Older Adults’ Engagement in Mindfulness Practices

Abstract

IJOAR: https://escipub.com/international-journal-of-aging-research/ 1 Neha Shivhare et al., IJOAR, 2021 4:82 IJOAR: https://escipub.com/international-journal-of-aging-research/ 2 Introduction There is substantial evidence to suggest that mindfulness practices and exercises positively affect older adults’ physical, emotional, and cognitive wellbeing. Research has shown that older adults experience calmness, inner joy, reduced anxiety and depression levels as a result of performing mindfulness practices [1,2,3,4,5] . However, despite these strong positive findings, there is still not much known about the level of engagement of older adults in these practices. Therefore, the present study addresses this issue by exploring the prevalence of older adults performing these practices. Benefits of mindfulness practices A meta-analysis involving 42 studies found that yoga asanas based heterogeneous interventions reduced evening cortisol, waking cortisol, ambulatory systolic blood pressure, resting heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, fasting blood glucose, cholesterol, and low-density lipoprotein, and improved regulation of the sympathetic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system in various populations . In another study, the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Approach for Seniors (MBCAS) was found effective in inducing a positive and accepting approach towards life and agingrelated challenges in reasonably healthy older adults . In their retrospective analysis based study, Young and Baime (2010) also found that eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training helpful in alleviating stress and promoting vitality among 141 adults aged 65 years and older.