What Assisted Living Communities Should Know about 'Mindfulness'

Hint: mindfulness reduced stress and improves cognitive and immune functioning.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the process of bringing one's attention into the present moment, into the here and now. Being in the moment is different from thinking about what's going on in the moment In fact -- it's the absence of reflecting on or thinking about what's going on right now. It is the difference between merely observing an experience rather than actively participating in it.

Mindfulness is something anyone can learn. It's particularly valuable in assisted living communities because it can be achieved without regard to physical fitness or health conditions.

How Leaning Mindfulness Can Help the Elderly

Clinical studies have shown that engaging in mindfulness improves the quality of life by reducing stress. For example, recent studies with healthy individuals have demonstrated that mindfulness training strengthens aspects of attention, increases immune system functioning, helps with pain management, and improves sleep.

Practicing mindfulness can improve working memory, which is the basis for almost all higher cognitive functions. This is of special interest for the elderly and assisted living providers who work with them because it is the higher cognitive functions that decline with age.

A study led by the University of Pennsylvania looked at the effect of mindfulness training on U.S. military personnel preparing for deployment to Iraq. Understandably, the anticipation of going into combat causes a high degree of stress.

The study found that the more time participants spent engaging in daily mindfulness exercises the better their mood and working memory (the cognitive term for complex thought, problem solving and conscious control of emotions).

Mindfulness Training Exercises Can Augment and Possibly Replace Exercise in the Elderly

Researchers have long known that staying physically fit, maintaining a positive and optimistic outlook, and staying socially active is important not only for successful aging but throughout the life span (see How to Facilitate Recreation and Activities for the Elderly). However, while assisted living communities emphasize physical activities for their residents, physical activities can become difficult, even painful, during the aging process. In those cases where exercise is difficult or not possible in an assisted living environment, mindfulness training exercises may be a great alternative to physical exercise in terms of reducing stress.

What is Mindfulness Training?

Mindfulness training goes back at least 2500 years to the time of Siddhārtha Gautama, a spiritual teacher from India who founded Buddhism. Buddha’s insight was that a mind fully in the present, not looking back at the past or forward to the future, automatically calms both the mind and body, and modern research has solidly confirmed this relationship.

Modern day mindfulness exercises help to focus the mind on some aspect of what’s happening right now. This includes meditation, yoga, Qigong (a Chinese practice that uses breathing, meditation, affirmations, and positive visualizations) or gentle Tai Chi movements.

In sum then, as assisted living residents grow older, they experience a decline in their physical function and therefore in their ability to exercise and fight stress. Learning to practice mindfulness, however, can be a highly effective non-physical solution to managing stress and improving overall health and mood. If assisted living residents can engage in both exercise and mindfulness training, all the better!

Resources

Dr. David Granet, M.D., UCSD School of Medicine talks to Dr. Steven D. Hickman, director of the UCSD Center for Mindfulness about the health benefits of mindfulness training: