Mindfulness has enjoyed a stellar career in the last 30 years. Rooted in Buddhist meditation, mindfulness is now widely practiced in schools, hospitals, companies, and therapy offices across North America. This blooming popularity stems from its reputation as a portal to inner stillness, a balm that soothes the stress of modern life. Scientists have gathered compelling evidence that mindfulness changes the brain and shifts features of the mind. In a culture that pursues progress and improvement, mindfulness has become a tool for optimizing personal potential. In the workplace, mindfulness promises to boost productivity and bolster creativity. The success of apps like Headspace and Calm illustrates mindfulness’ widespread appeal.
Psychotherapy has also taken a ‘mindful turn’ in the last few decades. For a good part of the twentieth century, counselling practice has dwelled in the realm of talk therapy, forms of psychoanalysis that rely on investigative self-reflection. In more recent decades, mindfulness has crept into many psycho-therapeutic modalities. Immediate, non-judgemental awareness is now a basic therapeutic intervention that illuminates ingrained patterns, unacknowledged desires, somatic sensations and latent emotions. Mindfulness has given psychotherapists and clients a way to hold immediate experiences beyond cognitive, analytical reflection. Many clients have integrated mindfulness into their lives as part of their self-care regime.
However, with widespread adoption comes misuses that undermine the efficacy of mindfulness practice. These misuses occur when private enterprises adopt an ancient contemplative method, turning practice into a commodity. Culturally, we tend to think of mental-health as the absence of ailments, not as something that requires intention and cultivation. Afflicted by a mental distress, we search for a remedy, thereby mistaking prevention for cure. The following is a brief tour of what I see as the misuses of mindfulness, based on my own meditative practice over the last 25 years.
Mindfulness Shopping
Popular mindfulness platforms like Headspace and Calm offer exercises for relaxation and sleep. Subscribers pay a monthly fee to access a library of guided exercises. As providers constantly add new content to attract new subscriptions to retain current users. Millions of people have benefited from these apps. The platforms are the transactional point between the supply of guided meditation and demand from listeners. However, there is the risk that subscribers begin to see guided meditation as commodities. The production of new mindfulness-related content feeds into the listener’s taste for novelty. Curious about new content and anxious about missing out, the user goes in search of new guided exercises. This pattern of consumption rubs against the spirit of mindfulness practice: finding contentment in the here and now.
Mindfulness practice drifts far when it becomes a trademark product sold by tech companies. If we have air to breathe and a mind for attention, we can return to basic awareness, which is our birthright as embodied creatures of the living earth. Most forms of mindfulness practice center around the breath. Instructions for the technique are simple and brief. Although there are many variations, most techniques offer different ways of applying and holding awareness. It is more effective to commit to one or a small handful of techniques rather than bounce from one method to another. My own meditative practice began with a simple form of breath work and has evolved as I was better able to work with awareness. The variations I discovered stem from the ripening of my core practice rather than a constant search for new techniques. Consistency is vital.
Countering Big Emotions
Mindfulness can help us stay centered during moments of intense emotions. Awareness of the exhaling breath activates the parasympathetic system, which down-regulates the body’s stress response. In this way, mindfulness affords us precious wiggle room when emotions loom large, giving us time to respond with care and thoughtfulness.
However, mindfulness has become the default technique for countering big emotions. In classrooms, some teachers use mindfulness techniques to regulate students’ energy and noise level. Many psychotherapists understand that mindfulness is not a technique to suppress emotions. However, in response to clients’ requests, counsellors often suggest mindfulness-based methods to help clients cope with distress. Clients have the impression that mindfulness is a tool for countering emotional upheavals. Unfortunately, this “use-in-emergency” mentality undersells mindfulness as a practice. While mindfulness indeed helps to regulate the nervous system in moments of distress, it is more transformative when used as a daily practice, regardless of our mental and emotional state. Studies indicate observable changes in cortical structures in the brain’s of regular meditators, suggesting alterations in executive function, emotional stability, and empathy. The practitioner’s inner landscape transforms because of consistent mindfulness practice. There is greater emotional stability, less identification with discursive thoughts, greater overall sense of wellness. Inhabiting a more stable emotional life, “use-in-emergency” techniques become less necessary.
Practicing mindfulness only in times of distress is like a musician practicing their instrument only on the day of a performance. Although it is better to practice a little than not at all, the results are better when the musician practices consistently before the gig. Similarly, mindfulness serves us best when practiced regularly as part of a healthy life. As we hone our awareness, we are better able to attend the flux of our emotions. The inner spaciousness cultivated through practice can better serve us when emotions loom large.
Productivity Booster
Among professionals, I have noticed an ethos keen on productivity. Videos and articles reveal life-hacks that optimize our function. Under this framework, mindfulness is a means of relieving stress, sharpening cognition, improving creativity, and increasing functional capacity. Writ large, this push for greater productivity is part of a work culture that thrives by extracting more value from each worker.
Productivity and efficiency are not problematic in themselves. However, mindfulness is weighed down by expectation when we used it as a means to an end. In the search for self-improvement, we are prone to look for changes in stress level, mental clarity, creativity and productivity. We want the practice to do something for us. This attitude is at odds with the spirit of mindfulness, which is about bringing awareness to the present, without conditions and expectations. In full awareness, the practitioner connects with life exactly as it is. We notice discursive thoughts and impose no agenda on them. We attend to emotions with gentle kindness. Mindfulness rests on the assumption of sufficiency — this moment is enough. Nothing else is needed.
Although mindfulness indeed relieves stress and improves cognition, these benefits are merely happy accidents. To set them up as goals of practice is to wag the dog by the tail. Worse, we may prime ourselves for disappointment if we expect something spectacular.
Self-Help Technique
Most clients come to psychotherapy because they are hurting. They may feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with them. Psychotherapy offers a path toward a stronger self-esteem and confidence. Harbouring hope for their own healing, clients take up mindfulness as a tool for self-improvement, a way to perfect themselves in the search for happiness. The desire to improve oneself is often a helpful motivator, one that compels us toward wholeness. However, beyond the initial motivation, a desire for self-improvement may undermine rather than support one’s overall health.
Consider for example, someone who struggles with anxiety. If mindfulness is presented as an antidote to anxiety, the client may expect a time when they are no longer afflicted by anxious thoughts. The recurrence of anxious thoughts can further feed doubt about mindfulness as an intervention. Expectation may lead to frustration, thus exacerbating anxiety. Likewise, someone who struggles with self-esteem may take up mindfulness as a means of self-acceptance. However, there is a contradiction here: if I meditate to become a better version of myself, I am no longer accepting myself as I am. The ideas and perceptions that we bring to mindfulness practice can shape how we practice. If we want mindfulness to usher in a different reality, this desire may an underlying discontent that invites reflection. While transformation indeed occurs over time, they happen because we have a greater capacity to face ourselves with greater acceptance. By working in this way, mindfulness increases our capacity to face our lives with greater poise and equanimity. We face our lives exactly as it is. Mindfulness is both a way of cultivating our inner capacity for awareness, which paradoxically transforms us while helping us accept ourselves as we are.
Conclusion
Mindfulness is a fundamental practice that promotes overall mental vitality. I often tell clients that regular mindfulness practice is like eating a healthy diet. A healthy diet will not cure a flu, but it will build the baseline for a quick recovery. In the same way, mindfulness generates a spacious and gentle attitude toward our inner world, which then help us resile against life’s turmoil. Knowing this can inspire us to practice; however, in the moment of practice, we drop all expectations. We work with attention and awareness, returning to breath and body in the present moment. If we can taste the fullness of the present, then we have arrived at the heart of practice.