What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a powerful practice of nonjudgmental awareness that helps us ground ourselves in the present moment, with the world and our lives just as they are.
Mindfulness is a kind of meditation. But, it's not like any other meditation. Mindfulness is training, training the mind. And, while it's an old and time-revered practice, it is also rooted in neuroscience and scientific understanding of the brain.
Mindfulness and Neuroscience
Neuroscientists have been studying the effects of mindfulness practice on the brain for many years. Studies using functional MRI have proven beneficial neural changes in several areas of the brain, including the Autonomic Nervous System, the primary mechanism in control of our fight-flight-freeze response.
Mindfulness vs Relaxation
In a three-day study* with a control group of relaxation vs versus mindfulness practice, there were specific, measurable brain changes related to the brain's default mode. Benefits attached to those neural changes include ability to regulate obsessive thinking as well as improvements in a marker of inflammatory disease risk.
Mindfulness, Resilience and Compassion
Mindfulness is a set of skills you can learn to enhance your resilience in the face of difficult circumstances. Neuroscientist and psychologist Dr. Richard Davidson's research has defined resilience as the first constituent of human well-being. Resilience is defined as the rapidity with which we recover from adversity. Covid has brought with it vast personal and collective adversity.
Mindfulness practice builds our ability to allow thoughts and feelings related to adversity into our consciousness gently, to experience them safely, with compassion. In doing so, we build resilience and cultivate confidence in our abilities to receive life as it is. We learn to sit with the experience of our breath, body and thoughts with acceptance, kindness and self-compassion.
* Alterations in Resting-State Functional Connectivity Link Mindfulness Meditation with Reduced Interleukin-6: A Randomized Controlled Trial
“Mindfulness is “meta cognitive awareness” which is being aware of how you think. Paying attention to where your attention rests. Learning how to sustain present moment awareness.”
~ Rick Hanson, PhD, Psychologist and author of “Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.”
“We certainly know from studies in adults that mindfulness training does improve various kinds of executive function and improves the circuits that are important for self-regulation in the brain.”
~ Richard Davdison, PhD, psychologist and neuroscientist
Photo credit Middlemarch Films/TPT)
