Would You Like to Live to 100? The Secrets to a Long, Healthy Life

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I often wonder how long my life will be. I’m 55 now, so hope to have at least another 30 years, if not more. My beloved grandfather lived to 104, so that bodes well, genetically! But perhaps more important than how long I live is how well I live – staying healthy, active and mentally sharp for as long as possible.

This intriguing question was answered in a fascinating Netflix documentary series I watched recently – Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. It’s presented by author Dan Buettner, who travels around the world to different ‘blue zones’ – places where there is an unusually high concentration of centenarians – to find out why people live longer there. Buettner visits Okinawa, Sardinia, the Greek island of Ikaria, Nicoya in Costa Rica, Loma Linda in California and ends up in Singapore.

In each of these blue zones people do not just live longer, they live well too. And some live remarkably well – in Costa Rica, he meets a 100-year-old cowboy who looks about 60, but is still working from dawn to dusk. He is so remarkable that the Costa Rican researcher Buettner is working with doesn’t believe him and checks his age on the national register! He is, indeed, 100 – and miraculously young, fit and healthy.

The secrets to living long – and well

In each of these blue zones, there are slightly different factors that help people thrive into old age. In Sardinia, the steepness of your village is key, because it means you are walking up and down steep hills every day of your life. But this is also a theme, because although in Singapore people are strongly encouraged to take daily exercise like walking, cycling and working out by the government, it’s generally the constant, low-level exercise that marks these places out.

Gardening, walking instead of driving, dancing, chopping wood, doing things by hand around the house – this kind of activity is key for longevity. Diet is another theme, even though the particular things people eat vary from place to place. The religious community in California (who are also mad about exercise) are mostly vegetarian. In Costa Rica they eat lots of black beans, in Okinawa it’s a particularly nutritious purple sweet potato, murasaki.

But along with diet and exercise, the most powerful learning for me was that having a sense of meaning, or purpose in their lives was key. Alongside this was the quality of their relationships. In every village, town or city Buettner visits, people live in warm, interconnected webs of relationship. These elderly people are not put in care homes, but kept in their families’ homes, or visited often by people in their community.

Love is the magic ingredient

If I’m honest, this doesn’t surprise me. I have written often in these posts about the importance of (good) relationships for our health. Evolutionarily, this makes sense, because we evolved from a common ancestor with apes like chimpanzees and bonobos. Apes don’t live alone. They live in large, social groups, as did every species of human, including homo sapiens.

This began to change just 10,000 years ago, with the agricultural revolution – and accelerated a few hundred years ago with the industrial revolution. Workers moved away from their traditional rural communities (where they lived in villages full of extended families, much like the blue-zone inhabitants) to live in towns and cities, doing back-breaking shifts in factories before going home to their small, nuclear family, or living alone.

Research increasingly shows us that living alone is not good for us, especially if we are often lonely. So perhaps the most important thing you could do, today and for the rest of your life, is to invest in and improve the quality of your closest relationships. If your family of origin was not a happy one, think about creating a ‘chosen family’ – perhaps your partner and children, friends and neighbours.

The blue zones teach us that eating well, exercising often, maintaining our interests, hobbies and even work well into old age are all crucial ingredients of a long, happy life. But even more important is the quality of our relationships – loving and being loved is the magic ingredient to a rich and fulfilling life.

I hope you find that useful – and do watch the documentary series, it’s fascinating.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Giving Thanks for Our Wonderful National Health Service

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I had to go to hospital today. Nothing serious – just a routine scan for an ongoing health problem. It was not very pleasant, but mercifully short and the results were good.

But this is not a story about my health. It’s a story about my health service – and yours, if you live in the UK. I’m talking about the National Health Service (NHS), founded in 1948 by Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan and his Labour Government, providing healthcare that was ‘free for all at the point of delivery’.

What a remarkable statement that is – free, high-quality healthcare, available to anyone who needs it. For my many readers in the US, you know only too well how crippling health problems can be if your healthcare is largely delivered by private, profit-making companies. Serious illness in the US and elsewhere can be financially catastrophic for those affected and their families.

