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Mindfulness is everywhere. Interest in this meditative practice in the western world seems to have grown exponentially in recent years, but it has its roots in ancient Buddhist contemplative practices. Lynne Malcolm takes a look at whether there's any science behind the hype.

Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn became interested in the Buddhist practice of mindfulness more than 35 years ago. With the scientific community sceptical, the at the University of Massachusetts Medical School professor decided to develop a more secular approach in the hope of opening the minds of people in the west.

By 1979 he’d designed a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which today is one of the world’s most well-respected secular mindfulness programs.

Just like physical fitness, you do notice the benefits of this in a capacity to be more focused, more present and more aware of what's going on from moment to moment.

That was only the beginning of scientific interest in mindfulness, though. Psychiatrist Dr Elise Bialylew has practised mindfulness for years and was so impressed by the benefits that she developed an online campaign to help others experience it.

‘It's really about training our attention to be more present, and through that we develop more awareness about what's going on from moment to moment, both within ourselves, so emotionally and in our thought processes, but also relationally,’ she says.

‘So in the world when we are interacting with others, if we are feeling emotionally triggered we are picking up on that data much more quickly and we are much more able to respond with more wisdom and more effectiveness.’

When you sign up for Bialylew’s Mindful in May campaign you receive a 10 minute guided meditation via email, along with other related information. You commit to a daily practice and you ask for sponsorship from your friends, to raise money for a world water project. Bialylew explains that the guided meditations help in training your attention. They start with focusing on the feelings and sensations of the body in each moment, breath by breath.

‘Inevitably, we notice that the mind is going to wander off into thoughts, planning, organising, and the real practice, the real heart and soul of the practice is noticing when the mind wanders off, letting go of wherever it has gone, and bringing your attention back to where you want it to be.

‘The best analogy for this that is popularly used is around physical exercise. This is like a form of mental exercise, it's a discipline. It’s simple but it's not easy. As you continue it, just like physical fitness, you do notice the benefits of this in a capacity to be more focused, more present and more aware of what's going on from moment to moment.’

Related: The mind/body connection

Many mindfulness practitioners report real benefits for their health and wellbeing, but what does the latest scientific research show?

Professor Sara Lazar is a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. For the past 15 years she and her team have studied the neural mechanisms of yoga and meditation. Initially they studied long-term meditators versus controls, and demonstrated that the brains of long-term meditators are different than the brains of control subjects, and that they have more cortex in certain brain regions.

However, they realised that this research didn’t show conclusively that the differences between meditators and non-meditators were actually due to meditation; they could have been due to other lifestyle factors or selection bias.

‘So some of our more recent research then looked at people who had never meditated before,’ says Lazar. ‘We scanned them. We put them through an eight-week meditation program and then we scanned them again.

‘We showed that there is growth in certain brain regions as a result of this meditation practice. Again, we compared it to a control group that just got scanned eight weeks apart and there was nothing in between. So now we know that, yes, when you learn meditation your brain does actually grow and change. Now our newest research is trying to focus in on some of those brain regions that change and try to understand a little bit more about what's going on there. We really are honing in closer and closer.’

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Whatsapp Studies of long-term meditators have shown their brains are different to those of control subjects.

In Lazar’s most recent research, participants went through Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program.

The techniques taught include a formal sitting meditation observing the breath, a body scan and a slow gentle mindful yoga exercise. These are designed to develop attention to what you experience in your body at any moment, without judgement.

Lazar explains that one of the regions of the brain which was changed by the practice is called the posterior singular cortex. It's a very important part of the brain and is often is the first to go in Alzheimer’s disease. It’s involved in a lot of different processes, including memory, daydreaming and staying in the present moment.

‘Another region we found to be different was the hippocampus, which again is also very important for ageing and Alzheimer's and memory, and those two work together,’ says Lazar. 'This data has suggested [mindfulness] could potentially help slow down or prevent those sorts of diseases.

‘People reported that they felt more in control of their life and they were... not exactly happier, but just more satisfied with life. These [brain changes] are not proof, but they are consistent with the self-reported changes.’

Mindfulness is now beginning to be used as an adjunct in the treatment of some mental illnesses. The Oxford Mindfulness Centre is at the forefront of research, and Professor Willem Kuyken, the centre’s director, is currently researching the efficacy of mindfulness as a therapy for depression.

‘In a recent paper of ours here in Oxford just published in The Lancet last week, we were able to demonstrate that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy may actually also provide an alternative way for people to stay well to antidepressants,’ he says. ‘Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy as a way of teaching people with a long history of depression skills to stay well. I'd say the evidence base in that area is very strong.’

Related: Our emotional brain

Many people are keen to know about the length of time that you need to practice mindfulness for it to have a beneficial effect.

According to Harvard Medical School’s Professor Sara Lazar, traditional eastern philosophies recommend 45 minutes of meditation a day, but some recent research suggests that even five or 10 minutes can provide some benefit, though more research is required.

Mindfulness is even starting to penetrate the corporate world. In Silicon Valley, Google is incorporating mindfulness into its work culture.

‘We've had educational programs and training programs for a long time at Google, but there hasn't been a lot of follow-up in terms of support for practice,’ says Van Riper, the head of Google’s ‘G Pause’ program.

‘This is what the G Pause program is there to do. It's providing the space and also the community support, the buddies, your meditation or mindfulness practice buddies. We're also doing more than just meditation; we are also supporting mindful meetings, mindful lunches, different things like that.’

According to Riper, these mindfulness programs seem to not only make people happier but also improve their productivity. But is mindfulness being overhyped these days?

Professor Kuyken of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre says all the fuss around mindfulness means that testing claims scientifically is all the more important.

‘There's certainly a lot of enthusiasm around mindfulness and there's a lot of interest in mindfulness, and I think that's for a whole range of different reasons, and that's great,’ he says. ‘But I think there is also a responsibility for those of us who work in the science community to generate knowledge that can answer key questions like how much practice is needed to keep people well over the long term, but also to report the evidence responsibly, to not overstate the evidence where the evidence doesn't yet exist, or not claim evidence that doesn't exist in an area yet.

‘I think there is both a responsibility to generate new knowledge but also to report the knowledge that we have responsibly.’

On being mindful Listen to the full episode of All in the Mind to hear more about mindfulness as a treatment for depression, and why Google is encouraging it in the workplace.

An exploration of all things mental, All in the Mind is about the brain and behaviour, and the fascinating connections between them.



