Food for Thought #5 18-19: Mindfulness and Health

Yesterday afternoon I went for an early dinner to a lovely Italian restaurant in D1, 4 P Pizza, the food was good. If you like experimenting with tastes they have some odd choices like Camembert ice cream. A couple of Israeli  tourists sat at the table next to us and a conversation sparked up over the beer I was drinking and moved to be about their trip to Vietnam and then more about who they were back in Isreali. It turned out that the young lady was a neuroscientist and undertaking some ground breaking research regarding the impact of stress on cancer and its impact on metastasis in cancer cells. It was a very interesting conversation. You may be asking yourself why is Adrian waffling on about this in his Food for Thought? Well it turns out that the research that this young lady is involved in is now quite advanced and they are carrying out human tests on drugs that can reduce stress for cancer patients. However, her team of scientists has moved on to research the impact of mindfulness on stress reduction and consequently on metastasis of cells. Their findings are already proving very interesting and could mean that we may soon have even more scientific proof that mindfulness and in particular meditation reduces the risk of cancer in the first place, as well as reducing metastasis of cells after operations and chemotherapy.

Mindfulness is one of our areas of focus this year on our strategic plan so getting to know as much about its benefits is important for all of us. hence this weeks I am sharing three short(ish) video with you that stress the importance of mindfulness and building it into our regular routines. 

This 3 minute video builds on the conversation last evening and explains the science as to why mindfulness is good for us.

In this video (6 minutes) Daniel Goleman highlights how quickly the benefits of mindfulness can impact our health and well being. 

I'd like to end this Food for Thought on the healing powers of mindfulness with this 6 minute Jon Kabat-Zinn talk where he explains why the cultivation of 'moment to moment, non-judgmental awareness' can be a powerful antidote to worry, fear or depression. as He ends with a quote that fully supports why it is so important that we engage every student in mindfulness so that it becomes a natural response to challenges and that they "Learn how to in habit being to such a degree that the doing flows out of being"

There is overwhelming evidence from renowned thinkers that what we are doing with our students will empower them and allow them to take better control of their lives in the future.



Added extra: Impact of loving kindness meditation that we have done at school by Daniel Goleman. In this brief talk from Big Think Goleman makes some very interesting observations as he suggests that doing mindfulness changes who you are, making you kinder, more empathetic and happier. Wouldn't we like that for everyone oin our community and around the world? It is almost the perfect video to explain why mindfulness/ meditation is so important at ISHCMC and for the future.