Mindfulness an effective way to heal trauma: study

From PsyBlog:

Adults who were neglected or abused as children generally experience poorer physical health in later years.

A new study, though, finds that those who accept their moment-to-moment thoughts and feelings and live in the present, report superior levels of physical health as adults.

The conclusions come from the first ever study to look at the connection between mindfulness, childhood adversity and health….

…those with the highest levels of mindfulness were considerably more healthy, being 50% less likely to have multiple stress-related health conditions.

Even amongst those with the highest levels of childhood adversity, those that accepted their thoughts and feelings and paid attention to what was happening in the moment had the least stress-related conditions. (read more)

This has certainly been my experience as meditation and mindfulness both are foundational in my healing practices. Body based practices are critically important for me as well and often neglected in clinical circles it seems. In my experience it’s necessary in that many with trauma histories need to have a sense of embodiment before it’s possible to really be in the present and mindful of that which is happening now. It seems doing both more traditional meditation and body oriented mindfulness practices helps create that capacity.  For me those practices include mindful walking, yoga and ecstatic dance. See also: Trauma and the body

More:

• Trauma and PTSD collected info, commentary and links

• Posts on Mindfulness

• Meditation is the practice of learning to pay attention. That is all.