Abstract
Congratulations to the Melbourne Academic Mindfulness Group for presenting this important topic [1]. Questions which the group do not fully explain include: (i) What does the term mindfulness mean? (ii) How is mindfulness related to (different from) the other forms of meditation? and (iii) If there is a difference, why should therapists pursue mindfulness rather than another form (what is the evidence that mindfulness is the best bet)?
Central to meditation is the purposeful stoping of thinking in the usual manner, stoping thinking all the rubbish that we usually think, stoping worrying. It seems that if you do this for 15–60 minutes per day for 6 months, something good happens. You have a 15–60-minute rest from your worries every day, but eventually there are benefits outside the meditation sessions, and you tend to worry less and become easier to get along with.
There are many techniques to help us stop worrying during a meditation session, all have to do with turning our attention away from our worries. One is to focus on relaxing our bodies, while focused in this way we cannot be focused on our worries. Others include focusing on our breathing, a lit candle, a mantra, or a prescribed set of calming thoughts [2].
The group [1] provide a quotation, ‘Mindfulness involves “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally”’. For the word ‘involves’ can we read ‘is’, or is there more to it than that? I gained the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that in mindfulness, the act of constantly paying attention to the thoughts and feelings of the moment is used as a means of turning attention away from our usual thoughts/worries. I also gained the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that, in addition to distraction from thoughts/worries, the process of constant awareness of the moment is believed to be therapeutic by establishing greater personal awareness.
We had the Devil's own job in trying to prove that the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors were superior to placebo. It would be a much more difficult task to prove that mindfulness is superior (in some way) to transcendental meditation or other form.
Meditation is swathed in Eastern philosophy and religion (although there is a tradition in the Christian church). But it can be unfrocked and made pleasing to motivated Westerners. I wonder if the use of the term mindfulness rather than generic meditation is part of this process. When Prozac was rebadged as Lovan, nothing was lost. It would be a shame if the thousands of years of developmental underpinning of the other forms of meditation were not respected.