Benefits of Mindfulness
The term “mindfulness” is defined as moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgment. In this sense, mindfulness is a state and not a trait. While it might be promoted by certain practices or activities, such as meditation, it is not equivalent to or synonymous with them. Meditation is a method for cultivating awareness (Mindfulness). The benefits of mindfulness are plenty.
Other practices can cultivate mindfulness, such as yoga, tai chi, and qigong, but most of the literature has focused on mindfulness that is developed through mindfulness meditation — those self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calmness, clarity and concentration (Walsh & Shapiro, 2006).
Major researched benefits of mindfulness include:
Reduced over thinking. Mindfulness reduces rumination, or constant going over of an event or potential event. In one study, for example, Chambers et al. (2008) showed Mindfulness led to fewer depressive symptoms and less rumination.
Stress reduction. Many studies show that practicing mindfulness reduces stress. In 2010, Hoffman et al. showed that
mindfulness meditation increases positive affect and decreases anxiety and negative affect.
Boosts to working memory. Improvements to working memory appear to be another benefit of mindfulness, research finds. A 2018 study by Silverman and Stone, found teens improved working memory after an 8 week mindfulness program compared to a control group.
Increased Focus. Mindfulness meditation practice and self-reported mindfulness were correlated directly with cognitive flexibility and attentional functioning (Moore and Malinowski, 2009).
Less emotional reactions. Research also supports the notion that mindfulness meditation decreases emotional reactivity. In a study of people who had anywhere from one month to 29 years of mindfulness meditation practice, researchers found that mindfulness meditation practice
helped people disengage from emotionally upsetting pictures and enabled them to focus better on a cognitive task as compared with people who saw the pictures but did not meditate (Ortner et al., 2007).
More thought flexibility. Another line of research suggests that in addition to helping people become less reactive, mindfulness meditation may also give them greater cognitive flexibility. One study found that people who practice mindfulness meditation appear to develop the skill of
self-observation, which neurologically disengages the automatic pathways that were created by prior learning and enables present-moment input to be integrated in a new way (Siegel, 2007a).
Improved Relationships. Several studies find that a person’s ability to be mindful can help predict relationship satisfaction — the ability to respond well to relationship stress and the skill in communicating one’s emotions to a partner.
So what does this mean for you? Just by engaging in therapy and adding mindfulness into your life, you may benefit and lead a happier more productive existence.
If you think the benefits of mindfulness are appealing to you, feel free to book your first appointment here.