Mindfulness: A Pervasive Impact
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HOLLY FIRFER: Living with chronic pain is not easy. And for many, on top of the pain there IS the stress of an ongoing illness. But there is something out there that might help.
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STEPHANIE SWANN: Beginning to let go of wherever we've been, letting go of whatever is coming next, and beginning to bring our mind here.
HOLLY FIRFER: Mindfulness.
HELEN VANTINE: It means being in the present moment with acceptance, and without resistance, and without trying to control the way things are. Letting things arise as they arise, and not getting into judgmental mind states about it.
HOLLY FIRFER: The idea is to stop for a moment of reflection and relaxation to reduce stress.
STEPHANIE SWANN: Stress is hugely related to our reactivity. And when we learn and train our mind to be aware and to be attentive, we actually reduce our reactivity and thereby reduce our stress.
HOLLY FIRFER: The Atlanta Mindfulness Institute offers an eight-week course in which participants meet for 2 and 1/2 hours a week to learn the basics.
HELEN VANTINE: This is training the mind, and is training the mind to observe the mind and to really begin to understand that there is a whole set of thoughts that we can be thinking about that are just creating stress. We are training our mind to actually be able to learn to drop into the present moment on a regular basis. And to be able to observe our thoughts and to be able to shape our mind so that we're not constantly in the story stressing ourselves out. But we begin to let that go.
HOLLY FIRFER: Participants are taught to focus on their breathing, acknowledge any stressors, and then put them out of their mind. Experts say when we react to something out of our control, we tend to dwell on it, sending all of our energy resources to the problem, real or created. And that can cloud your thinking and even predispose you to illness.
HELEN VANTINE: It wreaks havoc on the body. It raises the heart rate, it shunts blood away from the frontal cortex, which is where we do most of our high-level thinking and decision making. And we shut that off and we don't have that ability to think clearly. The immune system gets shut off during a chronic stress reaction. There's tremendous reactivity in the gut.
TODD VALENTINE: My stress is lower, and when my stress is lower, my immune system seems to work better, I get less sick. So I think that helps with health in that manner.
HOLLY FIRFER: With mindfulness, you can practice anywhere, at any time.
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Holly Firfer, CNN, Atlanta.