting period. Hatha yoga can be modified to fit your physical ability and a gentle healing practice can be chosen. 

Mindfulness practices have been shown to enhance overall health by managing symptoms of certain medical conditions, particularly ones that are exacerbated by stress.  There are many stressors that are beyond our control, however, we can influence how our bodies and minds react to stress. By engaging in mindfulness-based practices that assist in improving your moment to moment awareness of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations and calmly acknowledging and accepting their presence you can take steps to improve your health. 

• by Tara B. Reen, LCSW, CCTSW

  Kidney and Liver Transplant Social Worker,

  RUSH University Medical Center