Fourteen years ago, a professional in West Jakarta, Lauren, now 39, began suffering from frequent unexplainable and severe headaches. Simple painkillers did not do much to ease his pain.

He consulted several medical doctors but they were unable to determine the cause of the attacks. They concluded that his headaches must have been caused by psychosomatic issues.

After some soul-searching, he became aware that his distress was caused by financial difficulties that he and his family went through. The kind of predicament is common among adults in Jakarta.

Similarly, a Jakarta-based applied psychology consultant, Arta Fanti, now 28, said that in 2010, some family conflicts led to great surges of anxiety. She did not have adequate mental, emotional or spiritual resources to properly deal with her anxiety, despite having just enrolled in an undergraduate degree program in psychology.

Finding herself unable to apply the abstract theories she learned in the classroom to deal with her real-life situation, Arta resorted to bad habits, like biting her fingernails to the point of damaging them, whenever feelings of fear and anxiety started to come up.

She recalled that whenever she got upset, her mood and concentration would be affected for days.

She said she was in an autopilot mode at that time, resorting to her bad habits as a knee-jerk response, not even aware of the underlying anxieties and fears related to her family conflict.

Both Lauren and Arta said they had no idea how to deal with their negative emotions or prevent them from triggering their harmful psychosomatic responses until they arrived at a point where their problems started to seriously affect their daily activities.

Arta could not concentrate while attending her classes and Lauren felt his performance at work begin to decline.

That was when they started to become aware that they needed to look for stress management techniques that could help them deal with their stressful situations.

In order to function well in their studies and work again, Arta and Lauren decided to turn to mindfulness meditation which, simply put, helped them to pay attention to whatever physical and mental state they were in with a clearer and calmer mind.

“In my early meditation practices, I learned to pay attention to the physical sensations that underlie my fear and anxiety, noticing my breath coming in and out as an anchor to refocus again each time my mind wandered away,” Arta said.

“Having practiced meditation for 30 minutes to an hour a day, I become aware that the physical responses that lie beneath my fear and anxiety are only temporary and they will eventually go away once I investigate them and acknowledge them.”

According to Arta, practicing mindfulness does not mean she neglects the pain caused by her family conflicts. Instead, by practicing mindfulness meditation, she can forget her problems for a while to stave off impulsive urges or reactions to the issue at hand.

Then, after her mind calms down, she can revisit the problem again with a clearer mind and think of better strategies to minimize the pain caused by her family problems.

“After meditating for 20 to 30 minutes a day, my headaches started to disappear faster, helping me to manage my anxieties about my financial or work-related problems, and I can solve the problems better,” Lauren said.

A modern, urban malady

According to Atma Jaya Catholic University health psychology lecturer Eunike Sri Tyas Suci, living in megapolitan settings like Jakarta can be highly stressful; individuals are burdened by so many responsibilities and relationships with family or friends that often turn dysfunctional.

High living costs, heavy workloads and heavy traffic, not to mention loneliness and interpersonal conflicts, can serve as major triggers for anxiety and distress, Suci said.

Due to a lack of social support, stressed individuals often choose not to deal with their core emotional problems but rather try to distract themselves or suppress the issue — a strategy that, instead of solving the problems, tends to make them worse, she added.

Distraction and repression can lead to psychosomatic issues and compulsive behavior that not only hamper a person’s ability to fully function in their day-to-day lives, but also make it difficult to cope with problems effectively.

These psychosomatic problems and compulsive behavior can be harmful in the long-run, Suci asserted.

“Each individual’s window of tolerance for stress is different depending on complex interrelationships among intelligence, upbringing, life experience, temperamental disposition and many more.”

This is why, according to a paper coauthored by psychologists Veronica Adesla and Kantiana Taslim, both practitioners for consultancy company Personal Growth, individuals will only feel compelled to seek help and attain mindfulness only after they feel their daily activities are impacted by their stress.

“A person’s inner mental noise or chaos can result from intrusive thoughts, anxieties or fears. [The inner condition] is of course also affected by the external noise or chaos, such as the unrealistic demands that society places on an individual, an uncomfortable or unfriendly environment,” the paper says.

Suci advised that urbanites complement their meditation practices with adequate social support, proper nutrition and physical exercise, to help them cope with their distress better.

Neurological effects: A Buddhist monk meditates while being hooked on a brain scanner device. Various neurological studies have utilized brain scans to discover the structural changes that regular mindfulness meditation practices can induce in a person’s brain. (AFP/Getty Images)

Ancient technique, modern application

A contemporary interest in mindfulness meditation for some began after a children’s soccer team survived after being trapped for 10 days in a cave in Thailand in 2018 because their coach Ekapol Chanthawong helped them meditate.

The boys and their coach spent more than 288 hours trapped in Tham Luang Nang Non cave by monsoon floodwaters on June 23, 2018 after they went exploring. The group was discovered on July 2, 10 days after being totally cut off from the outside world, and while they were for the most part physically healthy, experts say the ordeal had likely taken a mental toll that could have worsened by the day.

What is it about the practice of meditation that helped them survive the horrific ordeal?

According to various sources, mindfulness meditation originated almost 25 centuries ago thanks to Siddharta Gautama (the Buddha), who said he had discovered a much older practice.

The Buddha practiced mindfulness meditation to ease suffering with the wisdom of impermanence, that whatever pleasures and pains a person experienced at a time, they would eventually fade away in time, so it was important not to over-identify with these emotions.

He also taught individuals to be aware of the physical sensations beneath these pleasurable and painful sensations and observe them as they come and go so that people will have enough resources to endure these sensations, especially the painful ones, which most of us find unbearable.

Sometimes, we panic whenever these painful sensations arise, causing us to react in an impulsive or destructive manner or get paralyzed by our fear, unable to make wise decisions.

The wisdom of impermanence taught in mindfulness meditation helps us to muster more courage to endure the pain and as soon as we face our pain, it starts fading away, according to Veronica and Kantiana.

“The practice helps prevent depression while reducing anxiety, panic disorder and stress, [while helping individuals attain] better emotional regulation, greater emotional intelligence and empathy, addiction management, better sleep as well as better emotional control,” they write.

Mindfulness for everyday people

To achieve the benefits of mindfulness meditation, you have to practice it regularly, ranging from 30 minutes to an hour a day, according to various research studies.

“You can start your regimen by building on short periods of meditation practices like five or 10 minutes a day in the beginning. Do it at a time and place you consider most suitable for you,” Veronica and Kantiana say.

Then, you start extending the temporal length of your practice until it becomes an integral part of your life, they advise.

“Now, when I’m eating, for instance, instead of being an airhead who plays with my smartphone and not paying attention to the food’s flavors at all, I begin to be able to pay full attention to the taste of the food I am eating and appreciate its subtleties,” Lauren said.

Sari, a 29-year-old journalist and meditation practicioner, said: “When I ride a commuter line train, instead of playing with my smartphone — thus flooding my already exhausted brain with needless stimuli — I would just observe the panorama outside the window or notice how tired my fellow commuters are as they return home in the evening, realizing I’m not the only one who’s tired after a day’s work.”

If you feel your life’s circumstances start driving you crazy, try mindfulness meditation and feel better.