From Dr. Oz the good life, Have
you ever found yourself unable to tackle an important item on your
to-do list because you can't silence all the nagging, anxious
thoughts running through your mind? Those annoying and uncontrollable mental
interruptions can be frustrating, but the good news is there just might be a
simple fix you can do on your own.
According to new research
published in Consciousness and Cognition, meditating for just 10
minutes could help get your mind back on track.
In the April 2017 study,University of Waterloo researchers asked 82 participants, all of whom had problems with anxiety, to
complete a task on a computer while regularly experiencing interruptions. They
used the results of this portion of the experiment to gauge participants'
ability to stay focused on the task at hand.
The researchers then split the
participants into two groups - one that listened to a short audio story and one
that engaged in a 10-minute meditation session -
before being asked to complete a task on a computer for a second time.
Results indicate that mindfulness training may
have protective effects on mind-wandering for anxious individuals," said
Mengran Xu, one of the study's authors and a PhD candidate in the department of
psychology at Waterloo, in a press release.
"We also found that meditation practice appears to help anxious people to
shift their attention from their own internal worries to the present-moment
external world, which enables better focus on a task at hand."
photo credit: Getty
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