Mindfulness and meditation have long since been a great method of addressing feelings of anxiety, stress and sadness. But more recently, it is becoming more useful in the management of various injuries and chronic pain. Even more specific to us, is the use of mindfulness and meditation in rehabilitation for concussion injuries.
Mindfulness is a form of meditation that is designed to orient yourself back to the present moment, improving your awareness of what is happening in your immediate surroundings, and what is happening within yourself. It is task-orientated and requires you to block out distractions and prevent your mind from wandering to unhelpful thoughts that may be triggering your anxiety, stress or pain. It works by stimulating the vagus nerve within your body, which creates a parasympathetic (rest and digest) response in the nervous system.
Following concussion, some of the most common symptoms that are reported are brain fog, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and difficulty remembering small details. This is because of the increased stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is essentially responsible for your flight or fight response. Basically, your body becomes wired to respond to threats (e.g. cave man sees bear), and without a natural release strategy (cave man runs from bear), the excess adrenaline in your body and brain has nowhere to go, leaving you feeling fatigued and in a constant state of brain fog.
We also have 2 networks that run our hardwiring for our brain. These are our Executive network (task-orientated, concentration), and our Default network (autopilot). Naturally, our brain will switch between the two as required. An example is driving. If you’re driving in wet weather, you will be using your executive network to concentrate on what is happening right in front of you. It leaves no room for distractions outside of the task at hand. But, when you are driving on a clear day, on a road you have driven multiple times before, it is not uncommon for your brain to switch into default mode (or autopilot), and all of a sudden you’ve arrived at your destination.
The reality is, that it is normal for your brain to utilise both networks, but often after concussion injuries, the default network will try to become more prominent and take over from the executive network, which makes task-orientation and concentration difficult!
This is why MINDFULNESS is recommended for management of acute and chronic concussion injuries! Mindfulness itself requires focus on task-orientation, which requires utilising your executive network! It can be tricky, but recommended strategies include guided mindfulness, yoga and breathing exercises.
So how can you implement it into your practice? Our practice principal Suzanne has compiled a number of meditations on our You Tube channel Yoga & Meditation – YouTube which can help with this! You can also see free resources in our shop created by our Cairns Occupational Therapist Jesse to assist you to develop more executive function. Free Resources Archives.
