Essay on Mindfulness

Etienne Blondiaux, Coach, Mindfulness trainer, Lead & Care? (Geneva, Neuilly-sur-Seine)

Mindfulness is generally defined as non-judgmental, moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Exact definitions vary by this is usually accepted as such by practitioners such as Jon Kabat-Zinn.

When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts stop rebashing the past or imagining the future and tune into what wa are sensing in the present moment.

Mindfulness involves acceptance, and as such is non-judgmental. We pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them. There is no right or wrong way to think or feel in a given moment. 

Mindfulness and Meditation

It is common thinking to say that mindfulness and meditation are closely related. Nevertheless they are not synonymous. Jon Kabat-Zinn used to say that we can practice mindfulness while not doing a formal meditation practice. In the same time there are many kind of meditations beyond mindfulness meditations. The word ? meditation ? refers to a wide range of practices that simply involve training the mind to achieve a particular state of consciousness, such as relaxation. Mindfulness meditation is adapted from Buddhist Vipassana meditation, and is a commonly practices form of meditation.

Mindfulness and Attention

According to psychologist William James, ? attention is the talking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts… It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. ? Attention may be compare to a spotlight, which makes certain information from the inside or outside world more available to conscious awareness, while filtering out less useful information. It then orients to information that is deemed important in a given moment.

Mind-wandering

You have probably heard people suggest that you should stay focus on the present. ? Be here and now ? !

Nevertheless as human beings we have the unique ability to focus our attention on something other that the present. Sitting on the computer, and we thing on our last vacations. Or our next ones. Or about what we are going to have for dinner. Or about the people we met yesterday.

We may think that giving such freedom to our minds, when they are unconstrained, may contribute to make us happy or happier. When our mind wanders, it may go to some happier place and therefore it could have sense as it could increase our happiness level.

In the same time some say that to be happy we need to be focused on our experience in the present moment.

Research shows that people are less happy when mind-wandering no matter what they are doing. Mind-wandering and unhappiness are correlated. In fact it shows that mind-wandering very likely seems to be an actual cause, and not merely a consequence, of unhappiness.

So how much do people think about something else than what they are doing ? as an average 47 percent. It goes from 65 percent when taking a shower, to 50 when working, to 40 when exercising, and only 10 when having sex… In most cases people are mind-wandering at least 30 percent of the time.

We spend huge amounts of time paying attention to where our mind is and it is not in the present moment. We spend time worrying, being upset, planning, usually it is about the past or the future. But we create, we are in a relationsship, we love, we feel compassion, … in the present. This is where we live and value our time. This is about mindfulness, about being present (in Chinese the ideogram for mindfulness is made up of the one for ? presence ? over the character for ? heart ?!; meaning ? the presence of heart ?!).

Practicing mindfulness

There are a lot of to practice mindfulness. We can practice it in most of situations by just being non-judgmentally aware of our thoughts, feelings, sensations, globally our experience. We may use a traditional approach of contemplation such as yoga, a silent retreat, or through chanting, eating, meditating… We suggest to start by developing with being aware of our breath. The awareness of the breath is just accessible to everybody and already allows to observe some deep benefits. Mindful breathing can be practices anywhere and at any time.

Choosing the right mindfulness meditation

So you want to be mindful and cultivate intentional, non-judgmental attention to each moment. Meditation is then the core of your mindfulness practice. But you have a few possibilities. Which one is right for you ?

A research engaging participants in one of three forms of practice, has been published in journal Mindfulness :

– the sitting meditation (sitting in a relaxed but erect posture and cultivating awareness of each breath you take)

• the body scan (paying attention to each part of the body, from bottom to top)
• mindful yoga (practicing a deliberate , intentional movement)

In each group participants reported benefits such as reduced rumination, as well as greater self-compassion and well-being. It is well-known and proven by research for decades that mindfulness practices improve mental and physical health.

Then results were compared between groups.

Yoga and sitting meditation improved emotion regulation. Sitting people were significantly less judgmental towards their own feelings and experience.

Depending on the life challenges you face you may choose one practice or the other.

If you are overwhelmed by anger, sitting meditation looks like the one you need. If you feel often tired or sick you could choose yoga. You could use body scan to pair is one other practice.

It would be worth investigating further this approach and include practices such as walking meditation.

Mindfulness and Research

UC Berkeley’s Jason Marsh narrates in an essay called Mindfulness : It’s worth a try, his way to mindfulness. He writes :

A ? study, published in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, suggests that meditating for just 30 minutes a day for eight weeks can increase the density of gray matter in brain regions associated with memory, stress, and empathy.

For decades, people who’ve completed the MBSR training have reported feeling less stress and more positive emotions; participants suffering from chronic illnesses say they experience less pain afterward.

The MBSR participants, none of whom were experienced meditators, reported spending just under half an hour per day on their meditation “homework.” Yet when their brains were scanned at the end of the program, their gray matter was significantly thicker in several regions than it was before.

One of those regions was the hippocampus, which prior research has found to be involved in learning, memory, and the regulation of our emotions. The gray matter of the hippocampus is often reduced in people who suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). ?

This study offers more evidence of the plasticity of the brain. It means we can improve our cognitive and emotional capacities over time. It therefore suggests we can easily work on bringing positive effects to our brain and improve our overall well-being.

The Science of Mindfulness

Jon Kabat-Zinn pioneered research on how mindfulness practices impact the body<; He looked at how his MBSR program (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) affects patients with chronic pain. His first study showed that mindfulness allows patients to uncouple the sensory dimension of the pain (how it actually feels) from the emotional, evaluative ( a kind of alarm) dimension of the pain. Thereby it reduces the experince of suffering.

In another study on chronic psoriasis, Jon showed that mindfulness can have great impact on the body when he reached a four-fold increase in skin clearing by adding mindfulness to the usual UV treatment.

With Richie Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Jon proved that MBSR meditators showed a more robust immune response to flu shots, showing that mindfulness practice actually boosts immune functioning.

Many medical studies were engaged all showing the positive effects of mindfulness practice. We may quote the Shamatha study by searchers from UC Davis and UCSF. They found that individuals who dedicated had longer telomeres, knowing that shorter telomeres are predicting earlier cell mortality and an aged immune system, as well as showing a chronic stress.

Helen Wang did a brief meditation program for people and showed that after they participated they responded to upsetting stimuli in a different way than they had before. The difference was that they more readily and more robustly engage prefrontal structures that are involved in sort of awareness and regulation of emotional experiences. They also showed a decrease in activation in their amygdala which is involved in the vigilance to potential threats.

Another study from Germany by Tanya Singer shows that practicing meditation leads to changes in the brain that change or affect our day-to-day experience and how we relate to others, how we relate to ourselves and how conscious we are of our own experiences.

So neuroscience has demonstrated that mindfulness seems to have some key effects on our body and mind. It helps people at focusing their attention and showing more discernment at present time experience. As mindfulness meditators we are able to impact on their emotional life, be more in touch with our own feelings and sensations, being more resilient in case of stressing situations.

It’s Worth a Try !

Usually people feel that it is much harder than what it is really. Many told us ? it is not for me ?, ? I am not able to meditate ?, ? it does not fit me ?, and claiming all possible causes for dismissal.

In fact the practice is simple and does need too much time to reach valuable results and benefits. At Lead & Care? we aim at bringing mindfulness practice into organisations to reach performance and in the same time improving the quality of life at work. Practicing mindful leadership is very rewarding and may change your whole philosophy of life.

Mindfulness : It’s Worth a Try !