What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness — or ‘meditation’ — is an ancient Eastern practice which has recently come to the attention of Western science. There are usually a broad range of different types and styles of practices which fall under the umbrella term of ‘mindfulness’.
Broadly speaking, mindfulness practices involve training and focussing the attention with a particular interest on the body and on subjective experience (things like feeling sensations and emotions in the body, the hearing of sounds, and on thoughts and internal states). They can also involve different movement practices, like Tai Chi or yoga, which incorporate focussing on and being aware of the body when it is moving.
Origins: Eastern meditation remained relatively separate from Western thought until the mid to late 1800’s.
Meditation and its related practices first emerged in India around 1500 BC and contributed to the core philosophies and teachings of Hinduism. Later, Buddhism and its related teachings and practices emerged from Hinduism, which became more popular in China and South East Asia, before again branching off into Zen which is most characterised in Japan. Eastern meditation remained relatively separate from Western thought until the mid to late 1800’s, when some translations of Eastern texts began to make their way to continental Europe and began to influence the continental philosophy of that period. However, it’s also important to note that there have been elements of other religions that have also strongly focussed on meditation (or ‘contemplation’ as it’s more commonly referred to for non-Eastern thought). These include Sufism in Islam, Kabbalah in Judaism, and Christian mysticism.
Jon Kabat-Zinn and ‘Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction’
It wasn’t until the 1960’s and 70’s however — after the influence of cheaper international airline travel — that more crossover occurred between traditional Western and Eastern thought. In the 1960’s a molecular biologist from MIT in America named Jon Kabat-Zinn went to lectures at MIT from a Zen master, and, inspired by this talk, he went on to develop an 8 week program called ‘Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction’ or MBSR, which he taught to people in hospital who had chronic pain, who had found all other treatments ineffective. He found that the MBSR course resulted in statistically significant decreases in pain levels in these patients, and well as improvements in mental health, and so the modern scientific interest in the potential of mindfulness practices to improve brain, mind and body was born.
Mindfulness can be conceptualised like a skill
Mindfulness — or ‘meditation’ — can best be conceptualised on a number of levels. Firstly, it is a practice — it is something that you physically ‘do’, just like riding a bike. This ‘physical’ part means that there are techniques and methods to the practices that you can practice and get better and more skilled at — just like riding a bike. In this sense, mindfulness can be conceptualised like a skill that you can train yourself in, learn, and eventually get better in.
Forming the foundation of a number of the religious and spiritual texts and belief systems in the East
As well as being a practice, mindfulness involves philosophy, or more broadly hermeneutics. This means that, through the ages, people who have practiced meditation have had a number of ideas, philosophies, and experiences, which were grounded in and created from their practice. As they wrote down these ideas, they formed the foundation of a number of the religious and spiritual texts and belief systems in the East, like Hinduism, Buddhism and Zen. Often, these ideas have in common the importance of the use of ethics in our everyday life, like living with non-violence for example, and the idea that everything in the universe — including who we are as human beings — is interconnected and part of a bigger whole.
Mindfulness can help change our brain and our body
Mindfulness is also a science, which means it involves real scientific entities which can be studied using empirical methods — such as attention, memory, the brain, and the cells in our body. It is in this way that mindfulness has become most popularised in the West. There is lots of interesting evidence that mindfulness can help change our brain and our body, particularly in the context of how our brains and bodies respond to and deal with stress.
Stay tuned to the forum for more updates on mindfulness, health, and wellbeing, including the science of mindfulness and tips and techniques on method. And remember — there will be free mindfulness sessions at this Zoom room every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 19:30 GMT — we look forward to seeing you there!
The StudyStream Team
