Mindfulness, or a heightened awareness of everything around us is usually done to help people cope with their anxiety. Surprisingly, the same technique can be used by pregnant moms to help them cope with the anxiety during birth, as well as cope with postpartum depression.
What exactly is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is defined as "awareness of our moment-to-moment experience," according to Dr. Steven Selchen, director of outpatient psychiatry at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
Additionally, Dr. Larissa Duncan, associate professor of human development and family studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison, hypothesized that mindfulness could potentially be a more natural solution for mothers who are suffering from anxiety during labor, as well as postpartum depression.
The mindfulness therapy program that midwife Nancy Bardacke created involves processes such as meditation, breathing exercises, walking meditation, and yoga. Pregnant women were asked to keep their minds just in the moment, instead of focusing on their contractions, or waiting for the next one.
Dr. Duncan adds that the benefits of mindfulness could extend well beyond pregnancy, "By using mindfulness to work with the contractions of labour, noticing they are temporary and there are spaces of ease in between, expectant parents learn a skill they can use later in parenting – working with their experiences of the baby crying or later toddler tantrums, with the same present moment awareness."
Practicing mindfulness during your pregnancy
Mindfulness came about as a practice over 2,500 years ago, as a part of Buddhist meditation. It helps deal with pain, anxiety, and also helps people deal with negative thoughts.
In order to practice mindfulness, it's important to stop thinking of anything except what's in the present. Any thoughts of what might happen in the future, or what happened earlier in the day, or in the week should be discarded, and all you need to focus on would be what's happening right now.
You can also pair it with meditation, yoga, and other forms of exercise in order to help you focus. It also keeps stress levels down, which is good for your baby, as anything you feel, your baby can feel to. So you need to always have good thoughts during your pregnancy so that your baby will always have positive thoughts.
For more information about mindfulness, you can watch the video below:
Sources: theguardian.com, theglobeandmail.com, mindful.org
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