- Research involving more than 1,200 adults found that a daily 10-minute mindfulness practice can improve workout motivation.
- Regularly practicing mindfulness also lead to other healthy habits, like better sleep.
Even the most dedicated runners experience some days when the usual motivation tricks—putting your workout gear out the night before, setting a schedule notification, recruiting a running buddy—don’t work like they once did. And for those who aren’t as disciplined, motivation can be even tougher. When it’s lacking, people tend to skip exercising altogether, research has found.
One mental trick researchers recently looked into to boost motivation may provide a key to unlock your drive to get up and move. That tool: mindfulness training a.k.a. practicing being present and bringing awareness to your body, mind, and surroundings. And it’s not just your motivation that mindfulness can boost, according to the A Part of Hearst Digital Media After 30 days, both groups reported improvements in.
Researchers looked at 1,247 participants from 91 countries who were split into two groups: One did 30 days of structured mindfulness meditation practice, which included instruction on topics like intention setting, body scans, deep breathing and bringing focus to the breath, and self-reflection. The other group acted as a control, but was asked to pay careful attention during a daily audiobook listening session of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Both types of sessions were designed to be relaxing and to prompt active listening, and were the same length of time at 10 minutes daily. Also, they were both digitally delivered, which meant participants could set their own schedules and did the sessions wherever they liked.
Side Effects of Text Neck for Runners anxiety and general wellbeing, but the mindfulness group showed significantly higher levels of interest in developing healthy behaviors, including better sleep habits and more regular exercise. Researchers suggested this might be because mindfulness training can have a positive effect on self-regulatory capabilities—or the ability to control behavior, thoughts, and feelings—which are crucial for behavior change.
This type of shift may linger even after the end of a mindfulness training block, they added: Participants were contacted two months after the end of the sessions, and many reported that they were still on track with physical activity and other beneficial health habits.
“This finding may represent the way that mindfulness can cause a gradual shift from external motivation to intrinsic, or internal, motivation,” said lead author Masha Remskar, Ph.D., researcher at the University of Bath in the U.K. She told Runner’s World that researchers need to do more work to confirm that this works in the long-term, but it does show that only a month of daily sessions at just 10 minutes each could make a major difference in how you approach your health, including workout motivation.
“We do know that our results add to previous evidence showing that people with higher levels of mindfulness engage in more health-promoting behaviors,” she said.
Other Hearst Subscriptions study in Nutrition - Weight Loss found that mindfulness—which those researchers defined as a psychological state of staying attuned to the present moment—can lead to higher exercise motivation, as well as lower levels of psychological distress. Similar to the recent study, those researchers concluded that mindfulness tends to work thanks to more intrinsic motivation, coupled with decreased pressure about exercising.
Best of all, running and mindfulness don’t need to be separate activities: Elizabeth Millard is a freelance writer focusing on health, wellness, fitness, and food Elizabeth Millard is a freelance writer focusing on health, wellness, fitness, and food mindfulness Strength Training Boosts Performance, Study Says.
