BY: ALEXANDRIA LEE
To relieve stress, some smoke, others work out, and many choose the comforting bath, nap or meal. However, few follow a page out of a book from Monica in Friends by performing household chores for the pleasure of unwinding. But the next time you’re stuck with the burden of dirty dishes from the party you hosted, think about using them for your mental detox.
A new study offers the advice that “while washing the dishes, one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes,” which is an excerpt from Buddhist author Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975). The practice of mindfulness is paying close attention to the internal and external details of what you are doing as it occurs. Observation is done at a distance and without judgment.
The practice of mindfulness is paying close attention to the internal and external details of what you are doing as it occurs.
Mindfulness is commonly used in meditation, where one self-regulates themselves to either focus on their own “sensations, thoughts and emotions,” or on background sights, sounds and other senses. Through focusing on the present, intrusive thoughts are discarded and forgotten.
And it works, too: in 1995, researchers found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy prevented the “relapse and recurrence in patients with a history of three or more episodes of depression.”
“while washing the dishes, one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.” Mindfulness involves people regulating themselves to either focus on their own “sensations, thoughts and emotions,” or on background sights, sounds and other senses.
What does doing dirty dishes have to do with it? (Say that ten times fast.) The new study, which was published in the October edition of academic journal Mindfulness, had half of their group of 51 participants read Hanh’s mindful excerpt, and the other half read a descriptive excerpt. The study found that focusing one’s attention on “smelling the soap, feeling the water temperature and touching the dishes” increased participants’ feelings of inspiration by 25%, as well as lowered nervousness levels by 37%.
Those that didn’t perform the chore consciously did not gain any benefits from it, except maybe for their clean plates. As for other household tasks, there is a possibility that they will prove therapeutic in the future as well. “Sweeping and garden tending are potential study ideas,” said co-author Adam Hanley, who is a doctoral candidate at Florida State University, to Medical News Today. “And, as household chores are seemingly endless, there is no shortage of potential research directions.”
Those that didn’t perform the chore consciously did not gain any benefits from it, except maybe for their clean plates. As for other household tasks, there is a possibility that they will prove therapeutic in the future as well.
Image sources: huffpost.com, valleyparentmagazine.com, metrohealth.net
