Feature: Mindfulness practice in stress management

Recent studies have shown that work related stress is widespread in the UK and accounts for over 13 million lost working days every year! Almost 1 in 7 people claim they find their work extremely stressful and a massive 80% of all G.P. visits are stress-related.

Prolonged exposure to stress will inevitably have an adverse effect upon the immune system resulting in an increase in susceptibility to illness and disease. Therefore, intervention is crucial to help the individual to manage stress more effectively.

Michael Smith, a Senior Biomedical Scientist at our Reference Chemistry laboratory at St Thomas’ Hospital, states that stress, is in fact a choice rather than a predetermined outcome. “Through repetitive behavioural responses to specific conditions, stress becomes habitual and as with any habitual behaviour, the more we act out the habit, the stronger it becomes.”

Click below to read the article, in which Michael, who is also a teacher of mindfulness and meditation practice, describes an alternative to a stressful response.