Mindfulness

Although today’s human has infinite choices to entertain and actually distract himself from reality, something deep inside him looks at him from the inside like an open eye and keep an eye on him and laughs at his simplicity with the gleam in his eye. This open eye is not a stranger. It is from old familiarity that they see everything and does not get discouraged by everything. This eye is always open and is not an enemy to anyone. He is curious and friendly, and most importantly, he is brave and powerful and does not shy away from seeing anything, even the feeblest weaknesses in a person. This eye is always our own homonym. In fact, we are our real selves. He is mindfulness.
As psychology has developed, many concepts for mindfulness have been formed by beginning to use mindfulness interventions. Mindfulness is an important infrastructure factor to achieve freedom; Because it is an effective and strong method to hush and stop the world pressures or one’s own mental stresses. The presence of the right mind means that a person directs his awareness from the past and future to the present. When a person is present at the moment, he sees reality with all its internal and external aspects and realizes that the mind is constantly ruminating and having an internal conversation due to the judgments and interpretations it makes. When a person realizes that the mind is constantly interpreting, he is able to pay more attention to his thoughts, examine them without aversion or judgment, and find out the reason for their existence. Mind training gives the person the ability to find out “Thoughts are just thoughts, and when one realizes that his thoughts may not be true, he can more easily let them go.
Mindfulness implicitly refers to awareness, attention, and remembering. By becoming aware of the events that happen inside and around him, he gradually frees himself from mental preoccupation and internal negative emotions or directs his attention, instead of trying to control or suppress intense emotions, he adjusts how he feels. Another aspect of mindfulness is remembering. This reference does not refer to recalling past events. Rather, it means to remember to be aware and pay attention and highlight the importance of intention and purpose in the practice of mindfulness.
Mindfulness can be defined as “paying attention in a specific, purposeful way, in the present time and without judgment.” Also, mindfulness is defined as “continuing attention in the present time, as well as creating a state of curiosity, openness, and acceptance to awareness.” Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as paying attention in a specific, purposeful way, in the present moment and without judgment or prejudice. Langer (1989) used the term mindfulness to describe a scientific research approach. According to Langer, mindfulness is a creative and constructive cognitive process and is manifested when a person employs the following three key characteristics. Those three features are:
Create a new classification
Acceptance of new information
Awareness of vision and deeper and more point of views
Mindfulness creates a state of mind that enables a person to pause and think before responding, this pause provides an opportunity to get rid of anger, fear and judgment in many situations. The patterns of the buildings, the shape of the stones, the colors, the sights, the smells, the sounds, etc. are all details that our awareness should be focused on them. In fact, mindfulness is a way to consciously communicate with ourselves, the world around us, and even with our own God momently.
Mindfulness enables a person to create a fundamentally different relationship with the experience of internal feelings and external events, through creating moment-to-moment awareness and behavioral orientation based on wise responsibility instead of automatic reactivity. By purposefully applying the higher functions of the mind, including attention, awareness, kind attitude, curiosity and compassion, mindfulness can effectively control emotional reactions through the cortical inhibition of the limbic system.
According to Hanh (1991), mindfulness is maintaining awareness of existing facts. Brown and Ryan (2003) define awareness and attention in the shadow of awareness: awareness includes both awareness and attention. Consciousness is the introduction of consciousness and shows the review of the external and internal environment. In fact, awareness and attention are intertwined, meaning that attention is measured in the context of awareness.
Gunaratana (1992) defines mindfulness as remembering to do an activity, seeing things as they are, and seeing the true nature of phenomena. Kabat-Zinn (1994) states that this awareness means special attention to goals, the present and nonjudgmental attention. In other words, according to Kabat-Zinn (1994), mindfulness is defined as a state of mind that focuses on experiences in the present, without judgment. Epstein (1995) defined mindfulness as open attention, which includes moment-to-moment awareness of changing goals and perceptions. In other words, mindfulness is a state of attention and awareness of what is happening in or for a person. Finally, according to Germer et al. (2005), mindfulness is awareness of existing experiences along with their acceptance.
In mindfulness, a person becomes aware of the mental gear at any moment, and after becoming aware of two mental gears, one of doing and the other of being, he learns to move the mind from one mode to another, which requires the training of behavioral, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies. It is special for focusing the process of attention.
The main goal of mindfulness is not relaxation, but rather an undifferentiated awareness of personal experience that unfolds moment by moment without judgment. Observing negative internal events without any judgment about them, or physiological arousal, induces relaxation. Mindfulness is a skill that allows a person to perceive events in the present moment as less distressing than they are. When people become aware of the present, they no longer focus on the past or the future. Most psychological problems are usually related to events that happened in the past or will happen in the future. For example, people who are depressed feel regret and guilt about the past, and those who have anxiety worry about future problems causing them fear and despair.
