Chapter 19: Mindful Meditation Versus Stress Reduction and Relaxation Methods

Mindfulness in simple term, is observing the mind.  The Buddhist right mindfulness is broader, and encompass focusing on improving the life through cultivating the mind as a whole, through living in the present, free from judgments.  This encourages open-mindedness, optimism, and happiness, while minimizing hatred, jealousy, lamenting, and resentments.  However, one should not engage in mindfulness practices to obtain specific benefits.  Although mindfulness may not directly relate to improving one’s studies or performance skills, adopting some of the principles of mindfulness alone can facilitates one to become a compassionate, useful, and a better person, living a complete life.

The optimal way of developing a sustainable mindfulness is to follow and practices, what The Buddha taught: the “Right Mindfulness meditation”.  The basis of this is a?n?p?na-sati—the breath meditation.  Once the basics are mastered and be able to maintain the mind at the present, one can follow advanced Buddhist meditations practices (e.g., based on Sathi-pattana), including Vipassana. There is no magical pathway or shortcuts in engage in right meditation practices or developing mindfulness.  It is also important to identify the right type of meditation and engage in regular practices.

Meditation is fundamentally important in Buddhist practices. It provides insight (especially about the self), stillness and the quietness of the mind, temporary reprieve from suffering, development of inner peace and happiness, and eventually helps the practitioner to follow the path to enlightenment.  However, as discussed in the previous chapter (#18), following any of the described short-cut methods currently propagated in north America, unlikely to pave the path towards developing sustained mindfulness.  Nevertheless, these truncated methods are easy to practice and enable to achieve short-term relaxation.

Materialistic and short-term gains do not lead to happiness:

Mindfulness is not equivalent to happiness. However, developing and maintaining mindfulness leads to fewer mental disturbances and less mental clutter, fewer attachments (to self, people, luxuries, wealth, material goods, etc.), better understanding of the self, developing the ability to getting rid of defilements; collectively, these can lead to happiness.

Being mindful means being willing to let go of negative emotion; the past, worries about the future, and uncertainties in life.  Maintaining attention to the present will also help one to appreciate the positivity of the life of self, others and the environment, without worries about uncertainties, worries, and worthless comparisons with what others have.

Importance of relaxing the mind and the body:

The mind and the body work together. When one is stressed, the other will follow. In fact, this is one of the keyways how most of our sicknesses develop.  These in part, are reinforced by negative thoughts and overcome by positive thinking.  The latter also generating compassion and equanimity.

Sitting meditation: Breath is natural and happen in real time, and thus, focusing on the breath is natural and would helps one concentrate on the present moment without fixing on thoughts or ideas. Sit comfortably is a quiet place, close eyes lightly, and focus the mind on the breath.  Focus on the in and out breath or the movements of the abdomen, which allow one to and keep the mind in the present moment. 

Walking meditation: Instead of sitting, one can also quieten the mind while walking. In this, one observes the movement of feet, while gazing about 5 to 6 feet in the front.  The practice of either, sitting or walking meditation methods will lead to relaxation of the mind followed by relaxation of the body, quickly. One of the main goals of meditation is clearing the cluttered mind and establishing mental calmness. 

During the process of meditation, one should allow thoughts to come and go, without trying to suppress them.  When one realizes that the mind has drifted away or fixed on an unintended object or drifted away in a dream, consciously bring the mind back to the breath. By focussing the mind on breath (which is natural and inherent), it is easier to maintain the mind in the present moment. The goal at this stage is to keep the mind on breath—the present movement.

Mindfulness and the development of compassion and empathy:

Mindfulness based compassion training increases altruistic behavior. It is associated with activation of areas of the brain implicated in social cognition and emotion regulation, such as the inferior parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and their neural connectivity with the nucleus accumbens. These emerging data suggest that cultivating compassion and altruism could enhance the activity and positive structural changes of specific intellect sites within the central nervous system. 

Moreover, compassion enhance the ability to understand the suffering of others together with executive and emotional control. Maintaining mindfulness is effective in improving cognitive empathy, which is compatible with the “personality theory” and assessing empathy. In this regard, the personality psychology theory is reported to relate to the developing, scientifically defensible model of human nature and behavior.  This encompasses psychoanalysis, humanistic traits, and social-cognitive perspectives.

A meta-analysis report a strong relationship between mindfulness training with reduction of neuroticism; the latter is a personality trait that is linked to an increased tendency to experience anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, and loneliness. Because of the self-understanding and the enhanced clarity of the mind, cravings are reduced by mindfulness development practices.  In addition, such practices also improve patience, tolerance, and the ability not to react in an automatic manner and thus improves the ability to respond with awareness.

What happens with longer-term practice of meditation?

Unlike mentioned short-cut methods, the Buddhist meditation practices, such as Samatha and Vipassana, Dzogchen, and Zen, all involve development of spiritual aspects, compassion, and equanimity. Practices of these are known to modify biological systems and the structural aspects of brain, that related to mind–body relaxation, reduction of stress, and so forth, within and outside the brain. 

In addition to the reported structural changes in specific brain areas, meditation also leads to sustained modulations of the neuroendocrine system and larger neural networks (12). These changes are different from the temporary clinical outcomes such as relaxation, based on shortcut methods, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).  The latter and similar methods have been adapted from Buddhist practices, have become popular in recent years in the west. 

Because programs similar to MBSR are easy to implement, and the currently used standard scientific methods in neurosciences and neurobiology can be apply to measure certain outcomes, scientists have opted to examine the short-term outcomes from these truncated mindfulness-based relaxation methods.  The goal of these programs is stress reduction and a number of studies have confirmed this outcome.  However, there is no evidence of the ability of truncated methods to develop sustained mindfulness, compassion or equanimity.

In addition to America, the impact and the benefits of mindfulness interventions have been examined over the past two decades in other countries.  Nevertheless, the psychological and biological mechanisms that reinforce the effects of mindfulness practice have been barely touched.  Meanwhile, based on previous reports, several empirical outcomes from mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) have been examined. Moreover, psychotherapists have attempted to learn and implement some mindfulness-based interventions to integrate them into therapeutic work. In this regard, even, brief mindfulness training exercises has been reported to significantly improve visuospatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning.

Chapter 20 will discuss how maintenance of mindfulness will help ordinary people. 

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Professor Sunil J. Wimalawansa, MD, PhD, MBA, DSc, is a physician-scientist, educator, social entrepreneur, and process consultant. He is a philanthropist with experience in long-term strategic planning, and cost-effective investment and interventions globally for preventing non-communicable diseases [recent charitable work]. The author has no conflicts of interest and received no funding for this work.