Is there truly a need to practice mindfulness and gratitude journaling?

The last decade has seen a movement towards what my grandmother would call "pie in the sky waste of time” activities.

As a hardworking woman from rural Jamaica, Mama did not have space in her life for any of these, now popular, new age activities. She instead focused her time and energy on raising her children, keeping food on the table and making sure she respected the Sabbath.

Nowadays, many of us use mindfulness to calm ourselves. We embrace this age old practice of being purposefully centred on the present, focused for periods of time on sensations, sounds, feelings and our general surroundings.

In 2012, an American Psychological Association article titled, What are the benefits of mindfulness? Drs Daphne M. Davis and Jeffrey A. Hayes referred to studies of mindfulness by various research teams.

From an examination of the various studies they concluded that mindfulness has several benefits, including: stress reduction, boosts to working memory, focus, less emotional reactivity, more cognitive flexibility, relationship satisfaction, enhanced self-insight, morality, intuition and fear modulation.

Mindfulness is but one of the New Age practices which has taken hold. Another is gratitude journaling. Forbes magazine, Oprah Winfrey and USA Today are but some of the names which talk about gratitude journaling and promote its use.

A study by the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida brought to light the idea that writing about things for which we are grateful, lowered stress levels and brought about calmness at night. That is, spending 10 to 15 minutes per day, thinking and journaling about the things for which we are grateful could add years to our lives.

As children we learn to be grateful and for some cultures it is par for the course. But cultivating the habit of gratefulness and implementing it in our individual lives on a conscious level is a newer phenomenon.

Not only is the old faithful pen and paper great for gratitude journaling but there are now numerous apps to help with the process. Institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley have launched projects to, "Expand the scientific database of gratitude, particularly in the key areas of human health, personal and relational well-being, and developmental science” as well as to "promote evidence-based practices of gratitude in medical, educational, and organizational settings and in schools, workplaces, homes and communities.” Our lives get busy and crowded no matter our profession. A typical day can start as early as 6am (or before) and goes until into the night with what seems like endless meetings, emails and core tasks. There are always deadlines, timelines and targets.

With this overcrowding of the mind and body, many of us wonder where to find space to incorporate journaling and mindfulness. Who has time for yogi, time wasting utopian ways of being when there are so many more important things in life?

But, if the studies are to be believed, these practices will help us create space for so many things which often get ignored or overlooked. What is there to lose really? Are there any downsides to these practices?

While my grandmother had no thought of such ideas, she did spend time tending her food garden which, in itself, is mindfulness at work. She did not have a television and so her life was never overcrowded with constant news coverage.

The world was less globalised and so her world centred on her immediate community and a little of wider Jamaica but not much of anything outside her island’s shores. Today we spend hours listening to, watching and reading the news. We Tweet, Facebook and Instagram; we are often always connected and unlike Mama we no longer truly garden, go for walks without disturbances or sit for dinner without checking our phones.

What this means is that we need new outlets to relax. We now need to schedule time to unwind as it no longer occurs naturally. So yes, many of the New Age practices are needed much more than we can imagine.

The writer is a development consultant and owner of Forrest Jackson Relocation Services