Definitions of mindfulness
Mindfulness in simple language means being aware of thoughts, behavior, emotions and feelings and is considered a special form of attention in which two basic elements play a main role; 1) being present in the present time, 2) not judging events and actions and reactions. Mindfulness means being 100% attentive and awake and aware of all the events that are happening right now around us as well as inside our body in such a way that no judgment and prejudice about the rightness or wrongness of the events don’t affect our awareness and carefulness.
Mindfulness is a skill that allows us to perceive events in the present moment as less distressing than they are. When we are aware of the present, we are no longer focused on the past or the future, whereas most mental problems are caused by focusing on the past.
It seems that mindfulness training by persuading people, repeated exercises, focused attention on the issue in question, and deliberate awareness of the issue as well as people’s minds, transforms a person’s response to conflict situations from an automatic state to a conscious and appropriate state.
Mindfulness can be considered as one of the teachings of religions (specifically Buddhism) and perhaps religions that have emerged in East Asia, which emphasizes on strengthening the mental and psychological power of humans to understand the moments, clear the mind and create inner peace to accurately understand the flow of life. (As Sohrab Sepehri says: “life is swimming in the pond of present”.
There are five different aspects of mindfulness. The ability to observe the internal and external environment, the ability to describe internal and external experience, the ability to act based on awareness, being non-judgmental to distant experience and reactivity to internal experience. Mindfulness creates a state of mind that enables a person to pause and think before responding. These pauses provide opportunities to release anger, fear, and judgment in many situations.
Different definitions of mindfulness reflect three basic characteristics.
1. Attention and awareness focused on the present.
2. An intention or purpose that adds a motivational component to a person’s attention and behavior.
3. An attitude that describes how one pays attention, or the state one takes when paying attention, such as interest, curiosity, non-judgment, acceptance, and responsiveness.
History of Mindfulness
Mindfulness, as used in ancient texts, is the English translation of the word Sati from the Pali language. The Pali language is the language in which the Buddha’s teachings were originally attributed. Mindfulness is considered as one of the cognitive-behavioral treatments of the third wave and has its roots in Eastern religious rituals, especially Buddha. Mindfulness is one of the prerequisites for the Noble Fourfold Truths in Buddhist culture.
The three steps in the Fourfold Path of Buddha are:
Moral provisions (right life, right activity and right speech).
Having the right perspective and the right goal.
Mental discipline (right effort, right concentration and right awareness or mindfulness).
Thinking is about mental concepts.
Mindfulness has four foundations, which were defined by the Buddha through the teachings of the Sutta. The word Sutta was used to purify beings by Buddhist monk, and its effectiveness was to overcome sadness and distress, eliminate pain and discomfort, benefit from the religion of truth and peace of Nibbana (goddess of fire and greed).
Similar to the word Sutta, another word is used as a practice in the Buddhist culture, which is called Mahasansa Panhana. Panhana means effort, and by means of it, the one who meditates creates mindfulness and attention in himself. The four main methods of teaching the Mahasatir are the Panhana Sutta, meditation on the body, emotions, the mind itself, and meditation on mental concepts. Exercises for creating bodily meditation or thinking about the body are described in six sections, which are:
1) Breathing 2) State 3) Body posture 4) Body resistance 5) Body elements 6) Body relaxation. The third area, thinking and reflecting on mental concepts or Dihamma, teaches principles such as enlightenment that are somehow related to mindfulness. The Sutta exercises conclude with the promise that anyone who practices these four main foundations of mindfulness will at once attain the highest level of knowledge and attention, or Anna.
The last part of mindfulness in Sutta teaching is thinking about mental concepts. This section is very broad and through a number of techniques, there are seven factors of enlightenment, which include mindfulness, search for reality, search for energy, spiritual rapture, calmness of concentration and intellectual balance. These seven techniques are positive traits that lead to freedom through insight. The basic concept of this case is mindfulness. It seems that mindfulness is the mediator between the other three passive factors (concentration, relaxation and mental balance). The prominent role of mindfulness is to maintain the balance between active and passive factors, which are both negative and positive and include feelings and mental states; therefore, it can be said that the root of mindfulness lies in the school of Buddhism and this school played an important role in promoting this therapeutic technique.
The first topic is thinking or reflecting on the body, which is translated as mindfulness of breathing. It is a clear teaching about paying attention to the passageways of the breath on the body. The first step in this technique is inhaling and exhaling with awareness. The next step is long and short breathing and the last step is for the person being trained to inhale and exhale the whole body, this exercise leads to relaxation of the body and breathing. Mindfulness meditation activates an area of the brain that creates positive emotions and beneficial effects on the body’s immune function.
