What is Mindfulness?

In recent years, what, using the English word, is called Mindfulness. But what is it about? The word “Mindfulness“It means” awareness “,” full attention “.

It is a state of consciousness in which we are vigilant and present witnesses of our thoughts, of our emotions and perceptions, moment by moment. A state that is not easy to describe in words because it refers first of all to a direct experience.

Among the possible descriptions of Mindfulness Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the pioneers of this approach has become “classic”. For him Mindfulness means “pay attention with intention, at the present moment, in a non -judgmental way“. Live the experience of the moment, in the here and now.

There Mindfulness (awareness) It is a mental state, a way of being, not oriented to a purpose. It is focused on allowing you to stay in the present as it is and to allow us to be simply in this present. It is therefore a non-conceptual, non-verbal-subversive state.

What are the origins of Mindfulness?

THE’Mindfulness approach It derives from the meditation of awareness and the doctrine and the Buddhist meditative practice constitute the tradition that most of all embodies and explicit this theme.

The teachings of Buddha, who vain under the name of Dharma, indicate the mental factors that allow the individual to grasp the essence and nature of each experience. In particular, aspiration, trust, attention, discrimination and, of course, awareness.

The Buddhist tradition

Mental presence, knowledge of what is happening, is that faculty that in the Buddhist tradition must be cultivated as a road to reach the reduction of human suffering. These are considered connected to an erroneous perception of an permanent individual ego.

Overcoming this illusion would allow the achievement of an emotional balance and lasting psychological well -being.

To reach this purpose, the Buddhist tradition It does not recommend a change in external reality. But rather a change of the individual himself at a cognitive and emotional level, to correct the errors that the human mind makes frequently when it has not been trained and disciplined.

The way is therefore first of all practical, based on an innate capacity, but cultivated with discipline.

Mindfulness: present experience, acceptance and awareness

Present experience

There Mindfulness It opens up to the wealth of the present moment, the fullness of the experience and to the Insights that lead to a deeper and more intuitive knowledge of reality and the way of working of the mind itself.

But the fullness of the experience necessarily also includes its “negative” side: discomfort, suffering, pain.

And here one of the most interesting aspects of this approach is played. He asks and teaches not to reject and not deny this dimension but to accept it, welcome it and make it reason for growth and even creativity.

Acceptance

There Mindfulness It is not a relaxation technique (even if relaxation is a direct consequence). It is not a way to enter some form of trance, nor to empty the mind, nor to reach the “emptiness”.

It is not a way to guarantee easy psychophysical well -being. Nor is it a form of “goodism” that pushes us to accept everything, to acrytically welcome what happens to us, to be passive in the name of “acceptance”.

Perspective of awareness

If the negative side of life cannot avoid it, then the perspective of the awareness (mindfulness) It offers us a strange and contraintive chance at first sight. Enter more direct relationship with the discomfort and suffering, learn to pay full attention, to make room for what we don’t like, that we would not want or that makes us suffer.

In this sense it is a “countercurrent” work, because the automatic trend we have is to do exactly the opposite.

But in this apparently incomprehensible “move” we find a possibility of making space, to let it be and therefore to be less conditioned, less oppressed also by the conditions that bring us discomfort.

Paradoxically, by doing this, we put ourselves in the best possible conditions to find, when there are, the most effective ways and ways to manage or resolve the causes of suffering. Sometimes even by drawing on creative intuition.

There Mindfulness practice It would therefore facilitate the passing from a state of imbalance and suffering to one of greater subjective perception of well -being, thanks to a profound knowledge and understanding of the states and mental processes and through an active work with them.

What are the clinical applications of mindfulness?

From here we understand how in recent decades the Mindfulness It has been integrated into consolidated therapeutic models and programs in the western world and how to have found in particular a fruitful integration with cognitive behavioral cognitive psychotherapies.

In this area, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work, professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, who had a very large follow-up in the clinical field, but more recently the applications have extended to the educational and organizational field as the proposal of a real healthier lifestyle was pioneering.

Kabat-Zinn and Mindfulness meditation

Kabat-Zinn’s work starts from his belief that the Mindfulness meditation practice He had the power to lastly transform the individual experience of suffering and stress, offering an alternative to strategies oriented to the resolution of problems that are deeply rooted in western culture, moving the perspective towards mind – body medicine.

Kabat-Zinn wanted to adapt the Traditional meditation practices In order to introduce them to contexts such as health and hospital, so that the practice itself was accessible to the psychological and physical possibilities of patients.

