So we can say with real confidence that mindfulness lowers stress levels. But how? Good question. Let’s take a look. Mindfulness, as we just mentioned, is the simple act of being aware. Nonjudgmentally and on purpose.
Simple enough, right?
But the crazy thing is that being aware, nonjudgmentally and on purpose, breaks the cycle of rumination. And rumination, it turns out, is a hellacious contemporary affliction, a gruesome epidemic of the soul, the psychological cholera of hyper-tech, post-industrialist societies.
To understand this, it’s helpful to get a handle on how our stress response works.
Humans evolved in dangerous environments. Every once in a while something super bad happened, and our bodies needed to respond. Our heart rates would go through the roof, our blood would be pulled out of our extremities, and our nervous systems would go berserk. That way we could run like hell or fight like hell or just freeze and play dead. Way back then, though, it was pretty obvious when the danger had passed. And when it passed the body would calm down, the mind would chill out, and we’d go back to happily picking berries and gossiping about who we wanted to have babies with. Back then, there wasn’t a lot of room for rumination. There was danger, it passed, we moved on.
These days, though, your nervous system responds to a hostile email or a politically charged news report or a coworker saying something jacked in much the same way your ancestors used to respond to a saber-toothed tiger. Only now, email and news stories are way more prevalent than saber-toothed tigers ever were. So the body ends up in a continual state of activation, making your emotions and thoughts just spin and spin and spin.
And spinning thoughts are super bad for you. They super freak you out. And they lead to a host of stress-related bad stuff like depression, anxiety, and any number of chronic physical ailments.
When you practice the simple act of bringing attention back to your left foot, or your breath, or even nonjudgmentally bringing awareness to your thoughts, the spinning mind slows its roll and you’re more able to relate to your experience in a calm, collected, and warmhearted way. Stress levels go down. A kind of friendliness develops. And all this is a very good thing.
AND ANOTHER THING…
Letting Go of Expectations
To be honest, I sometimes worry a little when I tell people about the research on mindfulness and meditation. I mean, it’s exciting stuff. I love talking about it. I love getting people excited about this thing I’ve been excited about my entire adult life.
But I want to be careful, too. First, because the science is complicated, there’s more research to be done, and I’m simplifying to make a point or two here. But most importantly, telling everybody how helpful meditation is might actually short-circuit the very ways that meditation is helpful.
Let me explain.
Meditation practice is primarily about letting go of expectations. It’s about being present with whatever’s here, no matter what is here. That includes pleasant physical sensations and unpleasant physical sensations. It includes nice emotional feelings, and not-so-nice emotional feelings. It also includes every conceivable kind of thought.
The power of meditation is not that all these things cease and desist. It’s not that we stop thoughts in meditation—we don’t stop thoughts in meditation. It’s not that our unpleasant emotions and painful bodily experiences disappear. It’s simply that we get really good at letting our experience be exactly as it is, moment by moment, no matter what it is, with warmth and friendliness and maybe even some steady sense of presence. And this engaged acceptance in itself is transformative.
So as you read all the scientific stuff, I hope you’ll be inspired. I hope you’ll sit down in a chair or on a cushion and try meditation for yourself.
But just remember: Once you’ve been inspired to sit down and give it a try, don’t look for some special experience. Don’t block out your thoughts or your feelings. Don’t think this meditation practice will make you into some kind of superhuman with no perceivable problems. Just keep coming back to what is, again and again. That’s the skill we’re really looking to develop.
Meditation Also Helps You Focus
At first blush, increased focus probably doesn’t sound like such a big deal. But think about it. Pretty much every worthwhile thing you do—from playing an instrument to cooking a meal to writing code—requires some level of baseline attentiveness. And the more attentive you are, the better things go.
Take, for example, your daily workflow. You get to your desk. Check your email. Check your voicemail. Check your Slack channel. Check your to-do list. Three people stop by asking for stuff. You get a text from your mom. You get a news alert on your phone. And then somehow you have to find a way to sift through the noise and get cracking.
This is where a lot of people get stuck. There’s so much information. Like a flood of beeping, buzzing, binging noise, and each piece of information is waving flags and flashing lights telling you it’s really, really, really important. So how do you actually choose what to focus on first? And then next? And on and on, moment to moment, throughout your day?
Well, mindfulness training—just that simple act of being intentionally aware again and again—can help. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s take a look at some of the research:3
People who take an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course see a big jump in focus.4
Long-term meditators show far better focus than well-matched controls.5
People who do a three-month retreat see a big bump in focus, and it stays with them long after the retreat ends.6
Ten minutes of mindfulness heals the break in focus associated with multitasking.7
Eight minutes of mindfulness decreases mind-wandering.8
Ten hours of mindfulness training increases baseline levels of both focus and working memory.9
So mindfulness works a kind of focus magic. Coming back to the breath again and again trains you to bring your attention to just about anything. If you can pay attention to your breath, you can pay attention to your work. You can pay attention to your pickleball game. You can pay attention in bed. In other words, your sustained awareness in all these areas will likely get a good little bump. And the more you practice, the bigger the bump you’ll see.
But all this can seem a little vague and brainy. So let me tell you a story about a meditator I know pretty well who saw big gains from learning focus. His name is Craig, and he’s my husband and the coauthor of this book. Craig got into meditation when he was pretty young. And it’s a good thing, too, because he was kind of a mess.