Is mindfulness a panacea?
Welcome back to our weekly blog on topics such as mindfulness, health and wellbeing. We hope you have been enjoying our recent series on how to meditate, experiences of meditation, and mechanisms of mindfulness. Today we will discuss the question ‘Is mindfulness a panacea?’ Let’s begin!
Tracing perceptions of Mindfulness as a ‘cure all’
Since the introduction of mindfulness meditation to the attention of ‘Western’ science around 40 years ago, alot of research on its effects has been conducted, and it is occurring today at an exponential rate. There has also been alot of hype around mindfulness as well — perhaps because it is ‘relatively’ straightforward to do, or because it is in its more or less early stages of development as a field, there have been claims — or perceptions — that mindfulness can do ‘more’ than what we know it can through what the evidence tells us. People have begun to wonder whether mindfulness is being marketed as a ‘cure all’ that can potentially fix any ailment we encounter through life. You may have encountered this yourself, through the myriad books, apps, websites, programs and public speakers who incorporate mindfulness and wellbeing in some way.
How did these perceptions come about?
The issue stems from the way we understand what a mindfulness practice is. One way people commonly misunderstand mindfulness is that it is just about your attitude. This conception of mindfulness has its roots in the positive psychology and behaviourism movements. Behaviourism is the branch of psychology that is interested in the way our behaviour shapes our brains and neurocircuitry, and subsequently our habits — or what we do ‘automatically’. What people who are informed only by this line of thought believe is that you alone are responsible for the way you react to situations and events that happen to you in your life. If you are unhappy, that is your fault, because you are reacting to life in an unhappy way. What positive psychology and behaviourism teach us is that in order to be happy, we must practice being happy, and in doing so, we can develop new habits along with new brain circuits and thus strengthen the happy parts of our personality and of how our brains are wired.
Is this the whole picture?
This is true to some degree — it is true that in general to get better at something it is better if we practice it consistently — but what it neglects to inform us is that so much of our lives are out of our control, particularly when we were children. It is unfair to make a claim that all someone has to do is to practice feeling happy in order to feel happy. Similarly, it is not true to say that our happiness just depends on our attitude.
This is perhaps why mindfulness is commonly misunderstood to be a panacea — a ‘cure all’ — because, if people wrongly mistake mindfulness to be the equivalent of putting on ‘happiness tinted glasses’ — then of course, one could assume that the world would appear to that person to be multiple shades lighter (or darker!) of happiness, and therefore every experience in that person’s life would be happier.
The experience — what should we be taking from this?
What we are learning in our practice is that mindfulness is about being present with our experience — whatever it is in that moment of the practice. Mindfulness is about tuning in to what our experience is in the moment of practice. You could say it is about giving precedence with our attention — in the few moments of the practice — to our internal lives, rather than to things in the external world. in fact, you could even think of mindfulness almost like ‘feeling what you feel’ — which can mean both bodily sensations as well as emotions. If, during a practice, you feel sad, then try to stay present with the sadness as much as you can — you might even find yourself crying. Or, you might feel angry — in which case, be as present as much as you can with your anger — try to feel it, explore it with your attention.
Of course, people find that allowing themselves to feel the way they do can sometimes be liberating. For example, sometimes we need to cry — the world is a confusing, unjust place, which is full of sadness and heartache. But after a good cry, you may feel like now is the time for you to get up and go and do the thing feel like you need to do — almost like you have now found a new sort of creative energy. Or, it could be terrifying — it is not uncommon for people to be afraid of how they feel, and to never have properly learnt how to feel. Practicing in this way could be new and unsettling.
Moreover, people have described profound experiences of joy, happiness and meaning during practices. This is, of course, wonderful to have. But it can be easy to become attached to the experience, and mindfulness practices can become reduced to trying to recreate a feeling or to try to feel a certain way.
The importance here is about our intention for doing the practice. Even in the first example above, we could say that even feeling sad is in the effort to eventually feel happy. In response to this, during a mindfulness practice for example, we might say something like ‘Notice that there is a thought or idea that you are doing this practice so eventually you will feel happy’.
Concluding thoughts
Mindfulness can only ever be about being present with your experience, as it is, right now, in whatever moment you are in when you are practicing. Each practice — indeed each moment — is a new beginning. Each practice in a sense is ‘uncharted territory’. You have never been present in this moment before, right? Therefore an opportunity presents itself to begin again, each time for the first time, during each practice, and indeed in each moment.
That’s all for now. And remember to join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 19:30GMT in the Secondary School FocusRoom (we use this as a combined session for both rooms) for live and free mindfulness sessions. We look forward to seeing you there!