Not here. Despite successive governments trying to destroy the NHS and sell it off to private healthcare companies (many of our Government Ministers are on the boards of these companies, while they are also major donors to the Conservative Party), it still provides a wonderful service. Years of underfunding, doctors, nurses and other frontline staff being woefully underpaid, chronic staff shortages, crumbling hospitals… Despite all of this, every single person who looked after me today was patient, kind and compassionate.

The procedure I endured this morning is called a gastroscopy – if you have been lucky enough not to need one, it’s hard to overestimate how unpleasant it is. They essentially stick a thick tube down your throat, inflate your stomach with air and do other less-than-fun things, to check that all is well in your digestive system.

As I lay there, in considerable discomfort, the all-female team constantly checked on me, reassured me, stroked my back through the worst moments. They were just so kind. And I am so grateful – thank you, thank you to those four lovely women, for taking such good care of me.

Not taking goodness for granted

As I left Whittington Hospital, mighty relieved that it was all over, at the entrance was a group of junior doctors, who are currently on strike. Why? Because their pay is insultingly low; they are burnt out and exhausted after two brutal years of Covid; morale in the health service is at an all-time low; and, adding insult to injury, the right-wing press and politicians demonise GPs and other doctors, blaming them for entirely political failings.

And they have had enough, as have I. Our doctors, nurses, paramedics, porters, physiotherapists, psychologists, cleaners, receptionists and all the other remarkable men and women who make up the NHS are heroes. They kept us all safe and well through the worst public-health crisis in living memory. Many of them gave their lives to protect ours.

They deserve our love and gratitude, not terrible pay and working conditions, or to be vilified in the media.

So thank you to everyone at the Whittington Hospital, who treated me with such kindness – and have done throughout my life. Thank you for keeping me and my family safe. Thank you for your dedication, your hard work, your selflessness.

Know that you are loved and appreciated – and that we never take your goodness for granted.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Manage Your Coronavirus-Related Health Anxiety

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Do you struggle with health anxiety? If so, you’re not alone. Millions of people around the world face a daily battle with this anxiety disorder. I often tell my clients that, if you’re prone to anxiety, your health is one of the easiest things to obsess about, because of course humans are vulnerable to health problems.

We all struggle with our health, dealing with everything from mild problems like the common cold to serious illnesses like diabetes and cancer. And we are all mortal, so have to accept that one day, our life will end. It’s natural — in some ways even logical — to worry about your health.

Now, of course, we are facing an unprecedented public health crisis. In the UK, as I write this over-70s are encouraged to self-isolate, many businesses have shut down and all schools are closing from tomorrow, we are all being encouraged to adopt social distancing and stay home as much as possible. And I’m sure the restrictions will get more and more severe.

The reality is that Covid-19 is a scary, unpredictable and long-term problem that we are struggling to understand and contain across the globe.

Kryptonite for the health-anxious

So I am anxious. My friends, family, colleagues and neighbours are anxious. Anxiety is a normal, healthy, proportionate response to a global crisis like this. It’s hard for everyone right now.

But I think — as well as the high-risk groups of people who are especially vulnerable to a serious reaction to the virus — this crisis is extremely tough on people with two types of mental-health problem: contamination-focused OCD and those with health anxiety (formerly known as hypochondria). I am going to focus on the latter problem in this story, but there is a huge amount of information about, and help with OCD on the MIND website, if you need it (mind.org.uk).

Health anxiety is one of the anxiety disorders, in which people develop an unhelpful preoccupation with their health. A useful definition I once read is: ‘The catastrophic misinterpretation of benign physical symptoms’.

That means that, if you have health anxiety, you will catastrophise — one of the common forms of unhelpful thinking styles treated with cognitive therapy — about benign physical symptoms. This means that, if you get a tension headache, you start Googling symptoms (always a bad idea!) and become convinced you have a brain tumour.

If your heart rate speeds up, because you’re stressed, anxious or engaging in physical exercise, you are 100 per cent sure you have a heart problem. You notice a tiny mole on your forearm and worry obsessively that it’s skin cancer.

