Mindfulness During a Pandemic: Why It’s Important and How to Achieve It

It’s March. The pandemic is just starting and people are frantically buying toilet paper and disinfectants with such speed, that even Clorox can’t keep up.

Your mind is in a whirlwind of panic as you walk up and down the grocery store aisles looking for non-perishables, realizing that most items have already been swept off of the shelves. Feelings of sadness and hopelessness overcome you. You find yourself thinking: When will this be over? Will I get the coronavirus after this trip to the grocery store? In this article, we are going to examine several ways that one can achieve mindfulness during the pandemic and how it affects your brain on a biological level.

Breathe in…breathe out…breathe in…breathe out. What is mindfulness and what makes it so crucial to psychological well-being? Mindfulness is when one brings attention to what is happening to him or her here and now. One way that mindfulness can be achieved is through yoga or similar meditation techniques. Sometimes mindfulness can be confused with overthinking, but there is one key difference. When one overthinks, one replays scenarios over and over inside his or her brain without offering solutions to the problems, whereas mindfulness allows a person to spend time with his or her thoughts productively, analyzing what is bothering him or her and what can be done to help.

We are accustomed to living in a society, where our daily activities are influenced by our interactions with people, surrounded by family and friend groups in which we support each other in our good and bad times. The pandemic has been a continuously uncertain situation for us, where our daily activities are significantly disrupted due to social distancing, which has caused us to face a great deal of stress. This kind of stress over a long time can alter the structure of the human brain.

Most of the brain remains mysterious to us. Most of the brain activity occurs beneath our conscious awareness. We actually have very little control over how we behave, what we feel, and the thoughts we have. The part of the brain that deals with complex and conscious cognition is the newly evolved prefrontal lobe and is a premium exclusive to the human brain that makes us different from other animals. Despite that, the brain is like an iceberg, 90% submerged, and 10% on the surface, where the mysterious and unapproachable submerged portion represents the unconscious, and the visible portion represents the conscious. Contrary to popular belief, our behavior and emotions are unconscious. When a stressful situation arises, the old brain comes into action, and the hypothalamus and amygdala quickly respond to an unfavorable, worrisome, or stressful situation by releasing the stress hormone cortisol and adrenaline as part of the fight or flight response. The new brain functions to counteract the unconscious effects of the old brain with flexibility by controlling emotions and bringing calmness, but its effects are delayed and not as effective as that of the old brain.

The brain is also constantly changing throughout one’s lifetime and is affected by one’s thoughts and experiences. This is called Neuroplasticity. Our responses to different situations are also strongly influenced by the amount of neural connection present in parts of the brain that deal with either strong emotions or conscious awareness. Neural connections in the brain are strengthened when they are used more often and are weakened when they are not used enough and eventually disappear. This is the reason why daily activities like tying shoelaces and driving are effortless while an activity like assembling furniture feels difficult. With this being said, the more you respond negatively to unfavorable situations, the more you create stronger neural connections associated with negative emotions, and the more you become worried, irritable, or sad. Just like how our bodies can be changed to attain a desired shape through working out, the neural networks in our brains can be changed by practicing brain exercises or mindfulness.

Daily practice of mindfulness over a longer time can gradually change our brains by building concentration, attention, and focus and develop our conscious awareness in certain ways. It helps strengthen neural connections in the new brain and weaken them in the old brain so that we respond more consciously and with calmness to stressful situations and reduce our emotions to affect our actions.

By understanding the biology behind neuroplasticity and its effect on stress, it is surely easier to understand why each of us needs to take a break every once in a while to maintain our mental well-being. Next time you find yourself panicking in the middle of the grocery store, remember to take time out of your day for mindfulness. It relieves stress and helps your brain stay healthy. Stay safe everyone!