Making sense of mindfulness

At a recent reception, we encountered a “mindfulness guru”. Yes, that is actually the job title on his business card — one bearing the logo of a huge multinational software company. His job is to teach the company’s stressed-out employees the “art of mindfulness”, which has been described as “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally”, and “knowing what is on your mind”.

Mindfulness seems to be everywhere nowadays. Companies such as Apple, Sony, Ikea, and Google have joined the trend, and now include mindfulness or meditation in their employee benefit packages. The aim is cultivating a happier, healthier, more productive workforce.

Moreover, some hospitals offer mindfulness meditation sessions to patients and employees, and some elementary schools assign rowdy children mindful “time-outs”. Already this year, The New York Times’ “Well” section has more than a dozen articles about mindfulness. A Google search for the word yields about 67 million hits.

Extravagant claims for mindfulness have been made. Its advocates assert that it can improve a number of conditions — including anxiety, depression, stress, and even drug addiction — while boosting productivity. But can mindfulness deliver on its many promises?

To be sure, there is a scientific basis for mindfulness. But the science does not vindicate any particular lifestyle or thought pattern, because the basis is breathing.

Located deep within the brainstem is a tiny cluster of neurons, the pre-Botzinger complex, that links respiration to feelings of relaxation, attention, excitement, and anxiety. Called the “pacemaker for breathing”, it communicates the activity in the brain’s respiratory control centre to the structure responsible for generating arousal throughout the brain. Thanks to this region of the brain, slow, smooth, rhythmic breathing can induce a state of calm.

But today’s prevailing version of mindfulness extends beyond breathing, to guide the way practitioners think. During the past 30 years, many studies, including meta-analyses, have claimed to show that when this type of mindfulness is practised regularly, people experience positive changes in their sense of well-being, their relationships, their ability to concentrate, their experience of physical and emotional pain, and their capacity to enjoy life.

Yet many, perhaps even most, of these studies seem to be observational (that is, uncontrolled) or poorly controlled. They are also susceptible to publication bias — the tendency to publish only studies that support the hypothesis, also known as the “file drawer effect”.

We wonder how, in a randomised controlled study, mindfulness would compare with other stress-reducing interventions, such as adopting a pet, hiking regularly, or practising yoga, which incorporates mindful breathing. In fact, mindfulness may carry a risk, compared with these other interventions.

In some cases, mindfulness has taken on a kind of cult-like status, and some practitioners have reported feelings of depersonalisation and detachment and even loss of identity. Others have had more extreme reactions, including psychosis, delusions, confusion, mania, or depression.

Maybe such outcomes should not be surprising, given that the practice of mindfulness encourages exploration of experiences — whether negative, neutral, or positive — with a non-judgmental attitude.

The adoption of mindfulness by so many high-tech companies may be particularly problematic, because it could effectively paper over the real problem: Chronically overworked, stressed-out employees.

At a time when many companies are implementing cost-cutting measures and pushing employees to boost their productivity, mindfulness and meditation programmes are a more management-friendly solution than raising wages or hiring more employees.

But there is more to it than that. Some corporate leaders in Silicon Valley view mindfulness as a way to improve employees’ “emotional intelligence” (EI), which helps people to understand others’ motivations, thereby boosting competitiveness.

As Mr Chade-Meng Tan, the founder of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which provides mindfulness and meditation courses to Google, told Wired magazine: “Everybody knows this EI thing is good for their career, and every company knows that if their people have EI, they’re gonna make a sh**load of money.”

Whether or not mindfulness really is the panacea its proponents claim it to be, there is no question about its appeal. While companies like the idea that mindfulness can improve their bottom line, individuals may be eager for a way to escape their quotidian cares.

The past year brought numerous terror attacks, mass shootings, fetal deformities from Zika virus infections, and the US presidential election and its rancorous aftermath.

If deep breathing and focusing on the here and now can help to alleviate the burden of some of these memories, sign us up. PROJECT SYNDICATE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mia Zaharna is a psychiatrist specialising in sleep disorders. Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.