Coronavirus-related anxiety

If this sounds familiar, I feel deeply compassionate for you right now. It must be hell. Every time you look at a newspaper, Twitter or your Facebook feed, you are confronted with frightening, doom-laden headlines about this awful virus that is sweeping through the global population. You, like so many of my clients right now, must be overwhelmed with anxiety.

But you can’t let anxiety dominate your life. This crisis is likely to go on for months, so you need to take swift and decisive action to help yourself. Here are three pieces of advice to get you through this:

1. Engage your rational brain

Because this all feels so threatening, the ancient, emotional parts of your brain have taken over — primarily your ‘threat system’, which is on red alert right now. This system triggers the fight-flight-freeze response to danger. If you’re super-anxious, you are in flight mode much of the time.

One answer to this is to use your rational brain — the frontal cortex — to calm down the parts that are freaking out. This virus is truly awful, but the vast majority of those who contract it will only develop cold- or flu-like symptoms, then make a complete recovery. Many health-anxious clients I have worked with are young, fit, healthy, often vegan and teetotal — some of the healthiest people I have ever met!

If that’s you, remember that it is overwhelmingly likely you will be fine, even if you get it. So stop catastrophising and take sensible precautions to minimise your risk of contracting the virus: social distancing, mask-wearing, regular hand-washing, and so on.

2. Breathe

When the fight-flight-freeze response has kicked in, your breathing goes haywire. Basically, you start breathing like a hot dog panting — rapid, shallow breaths that will make you feel dizzy, tight-chested and breathless. Not good, if you’re already worrying about a virus that targets your lungs.

So you need to slow your breathing right down, breathe abdominally, for roughly four seconds in and four seconds out. Do that for at least a minute, more if possible. I call this ‘compassionate breathing’, but it’s just deep breathing, so you can do it anywhere, any time if you need to calm yourself down.

Trust me: it’s awesome and it really works.

3. Get some help

Please don’t suffer alone. We are all struggling right now and need all the help we can get. There are plenty of charities set up to help with health anxiety and other anxiety disorders. Here are just a few for those living in the UK:

• Young Minds (youngminds.org.uk)

• Anxiety UK (anxietyuk.org.uk)

• OCD Action (ocdaction.org.uk)

If you need more help than this, I would recommend either cognitive or schema therapy. I have helped dozens of health-anxious people with both approaches and they are proven to be the most effective forms of psychotherapy for anxiety disorders. In the UK, you can get cognitive therapy on the NHS, but it will probably be a long wait. If you’re looking for a qualified private cognitive therapist, visit BABCP’s site (babcp.com).

If you would like schema therapy from me, use my contact form to get in touch.

So if you are having a tough time right now, know that help is out there for you. We will get through this. Humans are remarkably resilient. We will develop a vaccine and treatments for Covid-19 are already being trialled.

Wherever you are in the world, sending you love and warm thoughts from London,

Dan

How Chronic Pain and Illness Affect Your Mood

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As I sit writing this, I am in a moderate amount of pain. Like millions of people around the world, I suffer from chronic musculoskeletal (back and hip) problems, so most days come with either a small or large dose of pain, depending on how well I am looking after myself, how stressed I am, how much sitting I do that day, and various other factors.

Having been in some degree of daily pain for almost two years now, I have learned a few things about the relationship between physical pain and mental suffering:

• It's important to distinguish between 'primary' and 'secondary' pain. I learned this from Vidyamala Burch, founder of the excellent Breathworks. This organisation provides the Mindfulness-Based Pain Management programme, which has a strong research base behind it and helps many people in the UK and beyond deal with chronic pain and illness.

• Burch also co-wrote Mindfulness for Health: A Practical Guide to Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Wellbeing with Danny Penman. In this superb book the authors explain that primary pain is the actual raw data caused by, say, a gash in your leg. Intriguingly, the majority of the pain you end up experiencing is secondary – the pain created by your brain as it amplifies that raw data, depending on the way you think about and respond to your primary pain.

