A new study of injured athletes carried out by the University found they can benefit from using mindfulness as part of the sport rehabilitation process to improve their pain tolerance and awareness.
The research, carried out by Dr Warhel Asim Mohammed and Dr Athanasios Pappous (School of Sport and Exercise Sciences) and Dr Dinkar Sharma (School of Psychology) could have major implications in the treatment of sporting injuries at all levels.
Every year there are 29.7 million injuries among athletes in the UK. These have both psychological and physiological effects on athletes and for some it may mean the end of a career in sport.
To understand if mindfulness could play a part in the rehabilitation process of injuries, the researchers conducted tests on 20 athletes (14 male, six female), aged from 21–36 years who had severe injuries, preventing their participation in sport for more than three months.
Read the full news story at the Kent News Centre. The paper, Effect of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in Increasing Pain Tolerance and Improving the Mental Health of Injured Athletes has been published in Frontiers in Psychology.