Study Finds This Simple Practice Could Help With Depression & ADHD Symptoms

You're probably familiar with the concept of mind-wandering, but what about body-wandering? Unlike mind-wandering, which is thought-based, body-wandering is somatic-based and involves paying attention to sensations in your body like breathing, your heartbeat, and more.

For this study, researchers wanted to understand how body-wandering impacts people's experiences. They had 536 participants sit still in an MRI machine, using the MRI machine to scan their brains, as well as sensors to track heart rate, breathing rate, and stomach activity.

With the data gathered, the team observed that our minds don't just wander in thoughts, but they wander into our bodies as well. More specifically, many of the participants thought about their breath, heartbeat, stomach, and bladder during the scan.

Following the scan, the participants answered questions about their thoughts while they were in the MRI machine, as well as how much they noticed their own bodily sensations—and the results are somewhat contradictory, interestingly enough.

For one thing, mind-wandering was found to feel pleasant, while body-wandering was correlated with negative emotions and faster heart rates. But on the flip-side, participants who focused on bodily sensations more reported fewer ADHD and depression symptoms.

How can it be that body-wandering is experienced negatively, but has positive benefits? While more research is needed to understand these effects, the researchers believe it all has to do with presence. Namely, if you're focusing on your body, you're not caught up in rumination, regrets, stress about the future, and so on.

Body-wandering also created stronger connections in the brain between the thalamus and the parts of the brain that control movement and touch, suggesting that body-wandering could improve proprioception and strengthen one's ability to stay present in their body.