Mindfulness is the practice of paying steady, consistent attention to your experience in the present moment—including being aware of your body and its sensations, your thoughts, your emotions, and your surroundings. The mindful attitude is accepting and nonjudgmental. You allow your experience to be exactly as it is, whatever it is, without resistance.
Mindfulness is ancient, with roots in the meditative practices of Buddhism from 2,500 years ago. But its pedigree is also modern, with thousands of scientific studies showing many health benefits, like reducing stress, easing anxiety and depression, improving focus and concentration, relieving insomnia, managing chronic pain, and lowering high blood pressure.
A new wave of scientific research offers yet another benefit: Mindfulness can help you make behavioral changes, like starting and sticking with regular exercise. And regular exercise is one of the best ways to deal with chronic health problems like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer, cognitive decline, and depression. In fact, new research shows that combining mindfulness with exercise increases the benefits of both activities.
The many benefits of mindfulness
A recent scientific paper published in the journal Mental and Physical Activity reviewed 35 other scientific studies on combining mindfulness and physical activity and found many benefits. As you probably know from direct experience, an exercise routine can be hard to start and hard to stick with. Mindfulness, the paper showed, cultivates the psychological traits that allow you to exercise regularly.
Facing failure with persistence
According to surveys, nearly half of us give up on our fitness goals within the first month of setting them. Maybe you have a rigid idea of what an exerciser looks like, and that’s not you. Maybe you feel you’ve tried and failed before, and it’s not worth trying again. Or maybe you’re motivated to begin with, but as soon as you hit your first obstacle—like a missed session or a bout of illness—you give up. Mindfulness promotes a more resilient, healthier habit of thinking and feeling that allows you to be human, with all your limitations and faults, and therefore allows you to persist in the face of failures and setbacks.
For example, a common mindfulness exercise—suitable for beginners and advanced meditators alike—is to sit comfortably and follow your breath for five breaths, counting “one” while inhaling, “two” while exhaling, and so on. When you reach 10 (the end of five breaths), you start again.
It sounds simple. But it’s very difficult. Many people find that they rarely go a full cycle of five breaths without getting distracted by thoughts. But regular, daily practice—even for five to 10 minutes—teaches you that you can get distracted and return to the task without feeling upset or angry (or without feeling resistance to your anger and upset).
Over time, you get used to these small failures, and you persist in spite of them. In that way, you learn to deal with the failures of exercise and simply persist with 20 to 30 minutes (or more) of exercise a couple of times a week.
Not playing the blame game
Mindfulness also promotes nonjudgment and acceptance, which helps you let go of feelings of self-blame (“I should have never let myself get so out of shape.” “I’ll never be good at exercise.”) that sometimes come up when you’re trying to start a new exercise routine. When you’re more accepting and less judgmental of your so-called shortcomings, it’s easier to build healthy habits.
Overcoming discomfort
One reason it’s difficult to start an exercise routine is that you may have to deal with the minor physical aches and pains that happen when you’re pushing your body out of its comfort zone. (If you have acute pain, stop exercising, and see a doctor.)
In mindfulness, you learn that all physical and emotional states are temporary, and you’re less concerned about them. You just observe them coming and going, like clouds passing through the sky. In other words, mindfulness helps you reframe discomfort as something temporary that is occurring because you’re trying to be active, rather than a problem you can’t overcome.
Breaking through boredom
Mindfulness adds detail and definition to your experience. It helps you notice what is going on inside and around you. By learning to see more detail, mindfulness makes exercise more interesting. You realize that no two exercise sessions are the same—even if you’re walking around the same block. Maybe today you notice the color of the changing leaves, or the difference in temperature, or your distinct state of mind, be it peaceful or upset.
Recognizing benefits
Perhaps you’ve stopped exercising in the past because it didn’t seem to be doing you much good. Mindfulness helps you notice that you’re improving, which builds self-efficacy, the sense that you can do what you’ve set out to do. Self-efficacy is particularly important in the early stages of forming an exercise habit, when you may feel weak and out of shape. When you practice mindfulness, you connect with your present-time mental and physical state, allowing you to see more clearly how you’re doing—and notice improvements as they’re happening.
Perhaps last month you were out of breath when you climbed the stairs, but now you’re not. Maybe you felt sluggish and weak after most of your exercise sessions, but now you feel pleasantly tired and happy. Mindfulness helps you notice what’s happening.
An exercise-based mindfulness routine
Try this five- to 10-minute mindfulness routine before your next exercise session. Sit upright in a comfortable position. Take five deep breaths to center yourself in the present moment. Close your eyes, and perform what mindfulness calls a “body scan,” an exercise in which you pay attention to parts of your body and bodily sensations in a gradual sequence, from feet to head. Starting at your feet, notice any sensations you feel. Slowly move your focus up to other parts of your body—your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, and so on. Spend a little time at each part. If your mind starts to wander, gently guide it back to the part of the body you are focusing on. Observe without judgment or reaction—simply acknowledge each sensation as it arises.
When you reach the top of your head, end with a few deep breaths, and notice the state of your body as a whole. Do you feel energetic? Tired? Is your mind getting distracted with the past or the future?
Not only will a body scan help you cultivate mindfulness, but it will also help you understand what your limits may be on that day, and how you may want to tailor your workout to be better attuned to your body.
