Mindfulness
•What according
to you is
mindfulness?
• Too many of us walk through everyday life unaware, eyes trained on
our phones or some other electronic device instead of taking in our
surroundings. This often causes us to be out of sync with the
significance of our experiences and with our emotional selves. Hence,
we need to learn more about the psychology of deeper living, a
psychology with many applications that teaches about the depths of
enjoyment, contentment, and meaningfulness that can be achieved
through engagement with everyday life. In fast-paced and futurefocused cultural groups (such as the majority culture in Western
cultures), mindfulness is often undervalued.
Daniel Kanheman-Moment to moment
searches
• Now, there are about 20,000 moments of 3 seconds in a 16-hour day,
so this is what life consists of; it consists of a sequence of moments.
Each of these moments is actually very rich in experience, so if you
could stop somebody and ask, “What is happening to you right now?”
a great deal is happening to us at any one of these moments. There is
a goal, there is a mental content, there is a physical state, there is a
mood, there might be some emotional arousal. Many things are
happening. And then you can ask, “What happens to these
moments?”
Amy Wrzesniewski-search for novelty
• Some of the best examples of mindfulness are manifested in the everyday behaviours of
people. This was indirectly illustrated in the research of Amy Wrzesniewski, a positive
psychologist interested in how people function optimally at work (Wrzesniewski, 2012;
Wrzesniewski, McCauley, Rozin, & Schwartz, 1997; also see Chapter 15). She found that a
third of the hospital cleaners in a metropolitan medical centre considered their work a
“calling” and therefore did everything they could to make the health care experience
positive for patients and staff. These members of the cleaning team essentially
reconstrued their jobs by mindfully making moment-to-moment choices about what was
worthy of attention, thereby also exercising some control over their duties.
• Their mindfulness resulted in benefits for others. For example, cleaners who felt they
had a calling were quite vigilant in their attempts to keep the hospital sanitary. These
cleaners would make generous efforts to make the stays of the long-term patients more
bearable by changing the placement of pictures in the rooms and repositioning other
objects to give patients new views of their surroundings. Each day, the cleaners found
novel ways to improve the hospital environment.
Mindful health
• In 2009, Ellen Langer (2009) conducted studies showing that being mindful
about various aspects of our lives can have great health and well-being
benefits. In her book Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of
Possibility, Langer states that many age-related declines and maladies may
be at least in part related to the type of mindset that the elderly develop as
a result of negative stereotypes about older groups that exist in some
cultures.
• Langer states that in being more mindful about not accepting these
stereotypes, we may age “better,” and she has shown results to this effect
in the various studies she depicts. In tuning out what they are supposed to
do and tuning in to what they are doing, older adults may have more
realistic and potentially less pathological views of themselves; this may
have the effect of improving well-being and possibly health overall (Langer,
2009b).
Mindfulness as a State of Mind
• Mindfulness, which sometimes is considered a new-age concept, is
comparable to the age- old process of cultivating awareness (of everyday
happenings and physiological and psychological sensations) in Buddhist
traditions and to the modern therapeutic technique of increasing attention
in order to identify distorted thinking (an aspect of cognitive and cognitive–
behavioural therapies; Miller, 1995).
• This said, there are some important differences in Westernized mindfulness
and its use in the Buddhist tradition (Keng, Smoski, & Robins, 2011).
Whereas in Westernized ideas of mindfulness, this construct may be
studied rather independently, it is often viewed as only one component on
the road to true enlightenment within Buddhism. In addition, mindfulness
must be introspective in Buddhist teachings as opposed to more of an
external awareness of surroundings in Western teachings
Ellen Langer on Mindfulness
• It is important to take at least a brief look at what mindfulness is and is not:
It is a flexible state of mind—an openness to novelty, a process of actively
drawing novel distinctions. When we are mindful, we become sensitive to
context and perspective; we are situated in the present. When we are
mindless, we are trapped in rigid mind-sets, oblivious to context or
perspective. When we are mindless, our behaviours is rule and routine
governed. In contrast, when mindful, our behaviours may be guided rather
than governed by rules and routines. Mindfulness is not vigilance or
attention when what is meant by those concepts is a stable focus on an
object or idea. When mindful, we are actively varying the stimulus field. It
is not controlled processing (e.g., 31 × 267), in that mindfulness requires or
generates novelty.
• Making evaluations requires us to cast judgment on ourselves, others, and
life situations, as “events do not come with evaluations; we impose them
on our experiences and, in so doing, create our experience of the event”
(Langer, 2009, p. 283). Mindfulness may battle our evaluative nature and
lead us to make fewer unnecessary judgments, even positive ones, while
encouraging in-the-moment adaptation to one’s surroundings (Bercovitz,
Pagnini, Phillips, & Langer, 2017; Pagnini et al., 2016).
• This trait can potentially assist with being in unfamiliar situations or being
better at working with people who are different from you in some way and
as such is a valuable skill for today’s world of work. Here-and-now living
does require a refined ability to discriminate between subtleties, but this
need not lead to an evaluation.
Operationalization of mindfulness- Bishop
• Bishop et al.’s (2004) operationalization of mindfulness, although
similar to Langer’s (2009b), does discourage continued evaluation of
the self, and it draws more attention to the cognitive and emotional
components of mindful engagement. In the Bishop et al. twocomponent system, self-regulated attention is honed on current
personal experience, and emotional openness facilitates the
acceptance and appreciation of all internal experiences. Hence,
mindfulness from this perspective borrows somewhat from more
traditional Buddhist teachings and involves metacognition and
emotional awareness.
