Chapter 14: Mindfulness in Physical Activity

Chapter Overview

Why be Mindful While Moving?

What is Mindful Movement?

Experiences During Mindful Movement

Affective and Emotional Experiences

Embodied Experiences

Body Connection and Comfort

Inhabiting the Body as a Subjective Site

Outcomes of Mindful Movement

Trait Mindfulness

Mental Health

Healthy Behaviors

Is Mindful Movement Motivating?

Key Details of Self-Determination Theory Explained

Theoretical Explanation for the Role of Mindfulness

Moving Beyond Theory: What Does the Research Show?

Other Important Motivational Factors: How Pleasant is Moving?

Moving from Motivation to Behavior: Mindfulness and Physical Activity Behavior

Mindfulness as an Intervention to Increase Physical Activity

Conclusion

Learning Exercises

 

Mindfulness in Physical Activity

Chapter Overview

  • Mindfulness refers to being fully present in the moment; attending to the sights, sounds, thoughts, and physical sensations as they come and go.
  • Research findings show the potential for mindfulness to support more pleasurable exercise experiences and exhibit more positive embodiment.
  • Mindfulness also fits well with current theories of exercise motivation and is linked with key motivation variables such as need satisfaction and autonomous forms of motivation.
  • Mindfulness-based interventions even suggest that helping individuals develop mindfulness skills may be an effective strategy for increasing physical activity behavior.

Why be Mindful While Moving?

  • Current definitions of mindfulness tend to include two key parts:
  • The first part relates to awareness of and attention to present-moment experience, rather than thinking about the past or the future (Bishop et al., 2004; Brown & Ryan, 2003).
  • The second part of the definition relates to attitude or the characteristics of present-oriented attention. It is not enough to simply be present. One must also be open, accepting, nonjudgmental and even curious about the things that are passing in and out of awareness
  • Higher levels of trait mindfulness predict higher state mindfulness, but they have also demonstrated independent effects when predicting certain outcome variables (Brown & Ryan, 2003).

What is Mindful Movement?

  • During mindful movement, participants intentionally bring their attention to the experience of moving their body with an attitude of acceptance and nonjudgment that is characteristic of mindfulness more generally (Asztalos et al., 2012).
  • This might include their breath, physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions. Moving mindfully requires deliberate, conscious attention be brought to the experience of moving.
  • More recently, researchers have dived more deeply into the psychological processes that occur when individuals are moving mindfully.

Experiences During Mindful Movement

  • When moving mindfully, individuals not only direct their attention to their present-moment experience but are also open and accepting of whatever emerges in that experience.
  • Alternatively, when individuals engage in physical activity and are not being mindful, they might be thinking about the past or the future, judging some aspect of their experience (e.g., pain, ability, performance), thinking about what they look like while exercising, contemplating their exercise goals, or listening to music.
  • Researchers are interested in how being fully present in one’s body while engaging in physical activity impacts one’s experiences while moving.
  • Two areas that have received recent attention are the degree of pleasure experienced and how one experiences or inhabits their body while moving.

Affective and Emotional Experiences

  • In several studies, researchers have observed a relationship between mindful states and affective responses during physical activity.
  • In a study testing the effects of mindful walking, participants’ state mindfulness and positive and negative emotions were assessed multiple times a day using experience sampling methodology (Gotink et al., 2016). Results showed that state mindfulness and emotions experienced during mindful walking prospectively enhanced each other in an upward spiral.
  • That is, state mindfulness in one moment positively predicted positive emotions in the next moment sampled. Similarly, positive emotions positively predicted state mindfulness in the next moment sampled.
  • Overall, being attentive to the experience of moving in a nonjudgmental and accepting way appears to support positive affective and emotional experiences.

Embodied Experiences

  • Mindfulness also plays a key role in how we experience living in our bodies, referred to as embodiment (Piran & Teall, 2012).
  • Piran (2016) further discusses how experiences of embodiment can be positive or negative along five different dimensions including: body connection and comfort, agency and functionality, attuned self-care, experience and expression of bodily desire, and inhabiting the body as a subjective site.
  • Piran discusses in her developmental theory of embodiment (DTE) how multiple factors contribute to negative embodiment, such as the way many cultures emphasize the importance of women’s physical attractiveness and evaluate them based on often unrealistic societal standards. This objectification of women’s bodies can cause them to dissociate from their physical experiences.
  • On the other hand, she outlines the factors that support positive embodiment, which include immersing oneself in joyful physical activities. Unsurprisingly, engaging in mindful forms of movement is associated with positive experiences of embodiment.

