Coping with stress can be difficult if you don’t think you have the time or if you just don’t know how. Meditation is one coping mechanism that has been used for many years to manage stress. Since our phones are always readily available, mindfulness applications are becoming a popular way to take the time out of your day to deal with the stress.
A study was done at the University of London in 2018 to see if mindfulness phone applications have an effect on people’s everyday stress and well-being. The people in this study were chosen at random from two companies. Half of the employees practiced meditation through a mindfulness phone application called Headspace, while the other half of the employees did not meditate using the Headspace application so the researchers had a group to base their results off of. The employees that were chosen to practice meditation were offered 45 different guided audio meditations that were an average of 15 minutes each. The employees were asked to choose one meditation session per day and complete it.
The employees’ had their blood pressure tested at the beginning of the experiment to measure their everyday stress. They also filled out surveys about mental health issue like depression and anxiety, before they completed any meditation sessions. After eight weeks of using the Headspace application, the blood pressure and mental health measures were repeated. The researchers found that the people who used the application showed a decrease in self-measured workday blood pressure. The people who meditated also showed improvement in their mental health and overall well-being.
If you’re ever feeling stressed or like you have too much on your plate, download a mindfulness application, like Headspace, to your smartphone. Practicing meditation daily can improve your well-being and reduce stress, with potentially long-lasting benefits.
Written by Sydney Anonson
