As the pace of life gets ever more frenetic, with everyone constantly plugged into technology, stress and its associated diseases are growing. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work reports that around 50 per cent of job absenteeism is caused by stress. Meanwhile, according to statistics from the Meridian Stress Management Consultancy, almost 180,000 people in the UK die every year from some form of stress-related illness.
Meditation and mindfulness are an effective way of breaking the stress cycle and fit naturally with health and fitness. Research from Rutgers shows that combining meditation with exercise (30 minutes each, twice a week) reduced the incidence of depressive symptoms by as much as 40 per cent in just two months. At the other end of the spectrum, meditation can also be used to enhance performance in many areas: athletically, at work and in relationships.
But however good the benefits, there are still a number of barriers to overcome: for many people, sitting calmly for 20 minutes without worrying about the to-do list or getting caught up in mental chatter is as inaccessible as a 5k run to someone who hasn’t exercised in years.
We look at some initiatives that are aiming to make meditation and mindfulness more accessible and take them further into the mainstream…