Body Connection and Comfort

  • Qualitative investigations of individuals who participate in various forms of mindful movement highlight how the movement helps them feel more connected to their body or greater integration between mind and body.
  • Women ages 22 to 72 years who practice yoga regularly reported an increased awareness and connection with their body due to practicing yoga. This connection helped them feel more grounded or present in their bodies and they were better able to listen and respond to their bodies’ needs (Dittman and Freedman, 2009).
  • Moving in a mindful way, whether it be through yoga, dance, or sport, provides numerous opportunities to become both aware of sensations in the body that may be reflective of physiological and emotional states and accepting of what one finds, thus contributing to body connection and comfort.

Inhabiting the Body as a Subjective Site

  • Inhabiting one’s body subjectively means experiencing and interacting with the world from a first-person, internal perspective (Piran, 2016). It also refers to resisting the pressure to view one’s body from a third-person perspective, as an object to be judged for its external appearance.
  • Body surveillance is something people do all the time, some more than others. It refers to thinking about what you look like from a third-person perspective, and it undermines inhabiting your body subjectively (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997).
  • Mindful forms of movement may contribute to resisting this objectifying, third-person perspective by continually drawing attention to internal experiences of physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions.

Outcomes of Mindful Movement

  • Mindful forms of movement or physical activity have also been linked to a number of mental and physical health benefits as well as other healthy behaviors.
  • We know that mindful movement, like physical activity more generally, is associated with a wide range of physical health outcomes.
  • In line with an exercise psychology perspective, here we will discuss some of the psychological and behavioral outcomes associated with mindful movement.

Trait Mindfulness

  • At a very basic level, participating in mindful movement can be an effective strategy for increasing overall levels of trait mindfulness.
  • Any activity in which an individual is being mindful is enhancing one’s ability to be mindful in general.
  • Similarly, engaging in various forms of mindful movement over time has been associated with increases in trait mindfulness.
  • Mindful movement has been shown to be more effective than seated mindfulness practices for supporting the development of trait mindfulness (Carmody & Baer, 2008). Thus, mindful movement may not only provide a more accessible and attractive entry point for engaging in mindfulness practices but may even be more effective than seated practices for developing trait mindfulness.

Mental Health

  • The cultivation of mindfulness while moving may lead to better mental health benefits than either seated forms of mindfulness or physical activity that is not mindful.
  • The positive link between physical activity and mental health indicators is well-established, however, combined with acceptance and detachment from one’s thoughts, emotions, and other experiences, mindful physical activity may enhance the positive mental health benefits of physical activity alone.
  • In one study hoping to disentangle the various elements of MBSR, college students were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: a) mindfulness and meditation alone, b) yoga alone, c) yoga with mindfulness and meditation training, d) study break with snacks and therapy dog, or e) no treatment control for four weeks (Huntet al., 2018). At the end of the intervention, only the yoga alone and yoga plus mindfulness/meditation groups had significantly lower anxiety and negative affect compared to the no treatment control group.
  • The results of this study provide some initial evidence that there may be a synergistic effect when movement is combined with mindfulness.

Healthy Behaviors

  • Other potential beneficial outcomes of engaging in mindful movement include health behaviors.
  • Individuals who participate in yoga on a regular basis report that it has promoted healthy habits in the areas of eating, physical activity, sleep, and engaging in relaxation (e.g., Watts et al., 2018). Furthermore, yoga motivated them to be more active outside of yoga and provided them with the skills to try other forms of physical activity.
  • The relationship between mindful movement and healthy behaviors may be due to increases in attunement with the self that occur when being mindful.
  • Through increased awareness of what the mind and body feel like, individuals can better discern how best to respond to and take care of one’s self. This attuned self-care is also one of Piran’s (2016) five dimensions of embodiment.

Is Mindful Movement Motivating?

  • As research is catching up with the practice, we are seeing more and more evidence to support how mindful movement can play a role in motivational processes.
  • As a research topic, mindfulness and motivation is in its infancy. However, there is at least one theoretical model that incorporated mindfulness within a broader description of motivation and well-being more than forty years ago.
  • Self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017) is one of the most widely used theoretical frameworks on motivation and well-being across many disciplines and domains.
  • SDT is referred to as a macro-theory, which means that it is a framework that is intended to be applied across all people and domains to holistically describe, explain, and make predictions about human well-being.

