Can mind fulness REALLY make you live longer?
. . . even if you’re a grumpy old cynic like Janet Street-Porter
The world’s leading mindfulness guru is ordering me to focus on the moment. Sitting in a London hotel suite, I am supposed to be thinking: ‘I am bigger than my thoughts.’ But actually I am thinking: ‘I wish the corn on my left foot was not so bloody annoying.’
To be honest, I would park mindfulness in the dump bin along with spiralisers and ‘clean’ cuisine if it wasn’t for one important claim: devotees say mindfulness can extend life expectancy by teaching us to combat negative thoughts and achieve inner peace.
I’m 70 this year, and short of cosmetic surgery, there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do to live as long as possible and stay looking young. My routine already includes a healthy diet (not too much red meat, loads of nuts, seeds, vegetables and no junk food), a walk every day, a game of tennis against a tough bloke once a week and as much work as possible.
In short, I’m pretty typical of my generation of active baby boomers.
I’ll admit my week goes by in a bit of a rush and I struggle to fit everything in to the time I’ve allocated, I have a bit of a short fuse and can’t stand delays or waffling time-wasters — so I was concerned to read recently that impatient people could age faster than those who are laid-back.
Researchers in Singapore studied more than 1,000 people, giving them tests to deter-mine how impatient they were and taking blood samples to analyse their DNA. The people who sounded like me were found to be most at risk from age-related illnesses, regardless of wealth or social status.
One key factor was thought to be the stress involved with constantly making hasty decisions. This is when I decided to consider revising my opinion on mindfulness — the art of sitting perfectly still, putting agendas and negative thoughts to one side, and passively spending a short amount of time every day focusing on the ‘now’.
It’s a highly fashionable form of meditation, a bit like yoga without the need to strike a pose or get sweaty in a room full of devotees.
Fans claim it not only calms them down, it can also treat depression and boost creativity. I’d dismissed it as a fad, slightly narked that every time I picked up a paper there was a news story about the positive effects of mindfulness — even claims it could strengthen the immune system, reduce anxiety and improve our relationships. Really?
I thought it was just a new version of our previous obsessions with alternative therapies such as fasting. But there seems to be no stopping its world domination. A New study claims that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) can be as useful as antidepressant drugs, with no negative side-effects.
According to experts, people suffering from depression are 30per cent less likely to suffer a relapse in the next year if they spend time each day practising mindfulness exercises.
I’ve been studying the bestselling book on the subject, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide To Finding Peace In A Frantic world, co-written by Mark williams, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford University and former director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre.
On the book’s cover are enthu-siastic endorsements from Goldie hawn and Ruby wax about how it will change your life. But can this really be true?
how can sitting still for 20 minutes, placing two feet firmly on the ground and emptying your mind really help with normal everyday anxieties, high blood pressure and low moods?
why not just take the dog for a walk, pour yourself a glass of wine and listen to The Archers? (Maybe not the latter, now that helen is in a prison cell charged with attempted murder and about to give birth). If I can’t sleep, I simply replay one of my favourite walks in my head. Or I count backwards from 100 very slowly, thinking every number twice on the in and out breaths.
I tried yoga (that’s where I pinched the breathing idea from), but stopped because I became over-ambitious and strained my back, plus I didn’t like the crimpy curls the yoga teacher had (as well as her bland smiley face).
So I am in two minds about mindfulness. I’m a deep cynic about whether simple relaxation techniques can extend life or help cure potentially terminal illnesses — surely, genetics must play a role?
On the other hand, everyone I meet is a fan. Last week, I was recording a television comedy show and two of the performers had a mindfulness app on their mobile phones — so there you go!
To put the claims to the test, I arranged to spend a morning with Professor williams to try some of the techniques.
he’s a charming, fit-looking bloke. If mindfulness
stops the ageing process, it’s certainly worked for him — he doesn’t look wrinkly enough to be 63, and he has a calm, open disposition in the face of a barrage of Janet Street-Porter questions.
Professor Williams explains the Oxford MBCT course takes eight weeks, with a two-hour session each week. The rest of the time, participants have to practise each day at home using his manual and CDs.
I don’t have to sit cross-legged, though the technique is derived from Buddhist meditation.
I must gradually learn to focus on the ‘moment’, abandoning each and every bit of mental clutter that pops in and out of my head, and then I will see clearly.
The founder of modern-day mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed a mindfulnessbased stress reduction (MBSr) programme in the U.S. in the late Seventies to help patients with chronic pain, high blood pressure, cancer and cardiovascular disease. MBCT — which ruby Wax studied after she suffered from chronic depression — was adapted from MBSr in the Nineties. And the National Institute for Health and Clinical excellence now recommends mindfulness therapy sessions for people who have experienced three or more episodes of depression — so if you’re lucky, you might even get a course on the NHS.
But I want to know, will I live any longer as a result? Professor Williams says that ‘living in the now’ for one hour a day gives a better perspective on what’s happening the rest of the time.
Coming out of the mindfulness meditation, he says, I will ‘wake up’ and ‘notice the life that I have, and be more in control of it’. Ideally, I should be doing it for an hour, but a one-minute exercise (see box) can also help to calm the mind.
He orders me to stop thinking ‘what if’ about everything, to cast aside all my preoccupations with negative thoughts, to ‘gently manage’ my mind.
Of course, the main aim when I’ve closed my eyes is not to start a shopping list or create a running order for the next day.
As Professor Williams explains: ‘Focus your full attention on your breath as it flows in and out of your body. you’ll come to realise thoughts come and go of their own accord; that you are not your thoughts.
‘you can watch as they appear in your mind, seemingly from thin air, and watch again as they disappear, like a soap bubble bursting.
‘When unhappiness or stress hover overhead, rather than taking them personally, learn to treat them as if they were black clouds in the sky, observe them with friendly curiosity as they drift past.
‘Mindfulness allows you to catch negative thought patterns before they tip you into a downward spiral. It begins the process of putting you back in control.’
I drift in and out of consciousness during my session, and over the next few hours feel energised and positive.
BUT long term, I will confess, I found mindfulness of limited use. I would not denigrate it as a technique. I know ruby Wax well — years ago we cowrote a TV series that I produced — and I can confirm she was extremely difficult back then, but these days is a different person.
She’s absolutely genuine in her enthusiasm for mindfulness and it’s clearly changed her life for the better.
And I can see how it could be a real benefit to anyone who cares for others. Professor Williams says carers find it difficult to switch off and often neglect their own mental well-being.
Mindfulness provides a respite, giving you back a sense of worth, a break from routine, he says.
But I’m not someone who suffers from negative thoughts or serious depression. My worries are trivial compared with most people’s.
I could get worked up over why I haven’t planted that tray of dahlias I bought last week, but I’m not stressing out about whether I’ve got any friends.
My partner says I already live in the moment all day long — I can’t even remember who I upset yesterday or what went wrong.
I get up each day in a positive frame of mind, and my only weakness is a tendency to overorganise everyone else.
So I will use some mindfulness techniques, but I doubt they’ll add a year to my life.
Changing to one small glass of wine might achieve more, but there’s no chance of that.
A PRACtICAL Guide to Finding Peace In A Frantic World by Mark Williams and danny Penman, published by Little, Brown, is out now.