A University of Ottawa professor has combined scientific research and her personal experience to explore how to optimize cognitive abilities, be organized and set goals.
Professor Andra Smith, from the School of Psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences at uOttawa says mindfulness has allowed her students to achieve these skills while keeping “stress at bay.” She teaches the course [Neuroscience of Mindfulness: Neurons to Wellness.]
Here’s what she said in an interview with uOttawa about Mindfulness:
Why mindfulness?
Dr. Smith says after noticing a drop in student performance during the pandemic, she decided to use mindfulness as a tool in her class to bring stress levels and anxiety down.
“During COVID, I didn’t have the usual hands-on connection with students and noticed they were battling high stress levels and anxiety was impacting their performance. I wanted to give them tools to handle some of these stressors and their fear of the future. I had gained so much from my own mindfulness training that I knew they would benefit from learning why and how it works,” she said in the interview.
How did your students respond and what was achieved by introducing mindfulness to their class?
Not only homework exercises were given to students, but also they were asked to do mindfulness practices at the start and end of class, she says.
“One exercise was to have a mindful conversation, listening to listen, not to respond. This was eye-opening for students because they realized that they don’t really listen in a conversation without thinking about what their answer will be. It is a gift to give someone your full attention, and they felt it with this exercise and appreciated their relationships more afterwards,” Smith explained.
While students had tools to utilize to minimize stress, they learned that stress and anxiety “did not have to control them.”
“They could be in the driver’s seat and this made them more productive. For a professor it doesn’t get any better than hearing a student say that they implemented what they learned in class and that it enriched their lives,” Smith added.
How can people benefit from Mindfulness outside the classroom?
While mindfulness can minimize stress and improve cognitive ability, Smith cautions that it is not a replacement for treatment if you suffer from mental illness.
She recommends to use it gradually as a “supplement” to feel good.
“Mindfulness is a variety of practices so you can pick and choose what you like. It is really about attention and training those networks in the brain that allow us to stay focused and out of the pre-living and re-living narratives that we run so often,” Smith said.
“Being aware of how stress impacts our physiology can give us a jump start on countering its potential negative effects. If we can be in tune with our physiology, it gives us all kinds of information and cues that we then have control over.”
What scientific evidence did you find behind the effectiveness of mindfulness?
Scientifically speaking, Smith says, her research team has found significant changes in brain structure and function when using mindfulness.
The study also examines how the brain functions from a neuroscience lens.
“I was skeptical until I learned why and how mindfulness worked in the brain: the stress response; the evolution of our brains; the attention networks; the nervous systems and their interactions; the way in which stress hijacks our prefrontal cortex and how to counter that. Those were the academic and scientific features,” Smith added.
“Currently, we are working on an imaging study with pediatric concussion, and we hypothesize that mindfulness can help with emotion regulation and quality of life issues post-injury.”