Key Details of Self-Determination Theory Explained

  • Motivation is described as multi-dimensional, reflecting the different ways we regulate our behavior. There are different types of motivation that represent different reasons why people engage in a particular behavior.
  • Amotivation reflects lacking a reason for doing an activity and represents an absence of autonomy. Theoretically, individuals who are amotivated may be acting rather mindlessly given the unintentional nature of their behavior.
  • Intrinsic motivation represents the highest degree of autonomy. Intrinsic motivation represents engaging in a behavior, such as exercise, for the rewards gained solely from the act of exercising.
  • In the middle of the continuum, there are four types of motivation regulations that represent engaging in a behavior for reasons that emanate from external sources to the activity.
  • The most autonomous of the extrinsic regulations is integrated regulation, which represents an integration of the activity as congruent with one’s sense of self or identity; “I exercise because I identify as a healthy and active person”.
  • Next is identified regulation, which is still autonomous because it represents engaging in a behavior because it is of personal value and importance; “I value the benefits of exercise”.
  • A somewhat more external and more controlling regulation is introjected regulation, which reflects internalized rewards, pressure, or guilt; “I exercise because I feel bad about myself if I don’t”.
  • Finally, the most controlling form of motivation, external regulation, represents external rewards or punishments; “I exercise because my physician tells me I have to”.

Theoretical Explanation for the Role of Mindfulness

  • While there are important inter-personal influences such as the exercise instructor and environment on these motivational processes, there are also intra-personal factors involved.
  • Mindlessness represents a mode of operating in reactive, compulsive, and/or habitual patterns. These patterns of behavior demonstrate a submission to negative psychological and emotional states and may interrupt acting from one’s core values and needs.
  • Mindful awareness may defend against defensive or ego-involved states, which are more aligned with controlling forms of motivation that are regulated by short-term internal or external rewards and punishments (Ryan & Deci, 2017).
  • Mindfulness creates a pause, a space within which to be more deliberate. The result of this psychological space is that behavioral choices can be made with more clarity and over time can facilitate the internalization process and lead to autonomous motivation and long-term behavior

Moving Beyond Theory: What Does the Research Show?

  • A daily diary study by Brown & Ryan (2003) showed that those with higher trait mindfulness tend to have more experiences of state mindfulness during daily life and that these individuals report positive affect and more autonomous regulation for their activities
  • A key finding of this study was that the state of mindfulness had a stronger effect on affect and autonomous motivation and were independent of trait mindfulness.
  • Trait mindfulness has been positively associated with autonomous motivation for physical activity and negatively associated with controlling forms of motivation for physical activity (Kang et al., 2017; Ruffault et al., 2016).
  • Greater awareness of one’s feelings and sensations during movement may increase one’s ability to meet their needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness, thus facilitating the internalization process toward autonomous regulation.
  • Mindfulness allows attention without judgment that can serve to connect one to their physical experience, which should raise perceptions of competence and foster their sense of autonomy.

Other Important Motivational Factors: How Pleasant is Moving?

  • The extent to which exercise has pleasant feelings associated with it, the greater the likelihood of choosing to exercise again in the future and making that choice for intrinsic reasons. In order to develop useful exercise interventions, a growing trend is to focus on how to make exercise experiences more pleasant.
  • Dissociative strategies, such as listening to music during exercise have been touted as a way to make exercise more pleasant.
  • Although dissociation may serve a purpose of reducing awareness of discomfort and is motivating for many people, this can lead to a dissociation with the bodily experience of moving. While a distracted experience tends to be enjoyable, it should be more difficult to develop a strong sense of competence when one isn’t fully experiencing the movement and activity itself.
  • There is evidence to suggest that intentionally manipulating mindfulness while exercising can lead to similarly pleasant exercise experiences as listening to music while exercising (Cox, Ullrich-French, Hargreaves, & McMahon, 2020).

Moving from Motivation to Behavior: Mindfulness and Physical Activity Behavior

  • Those who self-report more physical activity also report higher levels of trait mindfulness (Gilbert & Waltz, 2010; Kangasniemi et al., 2014) and are more likely to engage in mindfulness practices (Strowger et al., 2018).
  • Although there is a consistent positive association between mindfulness and self-reported physical activity, this is not the case when physical activity is assessed more objectively (Kang et al., 2017; Kangasniemi et al., 2015).
  • When mindfulness is context specific, or applied specifically to physical activity, it is more strongly and consistently associated with physical activity compared to trait mindfulness.
  • It is difficult to predict and understand all the factors that influence behavioral choices, but we do know that mindfulness is related to many of those factors including more autonomous motivation, positive affect, and other physical activity related perceptions (e.g., psychological needs).

