Mindulness - What, Why and Why not

What

• A state where there is heightened awareness of one’s present experience without judgment.
• You slow down, observe and experience your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment without complaints, criticism, excitement or distress.

Why

• Shapiro etal study proves the following benefits
  1. reduce self-reported state and trait anxiety
  2. reduce reports of overall psychological distress including depression.
  3. increase scores on overall empathy levels
  4. increase scores on a measure of spiritual experiences assessed at termination of intervention.
• Preliminary functional neuro-imaging studies provides proof of improving emotional regulation by enhancing cortical regulation of limbic circuits and attentional control -Walter Sipe etal
• Improve attention-related behavioral responses by enhancing functioning of specific sub-components of attention - Jha etal
• Higher mindfulness scores were associated with greater satisfaction with the environment and this association showed persistence - Xi Xu etal
• Methodologically rigorous RCTs have demonstrated that mindfulness interventions improve outcomes in multiple domains (e.g., chronic pain, depression relapse, addiction). David Creswell 2016
• Mindfulness training improved both GRE reading-comprehension scores and working memory capacity while simultaneously reducing the occurrence of distracting thoughts during completion of the GRE and the measure of working memory. Improvements in performance following mindfulness training were mediated by reduced mind wandering among participants who were prone to distraction at pretesting. - Michael D. Mrazek etal, 2013
• The default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing. We investigated brain activity in experienced meditators and matched meditation-naive controls as they performed several different meditations (Concentration, Loving-Kindness, Choiceless Awareness). We found that the main nodes of the default-mode network (medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices) were relatively deactivated in experienced meditators across all meditation types. Furthermore, functional connectivity analysis revealed stronger coupling in experienced meditators between the posterior cingulate, dorsal anterior cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (regions previously implicated in self-monitoring and cognitive control), both at baseline and during meditation. Our findings demonstrate differences in the default-mode network that are consistent with decreased mind-wandering. - Judson A. Brewer etal, 2011

Why not

Ref: The Mindulness conspiracy by Ronald Purser

• Instead of encouraging radical action, mindfulness says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live.
• Although derived from Buddhism, it’s been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings.
• However, the claim that major ethical changes will follow from “paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally” is patently flawed. The emphasis on “non-judgmental awareness” can just as easily disable one’s moral intelligence.