Why is mindfulness so important right now?

I feel mindfulness is increasingly important in the modern societies we have now because we seem to be in “doing mode” nearly all of the time. Work is creeping in to our homes lives with working at home and being contactable anywhere. There are apps and feeds designed to keep us scrolling. The constant 24 hour a day news cycle who make money from people watching and clicking.

This constant stream of content (often designed to irritate, or even enrage us, to keep us coming back, interacting more and making companies more money from advertising...) also starts to trigger out "threat" mechanism. This overrides many of the brain functions that make us caring, loving and understanding. This is overridden when we are pushed into a threat or "fight or flight" state more and more of the time. This has hugely negative impacts for our brains, our bodies and a whole load of health outcomes.

More and more evidence is building to show that being in “doing mode” or "threat more" most of the time is bad for our bodies and minds; linked to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, digestive complaints, mental health conditions and even some forms of cancers and pain and fatigue conditions.

Our bodies and brains are not evolved for this sort of “always on” life. Going back just 20 or 30 years the news would arrive daily in a newspaper and work would stay in the place of work. Going back 100 years, most peoples evening would have been gloriously relaxing, as there just wasn’t as much to do!

It’s no wonder we have increasing numbers of people struggling with those health conditions and challenges I mentioned. Society and culture has changed massively and our brains and bodies are still the same. In fact this new culture we find ourselves in is changing out brains to be more reactive and easy to upset or anger. The great news is that mindfulness can help reverse those changes and bring us back to a more peaceful, kind, and natural equilibrium.