Mindfulness as an intervention to Increase Physical Activity

  • Mindfulness interventions often include acceptance and mindfulness-based stress reduction approaches that teach and then facilitate the practice of mindfulness strategies.
  • Acceptance, compassion, and mindfulness approaches share the promotion of awareness and nonjudgement toward the self. Such approaches have led to increases in physical activity (e.g., Butryn et al., 2011; Palmeira et al., 2017).
  • In a randomized controlled trial with healthy adults that used physical activity as a comparison group, similar amounts of physical activity were found for the MBSR and aerobic exercise conditions (Meyer et al., 2018). This study concludes that the real benefit may be in combining MBSR with physical activity.

Conclusion

  • Engaging in mindful movement is linked to better mental health, health behaviors, and the development of trait mindfulness.
  • Those who are generally more mindful or experience more mindful states during physical activity report greater autonomous physical activity motivation
  • Engaging in all types of movement provides a sensory activity with clear targets of focus as well as opportunities to resist self-judgment and thus may be an ideal forum for teaching mindfulness skills (Segal et al., 2002) or maintaining mindfulness skills previously taught (Gotink et al., 2016).

Learning Exercises

  • Check your recall and write down the two key parts of the definition of mindfulness. Next, let’s put mindfulness into action during a walking exercise. You can walk inside your home or outside, for a long time or just a few moments. While you are walking, see if you can apply mindful attention to all of the sensations of walking. This could include the movement of your arms, the contact between your feet and the ground and how it changes throughout each step, or muscular contraction in your legs, etc. Allow each sensation to arise in your awareness and then allow it to fade away. If it is really challenging to stay present with the sensations of walking, select just one focus of attention (e.g., your feet) and keep coming back to this target when you become distracted. How did this experience feel? What was difficult about it? What did you learn about yourself?
  • Recall a time when you were engaging in physical activity in a purely joyful, playful, and just plain fun way. Some of you might have to think way back to when you were a kid at the playground. Close your eyes. Try to recall everything you remember about that experience. What did you see, hear, smell, taste and feel? How did the experience make you feel? Write down everything you can remember. What aspects of mindfulness were a part of that experience? How can you recreate those experiences now?
  • Recall a time when you felt quite self-conscious engaging in physical activity. Maybe you were looking in the mirror frequently or thinking about the other people around you observing you. What did that experience feel like? What thoughts were going through your head? What do you notice about the way it feels to exercise or move when you are thinking about your outward appearance or others judging you? Finally, how could you bring your attention inward to the experience and sensations of moving your body?
  • You are in a high-intensity exercise class that is pushing you to your limit. You have choices. If you value and are motivated to push yourself then your response might be “bring it on”. If you value overall wellness, and want to survive to return to another class, your response might be “how can I modify this so I can complete the class?”. What are the ways that you might respond in this moment (i.e., emotionally and behaviorally)? Think about what is driving that response. Does the response align with your motivation, goals, and values? Does your response help you feel more competent and autonomous?
  • When you exercise to music it makes the time go by, it can be motivating and fun. Think about your experiences exercising with and without music. When you finish a workout while listening to music, how much of the experience to you remember? How connected do you feel with the sensations in your body? Your feelings of competence or achievement? Now, what about when you don’t listen to music? How does the experience differ?

Glossary terms

  • State mindfulness: An individual’s capacity be more or less mindful on a moment to moment basis
  • Trait mindfulness: One’s tendency or general disposition to be mindful throughout one’s day or across situations.
  • Affect: The experiential piece of emotions such as anxiety or joy, but does not have to be derived from a specific emotion per se.
  • Embodiment: How we experience living in our bodies (Piran & Teall, 2012).
  • Positive embodiment: “Positive body connection and comfort, embodied agency and passion, and attuned self-care” (Piran, 2016, p. 47).
  • Negative embodiment: “Disrupted body connection and discomfort, restricted agency and passion, and self-neglect or harm” (Piran, 2016, p. 47).
  • Intra-personal factors: Factors that are within the individual.
  • Mindlessness: A mode of operating in reactive, compulsive, and/or habitual patterns.
  • Integrated regulation: A type of regulation which represents an integration of the activity as congruent with one’s sense of self or identity
  • Identified regulation: A type of autonomous regulation because it represents engaging in a behavior because it is of personal value and importance
  • Introjected regulation: A controlling regulation which reflects internalized rewards, pressure, or guilt.
  • External regulation: The most controlling form of motivation which represents external rewards or punishments
  • Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) therapy: A meditation therapy used for treating a variety of physical and psychological illnesses.
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): An approach in which participants were taught how to defuse or separate from distressing thoughts about exercise and identify and strengthen values around exercise.
  • Intrinsic motivation: Doing an activity for enjoyment rather than external pressures

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Essentials of Exercise Psychology Copyright © by marclochbaum. All Rights Reserved.

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