There Mindfulness meditation He thus left his spiritual and moral connotations, renounces to be part of a path for lighting and has defined himself as a focused attention, aimed at the present and non -judgmental moment.

In this way it has become part of various therapeutic programs through awareness practices at the same time very ancient and suitable for the western world.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

The Mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) protocol it was the first Mindfulness Training Born precisely from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work starting from the seventies.

Designed for patients with chronic pain or terminal diseases, it was subsequently applied to other physical and psychological clinical conditions, such as in cognitive – behavioral treatment of the bordeline disorder of personality, in the treatment of dissociative disorders, in the most recent protocols for the treatment of anxiety disorders.

Eight group meetings are planned for Mindfulness meditation With weekly frequency lasting about two and a half hours, which is added an intensive day of practice, of the educational moments on the theme of stress.

However, these moments do not constitute the foundation of the path: experiential learning is the distinctive element and, it could be said, the heart of the Mindfulness based regulation and the programs borrowed from it.

Mindfulness and cognitive therapy

Mindfulness And cognitivism evidently have in common the interest in the role that thoughts play on emotions and behaviors. Thus the success of the Mindfulness based stress reduction has meant that in the field of cognitive psychotherapy, a certain interest in awareness practices was spread as a clinical tool.

A wider horizon has thus opened up of interventions that have meditative practice as common characteristics. In addition to the group format, individual responsibility, the consistent quantity of commitment required of the participants, the long -term perspective and the orientation not aimed at the result.

Mindfulness-based cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

Among the interventions derived from the Mindfulness based stress reduction, the Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy (Segal, Teasdale and Williams, 2002) is the most widespread and scientifically tested protocol, designed for patients with more depression experience.

This protocol aims to work on thoughts, emotions and sensations that have reactivated automatically during periods of negative mood in people who have had depressive episodes. Thus helping them to achieve a radical transformation in their relationship with thoughts, emotions and physical sensations that can contribute to depressive repercussions.

In other words, the purpose of Mindfulness meditation It is to teach patients a new relationship with their mental and body experiences. A relationship that allows them to take a step back compared to automatic responses and therefore protects them from those vicious circles that involve the risk of repercussions.

Mindfulness meditation and wellness

There Mindfulness proposes to experience the method of being, which is not a special state in which each activity ceases. But it is a decentralized perspective that allows you to unfold from the usual response methods, automatic and involuntary, which try to remove the unpleasant and retain the pleasant (as happens in the depressive rumination processes).

In this offset, Siegel believes that, if we are not careful, our brain chooses for us, in our place.

Depending on the perspective we assume we can call it automatic pilot, scheme, compulsion to repeat, conditioned reflection, internal operating model, neural influences “from top to bottom”. The human being tends to react in a stereotyped way When we are faced with a new event.

The habit of thinking by categories, to attribute forms known to what is not yet formed, is inherent in the functioning of our nervous system. It is related to the intention only partially conscious to increase the chances of adaptation to the environment. But adapting and surviving does not necessarily mean living well.

Siegel’s contribution

According to Siegel, the well -being is between two banks. The rigidity on the one hand and chaos on the other and is supported by the ability to activate a process of integration of the unknown with the known.

Still according to Siegel, to promote well -being it is necessary to stop conditioning. The automatic pilot, the coaction to repeat that limits the use of that indispensable nourishment for the development that are experiences.

It identifies in the Mindfulness meditation that way of being totally in the present moment. To have experiences from the “bass upwards” that free from the classification of the brain to which attention must be paid, in the sense that it must be supervised.

Interrupt response automatisms, ensuring that a person is able to avoid implementing inadequate behavioral reactions or unbalanced representations of reality is certainly a crucial clinical passage for psychotherapeutic processes, not only for patients, but also for the therapists themselves.

Mindfulness and neural integration

The physiological substrate behind a Mindful operation It seems to be neural integration, which influences and is influenced by awareness of Mindfulness.

According to the author, the awareness of the experience that we moment per moment can involve various regions of the brain in an integrated state. Including important areas of the cortex and the subcortical areas of the limbic system and the brain trunk.

Neural integration, partly conducted by these frontal regions, can be essential to create a balance based on self -regulation.

The latest searches suggest that the Mindfulness Promote functional changes in the brain through neuro plasticity. These integration paths can play a crucial role for well -being.