The most reputable scientists studying the impacts of mindfulness techniques note that the research is still in its early stages compared to many other subjects. It will be years or decades before there is enough peer-reviewed research with active controls and extensive time periods to produce strong proof of advantages.Nonetheless, the discipline is growing, and the research seems promising.
Mindfulness is the capacity to be completely present and aware of one's surroundings, without being unduly reactive or overwhelmed by external stimuli.
Meditation is focusing on the current moment without eliminating it. When we meditate, we explore our brains' workings: sensations (air flowing in and out of the body or a noise wafting into the room), emotions (love this, detest that, want this, abhor that), and thoughts (did I remember to send that email?).
Mindfulness meditation is suspending judgment and exploring the present moment with compassion towards ourselves and others.
And, while this may appear frivolous or even strange to some, research suggests that developing the human capacity to observe ourselves and our surroundings nonjudgmentally and compassionately has profound and nourishing effects on our well-being that spread throughout our daily lives and communities.
The Foundational Science of Mindfulness-Based Interventions
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn's Stress Reduction Clinic at UMass Medical Center conducted mindfulness meditation experiments beginning in 1982. Since then, over 25,000 individuals have finished his innovative multi-week program, which became known as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, learning to improve their ability to react to stress, pain, and chronic disease.
Zinn introduced the fundamental concepts of mindfulness meditation to patients in a medical environment, and his work building the MBSR program was successful in alleviating the suffering caused by chronic and previously devastating medical illnesses such as chronic pain. Collaborating with Richard Davidson, a pioneer of emotional neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, provided a foundation for systematic study. MBSR has established the gold standard for research on mindfulness-based therapies.
In 1992, Zindel Segal, John Teasdale, and Mark Williams partnered to develop an eight-week curriculum based on MBSR. In 2002, the three wrote Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse, which is today considered a key work.
MBCT's legitimacy is solidly based on continuing research. Two randomized clinical studies (published in 2000 and 2008 in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology) show that MBCT may decrease relapse rates by 50% for individuals with recurrent depression. According to a study published in The Lancet, combining medication tapering with MBCT is as beneficial as taking medicine on a regular basis.
How Does Mindfulness Affect Health and Well-Being?
When we consciously direct our attention inward during mindfulness meditation, we create a distinct state of brain activity. With repeated exposure, this purposely produced condition may develop into a persistent characteristic, resulting in long-term alterations in brain function and structure. This is a crucial aspect of neuroplasticity: how the brain changes in response to experience. Mindfulness meditation involves focusing your attention in a certain way.
One concern about the special qualities of MBSR is what is the "active ingredient" in its tremendous effects. Naturally, the experience of getting together with others to reflect on life's difficulties, listen to poetry, and practice yoga may all add to the program's empirically proved success. But how does meditation specifically contribute to the MBSR program's favorable outcomes? One indication is that individuals who practiced mindfulness meditation while receiving light therapy for psoriasis saw four times the rate of recovery for the chronic skin disease. In other research, long-term gains were seen and sustained in proportion to the formal reflective meditation time spent at home in daily practice. More study will be required to confirm the numerous studies confirming that long-term gains are associated with mindfulness practice and are not just the result of meeting in a reflective manner as a group.
Sara Lazar and her colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital discovered that persons who have practiced mindfulness meditation for many decades have anatomical traits in their brains that are related to the amount of hours they practice. However, this discovery, along with studies of "adepts"—those who have spent tens of thousands of hours meditating—must be read with care in terms of cause and effect. Is it just that people with different brain activity and structure have chosen to meditate, or has meditation transformed their brains? These questions are now being investigated in laboratories throughout the globe.
MBSR has shown to be a wonderful source of insight into these problems since it allows novices to participate in new practices, which can then be recognized as the factors that produce the resulting beneficial improvements. What are these changes, regardless of their unique causes? MBSR research has continuously shown numerous major advances that illustrate its efficacy as a health-promoting exercise. These may be crucial to the "science of mindfulness."
The Science of Mindfulness
11 research-backed ways mindfulness meditation may improve your health and well-being.
1) Anxiety and depression may decrease after meditation training.
A meta-analysis of 47 research suggests that meditation may effectively alleviate stress-related health issues such as anxiety and depression. Researchers discovered that participating in mindfulness meditation programs (such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, and other mindfulness meditations) effectively reduces the negative aspects of psychological stress, with effects comparable to those seen with antidepressants. A analysis of nine clinical studies published in JAMA Psychiatry indicated that when comparing standard treatments for depression, including antidepressants, MBCT lowered risks of recurrence by up to 60%. Willem Kuyken and colleagues discovered that MBCT was especially beneficial for individuals who had a high baseline level of depressive symptoms. Furthermore, this decrease in relapse risk occurred independent of gender, age, education level, or relationship status.
2) Immune function may improve after meditation training.
Meditators who went through an eight-week mindfulness training program had significantly more flu antibodies than their non-meditating peers after they received a flu vaccine, according to a randomized controlled study by Richard A. Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn published in Psychosomatic Medicine. After measuring the brain activity of both meditators and non-meditators they found increases in both positive feelings and antibody responses to immune system challenges. At the University of California, Los Angeles, David Cresswell, and his colleagues have found that MBSR improves immune function even in those with HIV. Improved immune system function may help explain the increase in healing found in the psoriasis treatment studies with mindful reflection during treatment.
3) Your brain may be protected from declines due to aging and stress after meditation training.
Muscle control and sensory perception are controlled by regions of the brain known as brain matter, believed to decrease in volume with age. A study by Dr. Eileen Luders at the UCLA School of Medicine, and Nicholas Cherubin at the Centre for Research and Ageing in Australia, showed that the brains of long-term mindfulness practitioners are protected from gray matter atrophy more than non-practitioners. A 2017 study looking at brain function in healthy, older adults suggests meditation may increase attention. In this study, people 55 to 75 years old spent eight weeks practicing either focused breathing meditation or a control activity. Then, they were given the Stroop test—a test that measures attention and emotional control—while having their brains monitored by electroencephalography. Those undergoing breath training had significantly better attention on the Stroop test and more activation in an area of the brain associated with attention than those in the active control group. A systematic review of research to date suggests that mindfulness may mitigate cognitive decline, perhaps due to its effects on memory, attention, processing, and executive functioning. And new research finds that mindfulness instruction may lessen cognitive decline due to mental and emotional stress.
4) Mental clarity and focus improve after meditation training
A recent meta-analysis of 18 trials on eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) indicated that mindfulness-based programs may help with cognitive components. Skills such as short-term and autobiographical memory, cognitive flexibility, and meta-awareness (e.g., self-awareness) enable people to identify negative thought patterns and build different responses to situations. Research (Alan Wallace, Richie Davidson, Amishii Jha) has found significant improvements in attentional regulation in those who have had mindfulness meditation training, such as enhanced focus and reduced "attentional blink," or times when new information is not seen due to prolonged attention on the prior stimulus.
5) Your mind may wander less after meditation training
The brain's default mode network (DMN) is connected with mind wandering and self-referential thinking, and it becomes very active when we are not focused on a single task. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that advanced meditators have a less active DMN. This suggests that seasoned practitioners may experience less mind wandering and a resting state closer to a meditative one, allowing them to shift out of ruminative thoughts and carry out tasks with less distraction.