Understanding the benefits and mechanisms behind mindfulness meditation
Practices for enhancing health and overall well being
Mindfulness is a central component to our program at NLP. In fact, we offer several opportunities during the day to practice mindfulness in a formal manner (e.g. sitting meditation, mindful movement, mindful walking) and informally, meaning focusing our attention on our moment-to-moment experience of an everyday activity (e.g. having a silent breakfast during noble silence).
Over the past 40 years, Mindfulness-based interventions have become a popular resource to help people improve their overall mental and physical health and a large body of studies report their validity. Researchers have found that a regular mindfulness practice changes our brain structure and biology in ways which enhances, for example, the quality of sleep or it can reduce stress-related conditions and depressive mood. For this reason mindfulness has been increasingly integrated into psychotherapeutic programs.
In the current research contexts, mindfulness is defined as a nonjudgmental, openhearted awareness of our moment-to-moment experience, which arises by repeatedly paying attention to our thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations as they arise and dissolve.
This definition suggests two main components:
- Stability of attention, to maintain our focus on our immediate experience
- A specific quality of attention nourished by curiosity, openness, and acceptance, regardless of the desirability of what is currently happening.
While this apparently simple practice can have such a wide range of beneficial implications, researchers have questioned how mindfulness actually works and what are the mechanisms involved in this process of transformation.
Essential components to describe the mechanisms through which mindfulness works
Mindfulness meditation becomes effective when specific mechanisms are at play and are interacting within the experience of the practice. These crucial components are:
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Attention regulation
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Body awareness
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Emotion regulation
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Change of self-perspective
Attention Regulation
During mindfulness meditation, the invitation is to focus our attention on an anchor point, mostly a bodily sensation or the breath, and return there whenever the mind wanders. A number of studies have documented that a regular mindfulness practice enables people to focus their attention on a desired object for an extended period of time. Certainly, a less distracted mind is an essential component to enhance performance and improve the capacity to execute tasks and such benefits have been supported by recent findings.
Nevertheless, while these outcomes are surely desirable and crucial for managing our everyday life, the core intention of the guidance “to come back, again and again, to the body and breath” is to learn to skilfully navigate the natural activities of the mind such as analyzing, judging, comparing, remembering, anticipating or planning. In fact, although these mental abilities are central to our capacity to survive, when they start dominating our experience, they can become very unhelpful or even harmful, like when we indulge in rumination or anxious thoughts.
When we start noticing, with interest and kindness, what the mind constantly does, we have an opportunity to become aware of depleting mental patterns and slowly choose to not get trapped in maladaptive coping-mechanisms to nurture clarity, creativity and more harmony in our life.
Attention regulation is also a foundation for the following mechanisms of mindfulness.
Body Awareness
Our bodily sensations are a common object of attention during mindfulness meditation, which is improving the ability to disengage from our thinking mind in favor of body awareness. The body, in fact, is always in the present moment and being aware and connected to our body, especially when we notice pain or discomfort, is an essential ingredient to then make choices which can increase our wellbeing.
Also, it’s part of the practice to recognize with gentle curiosity, how emotions are manifested in the body. Many studies support the fact that being aware of the bodily expression of emotions is a building block for emotional regulation.
Furtheron, some researchers have noticed that the awareness of our internal experience is an important precondition for empathy. A clear observation of the self is required to be sensitive to others. An increased body awareness might have as well relevance for affect regulation and empathic responses, which is particularly relevant for those people lacking this human capacity.
Emotion Regulation
Contemporary psychology considers emotion regulation a central component of mental health. This umbrella-term includes a range of strategies for changing our emotional experience from extreme reactivity to a more balanced response. That said, depending on the intensity of the occurrence, regulating emotion can be quite a complex adventure, surely not straightforward, sometimes requiring a lot of patience and our non-judgmental presence.
In the process of mindful emotion regulation practitioners approach their ongoing emotional reactions with awareness and acceptance. Acceptance is not the same as passive resignation. It means allowing our feelings about the present moment which will then probably induce choices to care for our wellbeing rather than promoting harmful consequences.
Another key intention of the mediation practice is to encourage a de-centred perspective toward our emotional states. It’s important to understand that decentring doesn’t imply a person to bypass, become indifferent or even dissociate from the unwanted emotions. It’s more about learning to “step back” and reperceive our feelings from the perspective of a kind observer. A common suggestion during the practice would sound like: sitting by looking at your emotion rather than from your emotion. This spacious quality of the mind reduces, with time, the impact of challenging emotional experiences. It means we are present but not dominated by the natural ebbs and flows of the human experience which naturally includes the full spectrum of feelings, not just the one we like.;
As the practice evolves by holding the intention to turn towards our emotional states from a decentred stance, 3 further fundamental mechanisms can take place, namely:
- Exposure
- Extinction
- Consolidation
Initially, we might find it very counterintuitive to be open and expose ourselves to feel what’s present. Courage and care are in fact needed to kindly embrace our experience and explore a different path when we are otherwise used to escape, to avoid or to repress our feelings. Nevertheless, as we patiently continue to practice, we discover that unpleasant emotions slowly dissolve and a sense of safety and wellbeing can emerge in their place.
These processes can truly unfold and recent studies have shown that the practice can transform the way the brain handles emotions, but it surely takes time, dedication and repetition to consolidate and strengthen this ability and to become present to meet our inner landscape with a gentle heart.
Change of self-perspective
Some studies have begun to document changes in perspective on the self, following mindfulness practices. These changes can be summarized as having more self-awareness, self-compassion and a higher level of appreciation and acceptance of oneself.
In essence as we meditate, we can experience how self-perception is a product of impermanent thoughts which are not always telling the absolute truth of who we are.
For example, if we are noticing recurrent self-criticism, we have an opportunity to pause, to shift the attention to the body and gently inquiry: how can I open my awareness to also include a moment of appreciation for the fact that I chose to sit and practice because I deeply care about myself?
While this shift of perspective might take time (depending on the mental conditions of the practitioner) as we repeatedly pay attention to the transitory nature of our thoughts, we can gradually experience a deconstruction of the self. One can also realize with discernment, how our inner stories only offer a partial perspective of the present-moment experience as thoughts are not necessarily always facts. Just because our thoughts are compulsory it doesn’t mean they are true.
Moreover, meditators with more years of practice showed self-perception styles associated with less pathological symptoms.
A final consideration
Understanding social enterprises
In modern Western society, mindfulness meditation is cultivated and applied in diverse contexts, involving self-exploration, self-experience, and self-transformation. All the mechanisms that have been described contribute to such development. They are highly interrelated and they interact so closely that a distinction seems sometimes almost enforced. In reality, the sequential order might even change, and depending on the experience we are facing, these aspects can influence and integrate each other and lead us in various directions.
Nevertheless, as scientists continue to unpack such complex and complementary neurological processes, the invitation is to directly explore how it feels to attend to your experience with an openhearted awareness. How it feels to meet life in a state of wonder and awe, acceptance and grace, simply because you deeply care about yourself and the world around you.
Sometimes people have to experience radical ruptures to wake up to the fact that they need to create space and time in their lives to pause and be fully present.
As life offers at times very challenging experiences, it’s helpful to create a routine where you can gradually cultivate a more nourishing relationship to your thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations.
Wherever you are on your path, NLP offers great conditions for you to explore how to show up to your life with joy and purpose and live a meaningful existence, one moment at a time.