The prominent role of mindfulness is to maintain the balance between active and passive factors and the optimal level of activity is maintained through it. In the final part of the Sutta, thinking is focused on mental concepts that are both negative and positive and include feelings and mental states. Therefore, it can be said that the roots of mindfulness lie in the school of Buddhism, and this school has played an important role in promoting this therapeutic technique (Mac, 2008). For this reason, clinical definitions of mindfulness are similar to its Buddhist definition in most cases; Because these definitions are aligned with the Buddha’s conceptualization. Mindfulness in Buddhism is defined as pure attention or the non-argumentative recording of events without mental reaction or evaluation and refers to the process of sustained attention rather than the content being attended to.
Mindfulness, as a psychological concept, focuses and emphasizes attention and consciousness, and based on the concept of mindfulness, it refers to Buddhist meditation; John Kabat-Zinn has popularized this concept in the West. Mindfulness gained attention from the West since the 1970s. Since then, more than 240 mindfulness-based programs have been conducted in North America and Europe. In 1979, John Kabat-Zinn found that mindfulness-based stress reduction programs at the University of Massachusetts were used to treat coronary patients; this was a spark for the development and application of mindfulness ideas in the medical world. Mindfulness is used to treat a variety of patients, both healthy and sick. Since clinical psychologists and psychiatrists have developed a number of therapeutic applications based on mindfulness to help people suffering from various psychological conditions. Research has shown that mindfulness-based therapies are effective in reducing anxiety, depression, and stress.
Biological basis of mindfulness
Studies of neural activity during mindfulness practice revealed that long-held beliefs about the beneficial effects of meditation were supported by specific changes in related cortical areas. Evidence from studies using electroencephalography and recent functional magnetic resonance imaging have shown that mindfulness practice has potentially profound and surprising effects on neural function, including the activity (and even size) of certain areas of the brain. A significant increase in the neural connectivity of areas associated with attentional control, emotion regulation, and perception of the actions and goals of others—skills that are essential for effective athletic performance and enable peak performance—was observed as a result of mindfulness training (Marks, 2008). Dunn, Hartigan and Mikolas (1999) stated that there are differences in the electroencephalogram related to relaxation, concentration and mindfulness. In their research on students who had practiced the above three postures for 10 weeks, they showed that during mindfulness training, delta waves are activated in the occipital, parietal and frontal lobes, theta waves in the left forehead, and beta waves in the left forehead and occipital-parietal lobes. Mindfulness is characterized by gentle alpha and theta waves in the frontal cortex and low beta activity. Mindfulness meditation is characterized by high blood flow in two levels of the frontal lob, the first one is involved in concentration and attention and the second one is involved in comprehensive attention. In a study, Lazar et al. (2005) showed that conscious attention as a mindfulness technique causes differences in the prefrontal cortex (especially Brodmann’s areas 9 and 10) and right insula areas (including the auditory cortex). In addition, Davidson, Putnam and Larson (2000) investigated the effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction training on brain structures in eight weeks, the results showed that alpha waves ranged from 8 to 18 Hz.
The three main elements of mindfulness
The growth of consciousness
Mindfulness is achieved through a systematic methodology in formal and informal exercises. Formal practices include body scan technique, sitting meditation, and mindfulness of movements, and informal techniques include mindfulness and awareness of moment-to-moment life experiences.
Special attention
Which is achieved through kindness, curiosity and satisfaction along with showing attention to experiences. These features are both voluntary and are achieved immediately after mindfulness.
Increasing understanding of human vulnerability
This principle is achieved through listening techniques and direct observation of experiential processes during mindfulness meditation practice. Through mindfulness, we learn that pain and suffering are part of our experiences and show patients that the existence of these pains and sufferings may be an unhealthy habit.
Baltraz model Figure 1 is the model proposed by Baltzel and Akhtar, which shows how mindfulness is fundamentally related to sports performance. When athletes and coaches have the ability to pay mindful attention to their performance and experience moment-to-moment non-judgmentally, then they will be able to attend to task-related cues. Instead of being distracted by unwanted thoughts and feelings, they can accept these distractions and focus their attention on the cues that best facilitate success. The placement of mindfulness at the lowest level of the model indicates the fact that accepting and even tolerating internal and external distractions is a fundamental issue. With such acceptance, the athlete or coach is free to focus on the ongoing task of the next level of the model. As shown in the model, by fully focusing on the task in progress, the athlete or coach is more likely to succeed in optimizing the performance of the highest level of the model.