What Is More Effective For Improving Mental Well-being: Meditation Or Sports?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Mindfulness practice is an effective way to improve psychological well-being, but not always and not for everyone

Today, there is a clear understanding that mental health is an integral part of health in general. It is in a state of mental well-being that we are able to withstand stress, work productively, realize our abilities, and enjoy life. This is also important because the health of each of us affects the well-being of society as a whole.

There are many mental health improvement practices. For example, mindfulness meditation and relaxation techniques focus the mind on the moment of being “here and now” and teach you to enjoy the present moment without worrying about the past or the future.

Research has confirmed that mindfulness:

1. improves memory and increases gray matter * 1. SV can be called the arbiter of knowledge and abilities, not the only one, but playing a key role in information processing, spatial thinking and its connection with objects, and therefore, affecting memory, attention and speech;
2. helps to feel included in social connections * 2;
3. increases the level of happiness * 3;
4. enhances concentration4 and helps to cope with the “wandering of thoughts”, which 46.9% of respondents are exposed to * 5.

Roughly speaking, it's like a SRT for our mental well-being. Odndako recently there have been new views on the effectiveness of mindfulness in each case.

For example, a new study from the University of Cambridge found that focus may not work for everyone as a way to improve mental health. And even when it actually works, meditation may not be better than other activities, such as exercise.

The study published in PLOS Medicine presents the results of 136 trials in which people attended community-based mindfulness programs, such as in universities and workplaces. Participants completed questionnaires between one and six months after completing the programs to measure changes in their anxiety, depression, and mental well-being. In total, there were almost 12,000 participants, aged 18 to 73, from 29 different countries.

It turned out that most mindfulness programs did reduce the level of anxiety, depression and stress in people, as well as improve their well-being (however, more than 5% of the programs did not improve the mental health of the participants). However, mental activity did not improve mental health to a greater or lesser extent than other activities such as exercise.

Julieta Galante told The Telegraph that people shouldn't assume that focus will work for everyone. "We have much, much more evidence that physical and mental exercise is beneficial." For example, a 2018 study published in The Lancet Psychiatry found that people who exercise experience about a day and a half fewer mental health problems per month compared to those who do not exercise.

While a study in The Lancet found that all types of exercise were associated with improved mental health, popular team sports, cycling and physical education had the strongest link. The study also found that 45-minute sessions three to five times a week were most effective in improving psychological well-being.

Mindfulness is a great practice for improving your emotional well-being. But, you may have tried to practice mindfulness meditation more than once and postponed it for different reasons. Start exercising and enjoy what you are doing. A lot of scientific evidence and the experience of my clients confirm that physical activity is a reliable prevention of apathy and depression, and also significantly increases the ability to learn and process information.

Have you tried mindfulness practices? What is more effective for you - meditation or physical activity?

1 Hölzel et al. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191 (1), 36-43.

2 Hutcherson et al. (2008). Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion, 8 (5), 720.

3 Fredrickson et al. (2008). Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of personality and social psychology, 95 (5), 1045-1062.

4 Brewer et al. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108 (50), 20254-20259.

5 Killingsworth & Gilbert (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330 (6006), 932-932.