Mindfulness and History

While mindfulness has become increasingly common over the past two decades, its roots can be traced back thousands of years to Hinduism and Buddhism. Hinduism is associated with mindfulness through yoga and meditation but was popularized in the West by those who learned about mindfulness through Buddhism. In Buddhism, mindfulness is the first step on the path to enlightenment.

One of the people often credited with bringing mindfulness to the West is Jon Kabat-Zinn. He developed an eight-week program for mindfulness-based stress reduction. He founded what is now the Mindfulness Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979 after studying Buddhism under the supervision of Many teachers. Kabat Zen combined Buddhist ideas about mindfulness with academic science, making it accessible to those in the West.

Soon, mindfulness made its way into the clinical settings with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which has successfully treated mental health issues such as anxiety and bipolar disorder in people of all ages. In addition, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is thought to be particularly useful in treating individuals who have experienced a relapse of depression.

Ultimately, being alert involves developing a state of purposeful attention that avoids judgment. One must abandon the desire to reduce uncertainty in everyday life to reach this state. This will reduce the individual's focus on controlling the present and the future and go beyond the tendency to value oneself, others, and one's circumstances. Thus, mindfulness involves developing metacognition, the ability to think and understand one's thoughts, and emotional openness.

Mindfulness benefits

Research has proven that mindfulness has many benefits. Some of these include:

Stress reduction

Several studies have focused on the ability of mindfulness meditation and mindfulness-based therapy to reduce stress. For example, a 2003 study of cancer patients showed increased mental alertness to reduce mood disturbances and stress. Similarly, the meta-analysis of 39 studies showed that mindfulness-based therapies effectively reduce anxiety. These and many other studies show that developing mindfulness through meditation or other mindfulness-based exercises enables people to be more selective about their emotional experiences, enabling them to regulate and reduce stress and anxiety while increasing positive emotions.

Decreased emotional reaction

Given how mindfulness can help reduce stress, it should be no surprise that it can also reduce emotional reactivity. For example, in a study by Ortner and colleagues, mindfulness meditation practitioners were shown emotionally distressing images and then asked to rate the unrelated tones. Participants with more experience with mindfulness meditation did not react more strongly to the photos and, therefore, were better able to focus on the tone rating task.

Improve focus

Research has also shown that mindfulness meditation can increase focus. In a study by Moore and Malinowski, a group with experience in mindfulness meditation was compared with the group with no such experience on concentration tests. Meditators significantly outperformed non-meditators on all measures of attention, indicating that mindfulness improves an individual's ability to focus.

Increase working memory

Another study suggests that mindfulness may also improve working memory. Jha and colleagues investigated the effect of mindfulness meditation on military participants during a stressful period before deployment, in which stress has been shown to deplete working memory. One group attended the eight-week mindfulness meditation course, but the others did not. The working memory decreased in the control group; however, in the wakefulness group, working memory decreased in those who spent the last time practicing mindfulness but increased in those who spent the most time practicing. More time to exercise mindfulness was also associated with increased and decreased negative affect.

Better relationships

Studies have also shown that mindfulness can improve an individual's ability to communicate emotions and respond successfully to stress in relationships. According to research, practicing mindfulness can reduce the emotional impact of conflict in relationships and help individuals communicate in social situations. Ultimately, these abilities increase relationship satisfaction.

Additional benefits

There are many other benefits of mindfulness. They include everything from psychological to cognitive to physical improvements. For example, studies have shown that mindfulness can improve the modulation of fear, intuition, and metacognition. Meanwhile, evidence shows that mindfulness meditation boosts faster information processing while reducing effort and disturbing thoughts.