• This only became clear to me recently when I visited my osteopath during a bad patch physically, feeling down and hopeless about resolving my problems. He reminded me that the pain was significantly better now than when I first came to see him; and that it was crucial to remain as positive as possible, because my negative thoughts ('I will never get over this'; 'Nothing will help'; 'I can't stand the pain any more') were undoubtedly making the pain worse (this is essentially what the Buddha taught – that human life inevitably involves pain, but we create suffering by our response to that pain. But that's a topic for another day).

Managing the pain

I think it's important to note here just how hard it is to maintain a positive, optimistic mood in the face of chronic pain or illness. As anyone with a long-term condition knows, it grinds you down, especially when it flares up or your symptoms get worse for whatever reason. Please don't think I underestimate the impact of physical ailments on your mood – it is a struggle and gets everyone down from time to time, as well as causing stress and worry/anxiety about the future.

I couldn't understand that vicious cycle any better. But once you understand the relationship between pain sensations in the body and the way that your brain either amplifies or minimises those sensations, it seems crucial to me that you do all you can to use your brain/mind to help your body.

 When I first hurt my back and was really struggling, Vidyamala Burch's guided meditations really helped pull me through. Visit her website (www.vidyamala-burch.com) to find out more. And if you are dealing with chronic pain or illness, my thoughts and well wishes go out to you – I hope you get the medical help you need and manage to overcome your problem soon.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How Mindfulness Can Help with Chronic Pain

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If you suffer from a medical condition that causes you chronic pain, life can be gruelling. Nobody likes being in pain, so over time it can really grind you down. Musculoskeletal problems like hip, knee or lower-back pain, arthritis and other ongoing, hard-to-treat conditions can sap your strength and energy over time, making it hard to stay positive or hopeful that a solution will eventually be found. Dealing with pain can make you stressed or depressed, as the ongoing struggle – unsurprisingly – causes sadness and low mood.

But if you or someone you care about is struggling with a painful condition, it's important to know that there is very good evidence for the impact that psychological treatments can have – in particular, cognitive therapy and mindfulness meditation.

Of course, thinking differently about your problem, the core strategy in cognitive therapy, will not take away the pain (although it can significantly decrease the amount of pain you are in). Instead, it will help you stop thinking so negatively about the problem, which will boost your mood and stave off the risk of depression. 

The mindful approach to stress

Since the 1970s, mindfulness – in particular, mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR – has been used to help people with a wide range of psychological and physical ailments. MBSR's founder, Jon Kabat-Zinn, developed his revolutionary approach to help people who had been failed by traditional Western medicine.

He worked with patients suffering from treatment-resistant spinal problems and even terminal illness – and had a remarkable success rate at lowering their stress levels and improving the quality of their daily lives.

As with all forms of suffering, whether emotional or physical, the mindful approach is to change our relationship to the thoughts, feelings and physical sensations, enabling us to stop fighting or resisting them and – counterintuitively – accept them, even if we do not want them to be there.

Over time, we find that this stance of acceptance is an extremely powerful one, allowing the 'aversive' experiences to come and go, so they don't get stuck or morph into other forms of suffering like self-criticism or anger.

I want to be clear: I am not minimising how hard or upsetting it can be to live with chronic pain (as someone with ongoing back, hip and other musculoskeletal problems, I know that only too well). But being human inevitably means dealing with stressors, large or small; and, if we cannot free ourselves from them, we must find the best possible way to live with them.

Warm wishes,

Dan

The Difference Between Pressure and Stress

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People often tell me that they 'thrive on stress'. I respond that they might be confusing pressure – which can be energising and motivating, if we respond to it well – and stress, which always has a negative impact on us. Let me give you two examples:

James is a 30-year-old entrepreneur, who has recently launched a startup website selling his own brand of clothing. James is passionate about his new business and thrives on the pressure he puts himself under to make it successful.

