All In Your Mind: How mindful and meditative practices are gaining mainstream momentum
Techniques help combat struggles with stress and mental health
As mental health becomes a growing concern in communities across the world, many people are turning to the techniques of mindfulness and meditation, which they say have practical applications from the classroom to the workplace.
Mindful and meditative practices come in many different forms and serve different purposes but, essentially, they are intended to increase awareness of one’s own mental and emotional state. Both are used to help manage stress and mental health.
One in five Canadians experience a mental illness or addiction problem in any given year, according to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, but just half are willing to tell friends or co-workers — compared to 72 per cent who would mention a diagnosis of cancer.
A ‘cleaning process’
For Aravindhan Ravindran, a father in Vancouver, mindfulness and meditation practices were a lifeline when his teenage son developed an infection on his spinal cord and became paralyzed from the waist down.
“We would go out and meditate every day and do a meditation called rejuvenation process, or cleaning process,” Ravindran said.
Ravindran knew he couldn’t heal his son but he could decide how to handle the intense emotions of a life-changing event.
“That immediately would make us feel light and clear — or at least not be bogged down by any worries,” he said.
Science behind the practice
Cortland Dahl, a research scientist for the Centre for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says there is a scientific reason that meditation helped Ravindran.
“As a skill, we can actually train the mind and train ourselves to intentionally notice the positives in any particular interaction or moment,” Dahl said.
It’s a skill that anyone can develop, he emphasized.
“The skill is simply knowing what’s going on in your own mental and emotional state in the moment,” Dahl said.
Hear more about the science behind why mindfulness works:
Mindfulness in the classroom
According to Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, an applied developmental psychologist and professor at UBC, the best time to start learning these skills is during the “sweet spot” of brain development, between grades four to seven.
“Being able to focus your attention actually helps develop something we call the prefrontal cortex,” she said.
“These exercises help to develop these muscles of your brain, so to speak, of being able to better focus your attention.”
Schonert-Reichl is also a leading researcher behind the Mind Up program,which teaches kids how their brains work and uses mindful practices to improve learning.
Implementing the Mind Up program has a visible impact in the classroom, according to one B.C. educator, who says kids can process their thoughts and emotions better when they understand what is physiologically happening in their bodies.
“After the first lesson, if [the students] are on the soccer field and they get tripped up and they get angry, they’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s my amygdala [a set of neurons in the brain] telling me to either flight, flee or freeze,'” said Jonathan Weresch, the principal of Grenfell Elementary School.
“That allows them to process it and think about another option of reacting.”
Hear more about how the Mind Up program is being used in local elementary schools:
Mental health in the workplace
Stress doesn’t stop after graduating from school.
The CAMH also released statistics stating that 500,000 Canadians miss work each week due to mental health-related issues.
That’s why companies are now starting to bring mindful practices into the workplace.
Wendy Quan saw the mental health benefits after incorporating mindfulness meditation into her daily routine when she was battling cancer.
After returning to work, her colleagues noticed the shift in her stress levels and wanted the same thing for themselves.
“Every time I sat down I’d come out of that time — whether is was for five minutes or an hour — feeling more calm, and more grounded, and that I had the strength, I could do this,” Quan said.
Quan later founded The Calm Monkey, a mindfulness and meditation training school, where she teaches facilitators to conduct mindfulness sessions for their employees.
Hear more from some of the participants of Quan’s mindfulness meditation sessions:
The skills not only help decrease employees’ stress levels but also, according to surveys conducted by Quan, lead to better decision-making and improved efficiency.
Misconceptions
While mindful and meditative practices have the potential to help manage stress and mental health, some experts caution that each person may react differently.
Nicholas Van Dam, a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Melbourne, said it’s important to be aware of the misconceptions of mindful practices.
“The concern is really people committing to retreats or intensive practices on their own, just thinking that this will solve any problem, without talking to a psychologist, psychiatrist or mental health professional,” he said.
Hear more about common misconceptions about mindfulness and meditation, as well as some cautions from Nicholas Van Dam:
This story is part of a radio series called All In Your Mind, which aired on CBC’s On The Coast Sept. 24-28, and was produced by Cass Lucke, a recipient of Langara College’s Read-Mercer Fellowship
Photo by K.Ho Black History Month award winner repays her community
Joy Gyamfi advocates for Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community
Reported by Cass Lucke
Fuelled by motivation to give back to her community, Joy Gyamfi radiates compassion through every aspect of her life.
Her contributions to Black Lives Matter Vancouver and her work at Gordon Neighbourhood House (GNH) prompted Gyamfi’s boss at GNH Paul Taylor, to nominate her for the Black History Month proclamation. Gyamfi was shocked when Taylor informed her that she had not only been nominated, but along with a few other recipients, had won the proclamation and was expected to accept the award in the beginning of February at Vancouver City Hall from Mayor Gregor Robertson himself.
“I’ve always known that whatever I end up doing in my life, I want to be able to help people in some way because I’ve benefited a lot from the help that I’ve received when I was growing up,” Gyamfi said.
Learning to embrace life’s challenges
After losing her father when she was 10 years old and watching her mother endure discrimination from her South Vancouver community, Gyamfi said there were times in her life where she wasn’t sure she would live to her current age of 20.
“When you face a lot of adversity growing up, it makes you empathize with others a lot more than other people who haven’t, and it’s motivating” Gyamfi said.
Black Lives Matter was began in New York after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder while the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed. It was a response to anti-Black racism and has circulated to various parts of the world, including Vancouver.
Recognizing the call
Having attended the launch of BLM in March, 2016, Gyamfi’s desire to give back to her community prompted her to instantly reach out and become a par. Since then, she has planned events for BLM which run in solidarity with black communities across the world, support black communities here in B.C. and lift up black queer and trans people, and for GNH.
Taylor said her humble and tactful presence while volunteering at GNH in the summer of 2016 probed him to hire Gyamfi as GNH’s Young Ideas Program Assistant, a position formulated specifically for Joy.
In an email, the Young Ideas program coordinator Jim Balakshin said, “Joy is a thoughtful, conscientious, and enthusiastic contributor at GNH, and [he enjoys] the time that [he gets] to work alongside her to support programs for the west end community.”
Gyamfi devotes Tuesday and Thursday evenings to connecting young Vancouverites through GNH’s low cost communal events, and she said she loves every minute.
“It’s really nice to be able to say that the purpose of my job is to build community and to foster new relationships,” Gyamfi said.
“I’m really glad I got through [the hardships]. I’m in university, working in a job I love, volunteering with a group that shares my passions; when I was younger, I could not have possibly imagined doing all of these things,” Gyamfi said.
CassLucke 