Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a practice that emphasizes intense focus on present experiences while maintaining a non-judgmental awareness of thoughts and feelings. Often described as "the power of the present," it serves as an individually defined method of attention training that can provide various benefits such as stress reduction, lower blood pressure, and improved mental health outcomes, including relief from anxiety and depression. While mindfulness practices can be traced back to ancient traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism, the modern adaptation largely emerged from the work of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program in 1979. This program has since gained global recognition and has been integrated into healthcare settings, educational institutions, and corporate environments.
Mindfulness encourages individuals to accept their past experiences while fostering awareness of their current feelings without mental analysis. Despite its roots in spiritual practices, mindfulness has been redefined in contemporary contexts, focusing on its therapeutic benefits rather than its origins. The digital age has also influenced the rise of mindfulness, as many seek to mitigate the stress associated with constant connectivity. While its growing popularity has led to widespread implementation, it has also sparked discussions about commercialization, often referred to as "McMindfulness." Ultimately, mindfulness remains a versatile tool for enhancing emotional well-being and personal growth.
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Mindfulness
Mindfulness involves an intense concentration on events happening in the present. People practicing mindfulness keep a distance from judgment but observe present circumstances from a clear and enlightened place. Often referred to as "the power of the present," mindfulness is an individually defined attention-training practice. Benefits of mindfulness include stress reduction, lower blood pressure, improved outcomes for heart disease, better quality sleep, and improved pain management and gastrointestinal health.
Practitioners are using mindfulness practices to help alleviate conditions like anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, drug or alcohol abuse/dependence, and disordered eating. According to its promoters, mindfulness is effective because it teaches people to accept negative experiences from their past and move forward. Frequently, mindfulness is combined with other approaches taught in cognitive behavioral therapy to overcome self-defeating prophecies.
Brief History
From popular literature, one would think mindfulness was invented in the same era as the VCR, but the practice is rooted in Hinduism. Virtually every culture and religion has practiced some form of mindful meditation at some point in their history and there is even evidence of spiritual meditation in Indian scriptures from 5,000 to 3,500 BCE.
The advent of the modern movement is credited to Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus and founding director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts’ Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was also the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts. The Stress Reduction Clinic opened in 1979, before transitioning into the Center for Mindfulness, and led to the creation of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MSRB) program. According to MBSR’s literature, more than 25,000 people completed the program by 2023. The eight-week course takes place at the Center for Mindfulness in Shrewsbury, MA, or online. Five-day residential intensive programs were also offered worldwide. The programs began by focusing on mindfulness meditation, mind-body connections, and yoga and continue with that formula today.
Kabat-Zinn grew the program out of a basement by approaching patients who were seeking pain relief from chronic conditions. In the article he published describing results, titled "An Outpatient Program in Behavioral Medicine for Chronic Pain Patients Based on the Practice of Mindfulness Meditation: Theoretical Considerations and Preliminary Results," Kabat-Zinn cited moderate to great pain reduction, less depression, anxiety, and fatigue in his fifty-one patient sample.
At that time, mindfulness was not linked to stress reduction. In 1979, Kabat-Zinn requested help from Saki Santorelli to explore the use of mindfulness techniques to reduce mental stress and concurrently improve physical symptoms. Santorelli helped develop the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts and served as director of its Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society from 2000 to 2017. Because the program was connected to a hospital and, thereby subject to the Hippocratic Oath, the conventional medical world began paying attention and the media soon followed.
In the 1990s, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy was created to alleviate symptoms of depression. In the 2020s, mindfulness is taught at healthcare institutions, the U.S. military, professional sports, and in the corporate world. Several studies from 2019 and 2020 show that mindfulness interventions have several proven benefits, including stress and pain reduction, improved sleep, and improved general quality of life, as well as success in treating anxiety and depression symptoms.
Impact
Kabat-Zinn deliberately avoided emphasizing the Buddist or Far Eastern origins of mindfulness. By all appearances, this tactic worked and mindfulness was not pigeonholed into any kind of New Age movement. The flexible definition of mindfulness helped the practice become adapted into modern pop culture as well. In 1990, Kabat-Zinn published a book titled Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, based on the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program (SR-RP) at UMass Medical and was subsequently interviewed for five-part PBS series that later won an Emmy.
With mindfulness programs springing up at hospitals, schools and countless other locations throughout the world, Kabat-Zinn never imposed many restrictions on the programs’ contents, as long as they didn’t use his program’s patented title. Modern interpretation includes the tenants of accepting the past, engaging in awareness without mental analysis, avoiding labels, opening oneself up to learning experiences for their own sake, and belief in a greater power. Within these broad categories, organizations have tailored their own mindfulness programs to include such disciplines as t’ai chi, yoga, reiki.
The advent of the smartphone, ironically, added fuel to the mindfulness fire. Though digital connectedness seems, at first glance, to be the polar opposite of mindfulness theory, the prevailing sense of digital overload has propelled many to the philosophy. Kabat-Zinn stressed the importance of turning off one’s cell phone. Some recommendations in this era of 24/7 connectedness include waiting a minute once the impulse strikes to check email, studying breathing quality during computer work, paying attention to one’s emotions while reading social media status updates, and simply leaving the phone behind sometimes. There are even iPhone and Android apps for meditation and practicing mindfulness.
Leading corporations have jumped on the bandwagon and General Mills, Aetna, Google, Bank of American, Goldman Sachs Group, and many others are offering mindfulness leadership training. Their motives aren’t entirely altruistic. In a Wall Street Journal article titled "Why Companies Are Promoting Mindfulness at the Office," writer Angela Chen noted that Aetna registered a decrease in out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
With popularity comes controversy, and even mindfulness is no exception. The term "McMindfulness" was coined in response to the commercialization of the term. This movement was illustrated perfectly in 2014 when protesters disrupted a Wisdom 2.0 conference panel discussion on "Three Steps to Corporate Mindfulness the Google Way." Activists disrupted the event to speak out against evictions of low income San Franciscans from city dwellings. Once protesters had been handled by security, the speakers encouraged attendees to focus within and not consider any points made by members of Eviction Free San Francisco.
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