He works long hours, but knows this is necessary to get a new business up and running. James thoroughly enjoys every minute of his working day, so never feels stressed or overwhelmed – the fact that his business is doing well helps him stay positive and optimistic about the future. 

So for James, it's clear that the – self-imposed – pressure is a positive thing; it gives him the energy and drive he needs to make his new business a success.

Emma is a 26-year-old nurse working in a busy hospital in inner London. Over the last year, she has seen wave after wave of cuts in the number of nurses and support staff working on her ward. She and her colleagues work very long hours with no breaks – Emma wolfs a sandwich during her daily meeting with the other nurses. Sometimes she goes hours without even a drink of water or toilet break, as she is swamped with constant crises and demands from her patients.

Emma's nerves are stretched and jangling, she feels exhausted and irritable all the time – recently she snapped at a difficult patient, which shocked and upset her. Emma is so stressed that she doesn't know how much longer she can take it and is seriously considering quitting nursing before she becomes seriously ill.

The impact of chronic stress

It's clear that Emma is suffering from chronic, debilitating stress, which is affecting her physically and psychologically. Like many people suffering from stress, she feels overwhelmed, under-supported and out of control of her working life. If she doesn't do something soon, she may will burn out or develop a more serious illness, as all the research shows that long-term stress is harmful to the body and mind.

In schema therapy terms, this kind of stress is generally caused by a demanding part, which drives us on to work harder and harder, never feeling that what we do is good enough. This part can also make us feel under pressure – but it's not the kind of positive, motivating pressure James thrives on. This pressure is unpleasant, debilitating and overwhelmingly negative.

James's enjoyable pressure is probably coming from his Healthy Adult, which encourages and motivates us, rather than being critical or undermining of our best efforts.

If you are struggling with short-term stress, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) will be extremely helpful. If becoming stressed is a pattern for you, or it's affecting every area of your life, schema therapy may be more suitable.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why Exercise is Key for Good Mental Health

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Most psychological problems – such as chronic stress, anxiety or depression – will require some kind of psychological treatment, especially if they persist over time. But it's easy to underestimate the impact of direct physical interventions on psychological problems.

Partly, of course, this is because the whole separation of mind and body is an artificial one – your mind is the product of your brain; hormones play a key role in regulating your moods; psychological problems such as stress and anxiety have a whole range of physiological symptoms... In reality, your mind and body are inextricably linked, with an exquisitely complex feedback system between the two.

So it should come as no surprise that regular physical exercise is key to good mental health. Think of exercise in two main areas: cardiovascular and relaxing. Cardio exercise such as cycling, dancing, racquet sports, football, brisk walking or swimming, weight training or martial arts burns off hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol that are produced when we are anxious or stressed.

Just 20 minutes of moderate exercise gives you a shot of endorphins, which help you feel happy and calm; and regular cardio exercise is proven to be just as effective as antidepressants for mild to moderate depression (and with no nasty side effects).

Stress-relieving exercise

Relaxing exercise includes yoga, tai chi, gentle swimming or slow walking and is an excellent stress-reliever, especially if you do it in a green space, such as your local park. This kind of exercise activates the relaxation response, which balances out the stress response and helps you feel calmer and more relaxed. If you are suffering from depression, you may lack the energy to do more vigorous exercise, but it's really important to do something even if it's just a walk round the block.

So if you're stressed out, struggling with an anxiety problem or depressed, remember that exercise will really help – and if the problem is short-term, it may be all you need to regain your equilibrium and feel better, so why not give it a try?

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Use Mindfulness in Daily Life

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In recent years, mindfulness has gone from being a little-known (in the West) form of Buddhist meditation to a hugely popular, much-written-about practice. It's hard to pick up a Sunday supplement these days without reading something about mindfulness, whether it's being taught to schoolchildren to deal with exam stress, or embraced by corporations such as Google, Facebook and eBay – it has become one of the buzzwords of our age.

This, of course, is a great thing – I strongly believe that everyone should meditate, and if we all lived our lives along Buddhist principles many of the world's problems and most of our cruelty and inhumanity to each other would be transformed overnight. But I am concerned about the misunderstandings of mindfulness, so wanted to set the record straight.

