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‘Mindfulness,’ which means consciously bringing awareness to our experience, boosts well-being in teenage boys, finds a recent study. Read article.
Editor notes: You might be interested in our free workshops for schools.
Since the 1980s, mindfulness techniques have been increasingly utilized in clinical psychology, often as an adjunct to cognitive or behavioral interventions and with a growing evidence base. According to a five-facet operationalization, mindfulness is a capacity to (a) observe, (b) describe, and (c) act with awareness of present moment experience, with a (d) nonjudgmental and (e) nonreactive attitude. The aim of this study was to identify which of the five facets of mindfulness predicts psychological well-being and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in a community sample comprising nonmeditators and experienced meditators. Participants were recruited from meditation organizations (Vipassana and Zen) as well as undergraduate psychology students (N = 106). Participants completed a Web-based questionnaire assessing mindfulness, psychological symptoms, and well-being. A higher degree of the nonjudgmental aspect of mindfulness was found to predict lower levels of depression, anxiety, and stress-related symptomatology.
Mindfulness, 2010, Pages 1-6
Decentering has been proposed as a potential mechanism of mindfulness-based interventions but has received limited empirical examination to date in experimental studies comparing mindfulness meditation to active comparison conditions. In the present study, we compared the immediate effects of mindful breathing (MB) to two alternative stress-management techniques: progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) and loving-kindness meditation (LKM) to test whether decentering is unique to mindfulness meditation or common across approaches. Novice meditators (190 female undergraduates) were randomly assigned to complete one of three 15-min stress-management exercises (MB, PMR, or LKM) presented by audio recording. Immediately after the exercise, participants completed measures of decentering, frequency of repetitive thoughts during the exercise, and degree of negative reaction to thoughts. As predicted, participants in the MB condition reported greater decentering relative to the other two conditions. The association between frequency of repetitive thought and negative reactions to thoughts was relatively weaker in the MB condition than in the PMR and LKM conditions, in which these two variables were strongly and positively correlated. Consistent with the construct of decentering, the relative independence between these two variables in the MB condition suggests that mindful breathing may help to reduce reactivity to repetitive thoughts. Taken together, results help to provide further evidence of decentering as a potential mechanism that distinguishes mindfulness practice from other credible stress-management approaches.
Behaviour Research and Therapy, August 2010
Editors note: Confused? Simply breathing beats loving kindness mediation and progressive muscle relaxation
As doctors increasingly prescribe meditation to patients for stress-related disorders, scientists are gaining a better understanding of how different techniques from Buddhist, Chinese, and Vedic traditions produce different reults.
It’s nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person’s ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see. Read the full article.
Research has found that the self-acceptance as mindfulness has the biggest impact on reducing depression.
The researchers also concluded that “mindfulness might serve a regulatory function by targeting low positive emotionality, poor mood regulation, and negative self-concept, risk factors implicated in the onset, development, and maintenance of depressive symptoms.”
Personality and Individual Differences
Researchers have found that working adults with greater meditation experience exhibited higher EI, and less perceived stress and negative mental health than those who had less or none.
In an additional study they found that meditation training improves emotional intelligence and mental health.
Stress and Health, Volume 26, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 169-180
Neuroticism is an individual difference variable reflecting proneness to negative emotional experiences. High levels of neuroticism are often associated with impulsivity and behavioral dysregulation.
New research has found that mindfulness fully mediated the relationship between neuroticism and behavioral dysregulation. The researchers found that neuroticism was negatively related to mindfulness and higher levels of mindfulness were associated with (a) lower levels of impulsivity and (b) higher levels of self-control, both assessed in dispositional terms.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 301-321
Research has found that mindfulness progressive muscle relaxation are both effective in reducing the symptoms of stress.
However, mindfulness participants reported better emotional comprehension and showed improved indices of somatic and autonomic regulation.
The researchers concluded “… findings suggest that mindfulness reduces chronic worry by promoting emotional and physiological regulatory mechanisms contrary to those maintaining chronic worry.”
Behaviour Research and Therapy, July 2010
People who meditate regularly find pain less unpleasant because their brains anticipate the pain less, a new study has found.
Scientists from The University of Manchester recruited individuals into the study who had a diverse range of experience with meditation, spanning anything from months to decades. It was only the more advanced meditators whose anticipation and experience of pain differed from non-meditators.
The type of meditation practised also varied across individuals, but all included ‘mindfulness meditation’ practices, such as those that form the basis of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), recommended for recurrent depression by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in 2004.
“Meditation is becoming increasingly popular as a way to treat chronic illness such as the pain caused by arthritis,” said Dr Christopher Brown, who conducted the research. “Recently, a mental health charity called for meditation to be routinely available on the NHS to treat depression, which occurs in up to 50% of people with chronic pain. However, scientists have only just started to look into how meditation might reduce the emotional impact of pain.”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/uom-mrt060210.php