What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is one of the modern buzzwords of popular psychology and seems to be everywhere we look. Google displays 19,000,000 results when searching the term, so plenty of people have a view, but is that view correct and is it applied appropriately?

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Dr. Stuart Baker – Mindfulness

A couple of weeks ago I attended a BPS sponsored workshop ran by Dr. Stuart Baker, an avid believer in the power of mindful meditation.

Stuart came across as level headed, aware of the needs of his patients (and audience), and I felt a sense of ease in his company. He had a firm focus on the need to be a believer in, and practitioner of mindful meditation, before deciding to teach others such wisdom.

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He talked about mindful meditation being the ability to take a step back and observe rather than be overwhelmed in any moment. He said this allows you to respond instead of react. He asked questions like ‘do you feel bad about feeling bad?’ and told us to concentrate on our ability to separate the mind and the heart, cognitive and emotional feelings. He referred to his research on psychotherapy trainees and commented on their ability to stand back from client / patient sessions, as an example of how people can successfully apply mindfulness in practice.

I felt assured by his morals for practice, and this gave me a sense of comfort in his methods and approach. However, the depth of his practice and research, gave me a sharp realisation of the qualifications and experience required to teach others to practice the techniques. I also felt this was even more prevalent given the intensity of the way he described the approach. It was something, I thought, that should not end up in the wrong hands.

Fortunately, my experience of mindfulness is quite different.

Professor Ellen J Langer - Mindfulness

The topic of mindfulness was somewhat of a black box for me for many years, so I bought a book on the subject in an effort to gain some clarity. The book is called Mindfulness and is by Ellen J Langer. It was first published in the 1980’s.

Ellen’s focus is somewhat different to that described by Dr. Baker. She focuses on what I term ‘mindful thinking’ as opposed to meditation. She talks about the importance of recognising when our thoughts take us down preconceived routes, making us reject ideas that could be possible if only we saw the world differently. She used an example that I believe epitomises what should be used by the masses in applying mindfulness to our everyday lives.

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Is this mindfulness?

Ellen described a scenario where you imagine it is 2am, and you are asleep in bed. The doorbell rings and you awake with a start. You go downstairs wondering who would be calling at such an hour. You answer the door, rather cautiously, and see a man stood there. He is wearing pristine clothes and looks very respectable. He asks you if you have a piece of wood you can give to him. You look at him blankly, so he explains further. “The wood is for a scavenger hunt I am doing. If you can supply the wood, I will give you £10,000." You think and think but you can’t place of a piece of wood you can give to him, so you apologise to the man and head back to bed. You awake in the morning and walk downstairs to see your front door ahead of you. It is made entirely of wood. You realise the error of your ways and wonder why you couldn't see the 'wood' last night.

The answer? You were not mindful, or, you were mindless.

What is the difference?

The difference between the two approaches got me thinking. What is mindfulness? Is it being mindful of our surroundings or is it something with deeper roots in meditation; or is it both, neither or are they one in the same?

Concerns

Mindfulness training is available everywhere, we only have to Google it to see its popularity. But, with mindfulness being such a popular phenomenon, I wonder how many people are attempting to adopt the deeper approach without suitable training and background in the methods.

Unfortunately, this means we have people in the healthcare and business professions taking short courses (if any course at all) and training others to use mindfulness techniques. Most notably, I have heard that people in primary care settings, dealing with those with severe mental illness, are being asked to train patients in mindfulness without suitable training themselves. My concern is that in its deeper meditative form mindfulness could be dangerous if used in the wrong hands.

Should we be mindful?

I place real value on being aware of our propensity to display limited thinking, and I certainly believe in teaching others to be aware of their metacognition. However, I believe deeper meditative states require careful training and management.

If people were training in and using mindfulness in what I see as its original intention - to help us think carefully about our metacognition – the wider application of it would be more acceptable. Sadly, I think meditative and internal reflection practices have taken over, and most people are not safely trained to adopt these practices themselves never mind teach others. 

So what is mindfulness?

Unfortunately, I can’t answer my question; I believe the phenomenon has many faces, and it is still evolving as I write and you read. I only hope it is used wisely, however it’s applied.