Mindfulness – especially in a psychotherapy context – is a skill. I teach my clients mindfulness techniques like I teach them any other skill, like how to identify and challenge negative thoughts; how to use relaxation techniques to de-stress and reduce anxiety; or how to 'push against' their avoidance in order to face and overcome their fears. 

Formal vs informal practices

To understand this, it's helpful to think about the difference between formal and informal mindfulness practices. Formal practices involve sitting (usually, although they can include movement) in a quiet room, closing your eyes and concentrating for 20 or 30 minutes on your breath, body, thoughts or some other point of focus.

Informal practices simply involve waking up to the sensory experience of your moment-to-moment experience, whether that's looking intently at a leaf, cloud or sunset; concentrating on the many and varied sounds coming to your ears; eating your apple or sandwich and relishing every taste, smell, texture and colour of the food.

Although I encourage my clients to develop a formal practice – and have a daily practice myself – it's the informal practices that can be so powerful if you are suffering from a psychological problem like depression, anxiety, chronic stress or an eating disorder.

That's because they allow you to choose where to place your attention – on the negative thoughts swirling through your mind, the painful emotions and physical sensations in your body, or... something else. Anything else.

Try this informal practice

Here's an example:

You are sitting in a cafe, having a pleasant day, when you receive a text message from your ex-boyfriend saying they want to see you. You have only just got over the breakup and this text, out of the blue, triggers a cascade of 'what if' thoughts...

'Why does he want to see me? What if he's changed his mind? Does he still love me? Maybe he's met someone else and wants me to hear it from him. God, that would just kill me...'

Unsurprisingly, these thoughts trigger a wave of powerful emotions: anxiety, upset, hope, fear, sadness, jealousy...

Within a few seconds, you have been catapulted from feeling happy and calm to being tossed around on waves of emotion. Then you remember your mindfulness training, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. You sit upright and let your tense shoulders drop and relax.

You focus on the warm, milky, chocolatey cappuccino in front of you, inhaling deeply of its aroma and then take a sip, tasting the coffee and noticing the sensation as it travels down your throat. Your mind keeps trying to pull you away with a string of 'what ifs' but each time you simply notice the thoughts, then gently but firmly bring your attention back to the coffee.

Your emotions naturally subside and you feel calmer. You put your phone away, deciding to respond to the text tomorrow, rather than rushing a reply you might regret. And you smile, at how just being mindful helped you out of a dark place.

Of course, it's best to develop both a formal and informal practice, but understanding why you are doing so can help you overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations involved. Developing this skill is, I believe, one of the simplest but most powerful steps you can take in overcoming your problem, whatever it might be.

And once you learn how to apply them, mindfulness techniques are free, with no horrible side-effects, unlike some of the other treatments on offer.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Sleep, Mental Health and Wellbeing

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When I start working with someone, one of the first questions I ask them is how much sleep they are getting. This is for two reasons: first, if someone is having disrupted or not enough sleep, that is often a symptom of deeper psychological problems like chronic stress, anxiety or depression. And second, not getting the sleep we need – especially on an ongoing basis – can make problems like these much worse.

It's common sense that we all need to sleep (different people needing more or less, but probably around 7.5 to 8 hours for most of us) but researchers are increasingly understanding the role of sleep and what is happening in our brains and bodies during our night-time rest. For example, we now know that dreaming is the way the brain processes and stores all of the important information we absorb during the day.

Your brain has to sift through vast amounts of information, discarding most of it and storing all the things it thinks you will need at some point. So if we don't have enough nocturnal downtime, or our sleep is broken, we don't get enough REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is when we dream.

Sleep and your mood

Anyone who has kids knows only too well the impact that sleep deprivation has on our ability to function throughout the day. I often think that you don't know the value of sleep until you have a small baby, when it becomes like gold dust!

Bleary-eyed parents will find it harder to concentrate, have perspective on their problems and make decisions; and their short-term memory will also be affected. Unfortunately, they will probably also be more impatient, snappy and irritable, as well as being prone to low mood and potentially depression.

