ABOUT MINDFULNESS
Originally a Buddhist practice, mindfulness meditation has been secularized and is now widely practiced in the United States as a tool to calm and focus the mind. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn , "Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally." Mindfulness practitioners learn how to pay attention on purpose by practicing specially developed mindfulness meditation practices.
According to the Dalai Lama Center, “Mindfulness is a mental faculty, like intuition or musical ability. Mindfulness does its work before intellect and emotion have had a chance to bring their judgments, interpretations, names, categorizations, or biases to bear on perception. It feels light and nimble, and comes in a flash -- out of the corner of the eye -- as if with a sideways glance, without grasping or looking directly. Why bother cultivating mindfulness? Among its many welcome side effects are deep serenity and a patient, tolerant understanding of others, but it is worthwhile in itself for reasons that must be experienced to be appreciated. In a word, it awakens us.”
A rapidly growing number of Americans are seeking a path to stress reduction, emotional fulfillment and deeper compassion for themselves and others through meditation. The National Health Association estimates that there are over twenty million meditators in the U.S., growing by approximately one million each year. Mindfulness meditation is now offered in some form by most major corporations, in hospitals, prisons, schools, and in the military. In 2014 Time Magazine ran the cover “The Mindful Revolution”, and mindfulness has been the topic of tens of thousands of publications and conferences around the world. Meditation is at the center of the exploding new field of Contemplative Neuroscience, which uses clinical trials and advanced brain imaging technology to explore how meditation changes the structure of the brain to increase resilience, empathy, and happiness, while helping practitioners to improve immune response and overcome trauma, addiction (link “addiction” to “In Recovery” page), and some psychological disorders (Davidson et al. 2003; de Dios et al. 2012; Roberts-Wolfe et al. 2012; Seppälä et al. 2014).
Since 1979, the University of Massachusetts Medical Center Stress Reduction Clinic, led by John Kabat-Zinn, pioneered the technique of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction to effectively treat sufferers of stress, anxiety, depression and chronic pain. With the use of Anatomical Magnetic Resonance Imagery, researchers from the Stress Reduction Clinic found increased density of gray matter concentration in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, empathy and emotion regulation, and shrinking of the amygdala area of the brain that controls fight and flight impulses, after one eight week meditation course.
LINKS
The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Heath Care, and Society: http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/
The Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education: http://dalailamacenter.org/blog-post/mindfulness-nutshell
The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds: http://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/
The Engaged Mindfulness Institute: http://engagedmindfulness.org/
The Prison Mindfulness Institute: http://www.prisonmindfulness.org/
Shambhala Buddhism: http://shambhala.org/
REFERENCES
Davidson, R.J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, M., Muller, D., Santorelli, S.F., Urbanowski, F., Harrington, A., Bonus, K., Sheridan, J.F. 2003. “Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation” Psychosom Med. 65(4):564-70.
Roberts-Wolfe D, Sacchet MD, Hastings E, Roth H, Britton W. 2012. “Mindfulness Training Alters Emotional Memory Recall Compared to Active Controls: Support for an Emotional Information Processing Model of Mindfulness” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 6 (15).
Seppälä, E. M., Nitschke, J. B., Tudorascu, D. L., Hayes, A., Goldstein, M. R., Nguyen, D. T. H., Perlman, D., & Davidson, R. J. 2014. “Breathing-Based Meditation Decreases Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in U.S. Military Veterans: A Randomized Controlled Longitudinal Study” Journal of Traumatic Stress. 27(4), 397–405.