Mindfulness was one of eight steps Buddha asked his followers to practice to achieve enlightenment. Photo / 123RF
Business titans do it. Sports stars do it. Big-deal actors do it. Your sister-in-law does it. And there are countless people who will tell you that if you knew what was good for you, you'd do it too.
Mindfulness meditation has been around for thousands of years but surely it has never been more hyped than it is now, as we head into a new decade. There are apps to help you fold it into your lunch break or bus commute, a new category of newsstand magazine devoted to it, 28 million #meditation posts on Instagram, and endless instructional books with drippy titles like Wherever You Go, There You Are.
Its purported benefits include improved mood and self-regulation, calm, resilience, pain relief, concentration, even anti-aging. It is used in gyms and hospitals, the military, schools, prisons and places of worship.
The problem is that you have to keep doing it. You don't spend a week at a retreat and come home forever calm. For it to work, advocates say you need to develop a meditation practice - but should you?
Mindfulness meditation seems to have really embedded itself as a mainstream activity in the past five years. This has to be at least partly related to high levels of stress and overwhelm in the workplace, a growing mental health crisis, choppy economic conditions, anxiety around climate change and our uncertain future as a species.
This year the World Health Organisation included a detailed description of burnout resulting from "chronic workplace stress" in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). The common advice for those trying to ward off burnout is to take a break and reflect, with mindfulness meditation often part of the package. This is because it activates parts of the brain associated with empathy, compassion, self-awareness and decision-making. Scientists do not yet know if the benefits last beyond the meditation session. Proponents say they do.
Mindfulness was one of eight steps Buddha asked his followers to practice to achieve enlightenment. In the 1970s, Jon Kabatt-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre used mindfulness to help treat patients with chronic pain. By removing the Buddhist underpinnings from mindfulness meditation, he made it accessible to a wider group of people and sparked a trend. Some practitioners question whether its peaceful principles should be taught to organisations such as the United States military and the New Zealand Defence Force and stamped on drink bottles and inspirational posters.
Dr Tony Fernando, a consultant psychiatrist and a senior lecturer in psychological medicine at the University of Auckland, speaks about the "McDonaldsification" of mindfulness, in which the practice is sold as a mass consumer item. In the US, for example, mindfulness meditation is a billion-dollar industry.
People often confuse meditation and mindfulness, and don't realise that "mindfulness meditation" is what they mean when they talk about what they do for 10 minutes at the end of their yoga class, when the lights are dimmed and they concentrate on their breath.
"Mindfulness meditation is one large category of meditation," explains Dr Motohide Miyahara, who recently retired from Otago University's School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences. "Within mindfulness meditation there are also many different types, such as breathing, analytical and compassion meditation.
"On the other hand, there are different mindfulness activities other than sitting meditation, including the raisin exercise [when you hold a raisin in your mouth for 10 seconds before chewing it, to notice its texture], body scan and yoga exercise."
According to the authors of a critical evaluation of mindfulness meditation called Mind the Hype, published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science in late 2017, "the various possible meanings of 'mindfulness' need to be clarified" in order to come to meaningful conclusions about its benefits.
"Researchers should adopt more nuanced, precisely focused, terminology for referring to the various distinct mental and physical states as well as overt behaviours often associated with mentions of 'mindfulness'," say the Mind the Hype authors, 15 psychologists and cognitive scientists led by Nicholas Van Dam from the University of Melbourne. "Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed."
Most laypeople would understand mindfulness to mean being aware of what is happening right now in this moment - which is easier said than done. A Harvard University study published in Science found that we spend 47 per cent of our time thinking about something that is not happening (what we will eat for dinner, whether we are saving enough for retirement) rather than the activity we are engaged in. Our minds skitter from topic to topic like hungry mice.
You can be mindful anywhere, at any time. You just need to pay attention. Mindfulness can also be a part of a more formal seated mindfulness meditation, when a practitioner focuses attention on their breath - and, when the mind wanders, refocuses it on the breath.
Meditation and yoga are often linked in a soothing wellness sandwich, having gained mainstream popularity alongside the self-help movement, which is a big pusher of both pursuits. But meditation and yoga are not immediately appealing to all.
I have had three stabs at sustaining a yoga habit (including time set aside for meditation). At university while rolling through basic yoga sequences I found I got twitchy and bored; post-babies I got sleepy and bored; these days I am calm and still kinda bored.
Every time I am concentrating on my breath as a way of centring myself, I start obsessing about my breath. ("It's too shallow and too fast. Dang, I suck at breathing. Can I open my eyes now?") It's simple - sit, breathe - but it's not easy.
"If meditation is difficult, there is no point in persevering, especially for beginners," says Dr Miyahara. "If you like the state of empty mind but the process of sitting meditation is annoying, you can reach the same state through different ways, like walking, or completing puzzles, or any other ways that work for you.
"Some people interpret mindfulness broadly, and consider any activities that induce the state of mindfulness as mindfulness activities. You may just want to find a mindfulness activity you like."
"I practice mindfulness every day - I have to because otherwise I'll go crazy," says Dr Fernando. "Our lives nowadays are very busy and our minds are naturally wired to overthink."
Our already busy minds seize on the stimulation offered by smartphones, social media, and the many conveniences of our instant gratification age, which worsens stress and fatigue. In that context, mindfulness meditation is a useful tool, says Dr Fernando.
"At the very least people can learn to manage their stress at a superficial level. But if you take the time to truly learn about meditation, not on an app, you're changing your operating system."
Dr Miyahara also regularly meditates. "[In] a stressful situation, we may respond emotionally, and run away or confront the source of stress. But if the time and situation permit, it may be useful to take a moment of silence, breathe deeply, and either empty your mind, or think of the short- and long-term course of action. In this way, meditation has helped me to stop and withhold an immediate response, allowing me to keep things in perspective. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't."
We know that regions of the brain associated with attention control, emotion regulation, and self-awareness are stimulated during mindfulness meditation. It is even suggested that changes observed in the brain during mindfulness meditation may change its structure long term.
However, we don't know what exactly it is about mindfulness meditation that brings about these changes. "To examine whether an effect of mindfulness meditation is caused by the meditation itself or as a byproduct of taking time out and staying away from screens, scientists can design careful experiments and tease them out," says Dr Miyahara. "To my knowledge, there is no such study."
The thing is, you probably already have meditated, in some form at some point in your life. When the teacher encouraged everyone in your class to close their eyes and belly-breathe, that was meditation.
There are literally hundreds of ways to meditate, including yoga, dog-walking, tai chi - even rave dances, says Dr Fernando, because participants "reach a certain level of consciousness".
"If meditation is considered in a broad sense, almost everyone has already practised some kind of mediation, taking a moment of silence to reflect on something or nothing, or taking a deep breath to calm down," agrees Dr Miyahara.
If you want to try incorporating mindfulness meditation into 2020, it is simple. All you need is to set aside a few minutes and sit quietly, pay attention to your breath and when your mind wanders - bring it back to the breath.
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