Humans need sufficient sleep, rest and downtime – our bodies and brains are hard-wired for them, just as they need oxygen, food and water to survive. So if you are suffering from insomnia, you need to take that seriously. It could be related to (or causing) a psychological problem; it could also be draining your energy and joie de vivre, making life seem a bit bleak and joyless.

The good news is that fairly straightforward things like exercise, diet, caffeine and alcohol consumption, as well as sleep hygiene can make a huge difference to the amount and quality of sleep you are getting. So if you are struggling to sleep please don't suffer in silence – do see your GP, or get help from me or another therapist.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Yoga and Mental Health

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As a late convert to yoga, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Having dabbled with ashtanga yoga a decade ago, when I wasn't quite ready for it, I thought it was a good idea to try again.

And I'm so glad I did – the benefits for my mental and physical health are tremendous. My back pain has vanished, I feel physically stronger, calmer and much more relaxed on a daily basis.

Intriguingly, I recently learned that the main purpose of hatha yoga (the physical postures, which are actually just one aspect of yoga practice) was originally to prepare for meditation – developing the flexibility, stamina and settled mind required for extended periods of sitting. And yoga certainly dovetails perfectly with my daily meditation practice, each enhancing and strengthening the other.

If you – like most people in the West – suffer from stress, yoga is for you. And if you have any physical health conditions, such as headaches, digestive issues or back pain, yoga can help with those too.

It may be more difficult to commit to any form of regular exercise if you are struggling with more serious mental health issues, such as depression or an anxiety disorder, but if you can try even a little yoga – say once or twice a week – it will really help.

Exercise combats depression

There is a large body of evidence showing the benefits of physical exercise for all psychological problems. For example, regular cardiovascular exercise like running, weights, playing sport, cycling, swimming – or more strenuous forms of yoga, such as vinyasa or ashtanga – is proven to be just as effective as antidepressants for mild to moderate depression. With no side effects (well, apart from feeling happier, healthier and more relaxed!).

If you do have a mental health problem, I would not recommend either meditation or yoga as a substitute for proven treatments like cognitive or schema therapy; but they are excellent additions to Western psychology. And, of course, Eastern practices like mindfulness meditation are increasingly used as part of talking-therapy treatments such as schema therapy or CBT.

Warm wishes,

Dan

5 Myths About Mindfulness Meditation

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It's wonderful that mindfulness has gained so much popularity in recent years – it's hard to read a newspaper or Sunday supplement without finding a story extolling the benefits of meditation. Unfortunately some of these stories are not entirely accurate, and many people have misconceptions about what meditation is and how it can help.

Here are five of the most common myths and misunderstandings I hear about meditation, to help you gain a clearer insight into this potentially life-changing technique:

1. Meditation is just for Buddhists

Not so. Although mindfulness meditation is a 2,500-year-old Buddhist technique, it is increasingly used in Western psychological, medical, educational and business settings. If you learn meditation from me, or another therapist, you are essentially learning a technique, like using thought records to challenge unhelpful thinking.

Although I do have a strong interest in Buddhist psychology and philosophy, I only talk about that to my clients as far as they are interested in it. So you don't have to believe in any form of religion to benefit from mindfulness, all you have to do is sit quietly for a short period every day and watch your breath. That alone is proven to have a raft of benefits, from reducing stress and anxiety to lowering blood pressure. Simple.

2. You have to clear your mind of all thoughts

Again, no. If your mind is empty of all thoughts, you have a very unusual mind indeed. We are always thinking – even when we sleep – so the idea that we should somehow magically stop thinking when we meditate is neither helpful nor realistic. Instead, if we are trying to focus on our breath, say, when we find our mind carrying us off into thinking about lunch, we notice that and gently bring our attention back to the breath.

Again, again, again – it might happen 100 times during a 20-minute meditation, but that's not a problem at all. In fact, this is the practice, because each time you notice and bring your attention back, you are strengthening your ability to focus, which is the whole point of meditation.

