Our obsession with mindfulness is based on limited scientific evidence
Mindfulness practices are promoted at major corporations like Google, offered as psychotherapy via the National Health Service in the UK, taught to about 6,000 school children in London, and widely studied across sub-disciplines of psychological science. And yet there’s still not even a consistent scientific definition of “mindfulness.”
It gets worse. A paper published on Oct. 10 in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science argues that mindfulness research to date has been wrought by significant conceptual and methodological problems. For all the excitement about mindfulness meditation in contemporary culture, evidence of its benefits is limited. The field, the scientists who authored the paper say, needs a more systematic and rigorous approach.
Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Quartz
Comments
Mindfulness is not mysticism nor superstition, it’s a way helping you to be more aware of what you feel, what you think, and why you feel and think like that. There are scientific evidence and patient experience showing that mindfulness can be useful, even NHS recommends its use in anxiety. If you want to read more about Mindfulness, this is a good piece to start: http:// bit. ly/2h1PU18
Mindfulness simply involves attention and memory throughout every successfully completed deliberate and mundane behavior, whether filling a glass with water, putting on lipstick, or driving a car. To consider it a meditative form confuses it with such deliberate attempts to clear thought processes in favor of minimal non-judgmental perceiving.
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