Mindfulness Qualities- Shapiro, S. J
• Nonjudging: Impartial witnessing, observing the present moment by moment without evaluation and categorization
• Nonstriving: Non-goal-oriented, remaining unattached to outcome or achievement, not forcing things
• Acceptance: Open to seeing and acknowledging things as they are in the present moment; acceptance does not mean passivity or
resignation, rather a clearer understanding of the present so one can more effectively respond
• Patience: Allowing things to unfold in their time, bringing patience to ourselves, to others, and to the present moment
• Trust: Trusting oneself, one’s body, intuition, emotions, as well as trusting that life is unfolding as it is supposed to
• Openness: as Seeing things as if for the first time, creating possibility by paying attention to all feedback in the present moment
• Letting go: Nonattachment, not holding on to thoughts, feelings, experiences; however, letting go does not mean suppressing
• Gentleness: Characterized by a soft, considerate and tender quality; however, not passive, undisciplined, or indulgent
• Generosity: Giving in the present moment within a context of love and compassion, without attachment to gain or thought of
return
• Empathy: The quality of feeling and understanding another person’s situation in the present moment—their perspectives,
emotions, actions (reactions)—and communicating this to the person
• Gratitude: The quality of reverence, appreciating and being thankful for the present moment
• Loving kindness: A quality embodying benevolence, compassion, and cherishing, a quality filled with forgiveness and unconditional
love
Being Mindful of Emotions
• With mindfulness meditation, one can learn to be less judgmental.
Being less judgmental helps to bring about a more relaxed state. One
can learn to watch anger and other emotional states with
compassion. This enables one to eventually let go of these states or at
least keep from intensifying them.
Mindful Stretching Exercises
• Gentle stretching and strengthening exercises done very slowly with
moment-to-moment awareness of breathing and of the sensations
that arise is yoga. Yoga seeks to unite the body, mind, and spirit. This
can result in improved health and vitality.
Mindful eating
• Studies have found mindfulness techniques to be helpful with
reducing binge eating and emotional eating. It may also help with
weight loss — but that tends to happen slowly over time, Mindful
eating isn’t meant to be a quick fix for weight loss.
Sit down while you eat
Use all your senses
Be aware of physical hunger
Mindful Breathing and
Sitting as a Meditation
• Mindful breathing and sitting (meditation) help to relax and focus the
mind. Just 5 minutes a day can make you feel more refreshed and
energetic. Here are some guidelines for practicing mindful breathing and
sitting:
• Make a special time and place for “non-doing.”
• Adopt an alert and relaxed body posture.
• Look dispassionately at the reactions and habits of your mind.
• Bring your attention to your breathing by counting silently “1” on
inhalation and “2” on exhalation, “3” on inhalation, etc. When you reach
number 10, return to number 1. (If you go beyond the number 10, then
you know your mind has wandered.)
• When your mind wanders, name what it wanders to, and come back to
the breathing.
• Once you have practiced focusing on your breathing, you can use
sensation, sound, or watching thoughts as your point of concentration.
• You cannot prevent stressful situations in life, but you can control your
reactions to them. Practicing mindfulness can help.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)
• Studies involving mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) also have
led to positive discoveries. MBCT is also an 8-week, standardized treatment
developed to attempt to hold depression at bay in cases of remission
(Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002). This group intervention follows the
premises of general cognitive therapy in which the goal is to weaken
associations between negative thoughts and depressive emotions, but it
differs in the sense that it focuses more on awareness of the thoughts and
emotions as opposed to the evaluation of legitimacy of these thoughts
(Keng et al., 2011). Many beneficial outcomes have been observed through
use of MBCT, including reductions in depressive relapse (Teasdale et al.,
2000), decreasing depressive symptoms (Costa & Barnhofer, 2016;
Williams, Russell, & Russell, 2008), treating sexual dysfunction
(Stephenson, 2017), and lessening symptoms of social phobia (Piet,
Hougaard, Hecksher, & Rosenberg, 2010; again, see Keng et al., 2001).
Neurological Findings With Mindfulness
• In the past few years, much attention has been paid to the
neuroscience behind mindfulness, with particular interest paid to its
neurological benefits. Improving mindfulness is related to better
spatial abilities regardless of gender, increased ability for awareness,
and potential increased neuroplasticity in the brain. To delineate
clinical implications of the use of mindfulness, some studies have
mapped the neurological process of mindfulness, although there is
not consistent agreement in this area. In neuroscience, emotional
regulation is thought to occur in two distinct ways.
• A “top-down” approach to this is where cognitive reappraisal of a situation
occurs to modulate the emotional impact of the stimulus; this contrasts
with a “bottom-up” approach in which the base reaction to the stimulus is
modulated without the need to cognitively reappraise and use higher order
functioning (Chiesa, Serretti, & Jakobsen, 2013).
• Researchers do not agree on whether the process of mindfulness follows a
bottom-up or a top-down procedure, as evidence of both seems to exist. It
may be that mindfulness helps to regulate emotions in a top-down fashion
in those who have just learned mindfulness techniques, but this becomes
more of a bottom-up strategy in longer- term users (Chiesa et al., 2013).
• In support of this hypothesis is a finding that individuals who possess high
trait mindfulness appear to control emotional reactions to sources of
threat by producing less cortisol (a bottom-up process), even in the face of
a social stressor (Brown, Weinstein, & Creswell, 2012). Those who are
taught mindfulness strategies may use a more top-down process until
these strategies become more automatic for them