3. You have to meditate somewhere quiet

In some ways, this is true – it's helpful to meditate in quiet places, for example at home in the early morning. But mindfulness is a skill we are trying to cultivate for when we need it – on the Tube, in a meeting, in a shopping centre. So the more you practice in everyday situations, the more that skill is available to you when you most need it – like your toddler having a meltdown in the supermarket.

I often meditate on the Tube, because it can be an unpleasant place – noisy, packed with people, hot, glaring lights... Far better to close your eyes and focus on sounds, say, than ride along grimly trying to ignore it all.

4. Meditation should always make you feel relaxed

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There's a saying in Zen meditation: 'Just sit'. This means just meditate, every day: hard/easy, enjoyable/frustrating, relaxing/no change. It doesn't matter, because we meditate for the long-term benefits of daily practice.

If you do it most days for a period of time, you will probably feel calmer, more grounded, less stressed, happier, more able to deal with stressors without reacting impulsively or unhelpfully. That's why we do it (and why I have, most days, for six years now – and will for the rest of my life).

5. Meditation is New Age hocus-pocus

It's true that meditation conjures up images of bearded, be-sandalled folk, incense and crystals. But mindfulness meditation, as well as having that 2,500-year history behind it, has been rigorously studied and researched in prestigious medical establishments since the 1970s.

There is a huge body of research proving its effectiveness for a wide range of psychological problems, such as stress, anxiety and depression; and for medical problems like chronic pain and high blood pressure.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Bibliotherapy to Help With Your Stress

Image by Thought Catalog

What is bibliotherapy? Well, health professionals increasingly see the benefit of reading for people suffering from a wide range of physical and psychological problems. In fact, a Government-backed scheme – Reading Well Books on Prescription – 'prescribes' specific books for people struggling with, say, depression or worry through their GP.

I have always recommended books to my clients, so this post is part of my ongoing bibliotherapy series (here are my posts on the best books for anxiety, mindfulness, compassion, anger issues and depression).

If you are suffering from stress, you will find these books helpful in managing your stress levels:

1. The SuperStress Solution: 4-week Diet and Lifestyle Programme, Roberta Lee, MD. Dr Lee is an integrative physician, which means she combines the best of evidence-based Western medicine with strategies and techniques from alternative approaches, focusing on meditation and relaxation techniques, sleep, exercise, work/life balance, diet and nutrition.

   Her argument is that the kind of stress those of us living a 21st-century urban life now suffer is far worse than our parents faced, so it has evolved into SuperStress; a type of chronic stress that is insidious and creeps up on us, given the constant drip, drip of stressors such as 24/7 digital media never letting us relax; the pressure to be perfect parents, partners, family members and employees; the endemic lack of job security; too much sugar, caffeine and alcohol; insufficient sleep and rest; and rolling news bombarding us with scary and upsetting stories. Her argument is very persuasive and it's an excellent book, so highly recommended.

2. 2. How to Deal With Stress, Stephen Palmer & Cary Cooper. This is a sensible, practical guide to reducing your stress by two world-leading experts in stress management. Having trained with Stephen Palmer at the Centre for Stress Management, I can personally vouch for his expertise in this area (he is also an excellent CBT therapist).

   The authors explain how to identify the cause of your stress, then offer a plan to help manage it. They offer practical guidance on time-management (hardly a scintillating topic, but important if you have a never-ending to-do list and not enough time to do everything on it), exercise and relaxation techniques, as well as nutrition. It's also the shortest of the three books listed here, so is helpful for the time-poor.

3. 3. Overcoming Stress: A Self-help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioral Techniques, Leonora Brosan and Gillian Todd. When I start working with someone using CBT, I always recommend a book from this Overcoming... series, as they are all written by leading CBT experts in their particular field.

   Not only will this give you an excellent introduction to stress and its physical, psychological and behavioural impact on you, but it will also explain CBT and how it works; with a particular emphasis on the role of unhelpful thinking in driving your problems with stress.

Warm wishes,

Dan