Tag: Sound Therapy

Why Does Mindfulness Have to be Expensive?

(Photo by Mackenzie Marco on Unsplash)

This past January, I was delighted to receive an email from work about a day-long mindfulness class being offered to help usher in the new year. What a great idea! I can think of no better way to launch into another journey around the sun than with a sense of calm and acceptance, and I felt myself puff up with enthusiasm.

But as I scrolled down for more details I saw that this retreat had a price tag. Good feelings gone. It was close to $100.

This was an experience offered by my workplace, presumably so that I could be a more mindful employee, and they were charging for it.

Need I say, work can be stressful?
(Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash)

I understand the importance of investing in yourself. It’s worth more than a monthly Netflix subscription and will get you much farther in life than a daily Starbucks run. Mindfulness experiences are where I want to put my hard-earned dollars.

But this past year was tough. I needed mindful guidance even more, and yet I kept coming across financial barriers.

Why does all this good stuff need to cost so much? Meditation costs absolutely nothing and offers infinite rewards, and yet, there seems to be a vibe out there that you must spend money (the right cushion, the most beautiful journal, the most blissful island retreat, the perfect yoga pants) in order to do this right.

I live in Southern California where the cost-of-living is high and so are many salaries, but not all. And the gap between those who live comfortably and those who struggle to get by is widening. There are so many who could use the grounding and calm that meditation can offer.

At the same time, I completely get that someone like a yoga teacher or a sound therapist in this area is also struggling. In order for them to be able to offer the services that they do, they must cover their costs.

Yeah, I know. All this mindfulness stuff seems to be unnecessarily pricey.
(Photo by Magic Bowls on Unsplash)

So here’s my wish for the remainder of 2024: Hey, workplaces! Yeah, you, the ones who expect a lot from your employees! Make sure they are fully supported in all aspects of wellness. Bring in a meditation teacher or a yoga instructor. Set up a quiet space for people to destress for a few minutes. Don’t expect your workers to shell out part of their paycheck for staying grounded dealing with your expectations.

And for the meditation teachers and yoga instructors and sound therapy practitioners and the like who are actually making a very good living…fine. Do your thing. Charge your prices. I know that trainings and musical instruments and sacred spaces aren’t cheap. There are people who can and will pay a premium for them to get a truly calming and magical experience.

But after that, please. Offer free classes in parks and libraries and community centers. Volunteer your time for a good cause (my favorite has been a charity yoga class at the local Humane Society). Look for opportunities to share your talents in the not-so-bougie parts of town.

It will make a big difference to people who usually are not usually shown such grace.

Benefits of Mind-Body Fitness Classes for Cancer Patients: A Preliminary Research Study

If you needed yet another reason to turn to meditative exercise practices in the course of cancer treatment, here it is.

A recent, unpublished study that was presented at the 2023 ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) Quality Care Symposium, entitled “Virtual Mind–Body Fitness Classes Show Unexpected Benefit in People with Cancer” (Mao et al., 2023), examined the effects of virtual mind-body fitness classes on visits to urgent care or unplanned hospitalizations for cancer patients who were in active treatment and were dealing with moderate or greater fatigue.

While mind-body practices are already recommended for cancer patients to help deal with the symptoms of treatment and its emotional fallout, the results of this study illuminated specific benefits. Those patients who had been assigned to the group given access to virtual live mind-body and fitness classes (called Intergrative Medicine at Home, or IM@Home) had fewer hospitalizations and shorter hospital stays, in addition to fewer visits to urgent care, compared to those subjects who were only given access to pre-recorded online meditation resources (Enhanced Usual Care, or EUC).

It’s not surprising that mindfulness benefits cancer patients, although it’s striking how those benefits manifest themselves.

This study was run at the renown Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) with 200 cancer patients randomized into the two groups (IM@Home and the stan, which makes the design more solid and increases confidence in the results. Nonetheless, as the lead author Dr. Jun Mao (Chief of Integrative Medicine at MSKCC) stated in the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Currents blog, “I do want to caution that the current trial was designed as an early-phase trial, so we would like to do a larger study with longer follow-up to confirm our results before we are completely confident in the findings.”

A larger study is currently in the works. Dr. Mao would like to explore whether these classes help patients follow through on their treatment plans, and if so, whether these patients also live longer.

The IM@Home group’s classes included a variety of classes (again, quoted from Cancer Currents blog): “Some of the classes taught participants movement-based activities such as yoga, tai chi, and dance therapy; other classes taught meditation-based practices, such as music therapy and mindfulness.” It is already known that exercise during cancer treatment can reduce fatigue, but the researchers felt that part of the success of this study was due to the participants’ ability to choose the level of exertion based on how they were feeling at the time of the class.

Looking forward to further research on the ways that we can support cancer patients physically, emotionally and spiritually!

As Dr. Mao pointed out, more directed research on this must be done before drawing specific conclusion, but this was a very valuable pilot program, the results of which would not surprise those of us who have made use of various exercise modalities, particularly those with a mind-body angle, for calming ourselves during our cancer journeys.

The more this subject is studied, the greater the chance that cancer centers focusing on whole-patient treatment will be offering such classes to their patients. COVID taught us that there are ways to make classes accessible to people with limited mobility or conditions that may prevent physical travel to classes.

While I believe that attending mind-body oriented classes in person is ideal, this study illustrated that even virtual opportunities can have significant benefits for the patient.

It’s worth pointing out that of the 200 study participants, 91% were female and 77% were white. That is not a diverse spread and reflects the typical clientele at your average yoga studio (based mainly on my personal observations), with the exception being that the average age of these study participants was 60 years. I would be willing to bet that less-represented groups would benefit greatly from the stress relievers offered here and I hope that the researchers expand their subject pool to balance out the participants in their future study.

Regardless, these are intriguing results that underscore the important of mind-body focused classes, and exercise in general, in the well-being and improvement of cancer patients. This study joins a growing list of research that is changing the way that we look at managing cancer treatment side effects.

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REFERENCES:

Reader-Friendly
Windstead, E, Virtual Mind–Body Fitness Classes Show Unexpected Benefit in People with Cancer, Cancer Currents, December 15, 2023:
https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2023/mind-body-fitness-cancer-side-effects

Research Study Abstract
Mao, JJ et al., Effect of virtual mind-body fitness program on reduction in unplanned hospitalizations among patients undergoing active cancer treatments: A pragmatic randomized clinical trial, presented at 2023 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, October 28, 2023:
https://meetings.asco.org/2023-asco-quality-care-symposium/15514?presentation=227485#227485 (note: click on “Abstract 473” on right side panel for abstract text)