Mindfulness: pros and cons analysis

Mindfulness is the must have skill that is revolutionizing the world and everybody is trying it. Many scientists refer to it as a consciousness discipline, it is concerned with training the mind, the heart, and the body to be fully present in the place and in the moment, you are right nw. This practice is involved in various religious and secular traditions[1]. Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, its main objective is to shift thoughts away from usual preoccupations towards an appreciation of the moment and a larger perspective of life. Mindfulness’ main and most important technique is meditation.

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            Interest in mindfulness has grown exponentially over the last decade. Although there are criticisms against this new trend, mindfulness is something positive that is worth trying. Many people have already seen the results and are satisfied with the shift and new perspective it gave to their lives.

In first place, mindfulness boosts the immune system’s ability to fight off illness. A study published in the US National Library of Medicine in year 2003 proved this idea in a experiment that consisted of two groups of people. They measured both groups’ brain electrical activity. Then, the first group did an 8-week training program in mindfulness meditation. The final step was that both groups were vaccinated with influenza vaccine. The report explains how significant increases in antibody titers to influenza vaccine were found among subjects in the first group, the one that did the mindfulness meditation program.  As a result of this and other studies that show this positive relation between mindfulness and health, almost 80% of the 140 accredited medical schools or their associated universities in the United States presently incorporate Mindful- Based Interventions into their treatment and education programs.

                        On the other hand, mindfulness completely develops our ability to focus by helping us tune out distractions. According to an article published by the American psychological association, boost to working memory, and a better focus capacity, are some examples of benefits of mindfulness. As a result of this mindfulness benefit, the United States Army has decided to include mindfulness as a new training technique for soldiers in order of increasing their concentration ability. According to a recent article in The New York Times, this winter, Army infantry soldiers at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii began using mindfulness, not only to help them focus, but also for soldiers to have a break from the hostile environment many of them are exposed to everyday.

            Nevertheless, not everybody has this same idea about mindfulness.  Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm, two researchers at Coventry University and the University of Surrey respectively, explain some arguments that explain why mindfulness is a tendency that should stop being spread among people. In first place, both researchers explain that this trendy tool has been separated from its ancient Buddhist roots, and striped of its ethical and spiritual connotations in order to sell them to people. Mindfulness was originally a technique with the only aim of creating a state of bare- awareness and people have turned it into a ‘’panacea’’, a cure for all human problems.

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            The two researchers also try to explain some side- effects this technique might have and that people never consider. Buddhist meditation wasn’t created to make us happier, it was created radically change our sense of self and perception of the world. This may have really harmful effects on people, like depression, anxiety, or dissociation.

            Finally, in its article, Giles Coren explains how mindfulness is just a tool to reinforce our egocentric drives. He also explains how the true intention of Buddhist mindfulness has been completely distorted and conclude with the idea that mindfulness in order to become a genuine force for positive personal and social transformation, it must reclaim an ethical framework and aspire to more lofty purposes that consider the well-being of all living beings.

            I think that everything in this world has its positive and negative ways of seeing it. Yes, probably people have started overvaluing certain aspects about mindfulness, but that doesn’t mean that this is a negative thing. Like it was mentioned previously, Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, one of the oldest traditions focused on spiritual development. Mindfulness isn’t something that someone just made up three years ago, is a technique loaded with ancestral knowledge, so I personally rely on it.

            Life nowadays can be really intense, and taking a small break can be unbelievably helpful sometimes, mindfulness gives you that break.

I think that we tend to worry about the many things we need to do rather than doing what we need to do and that happens because we can’t focus on one task at a time, our mind starts flying, and we end up losing a lot of time. Mindfulness can help us by calming our minds and focusing on one thing and a time and being more effective.

Mindfulness is a tool, not a solution to all of our problems and I encourage everybody to at least try it. At the end of the day, in such a competitive world, one as a person must always seek to grow and seek to have more skills that make it stand out. At the end of the day, in such a competitive world, one as a person must always seek to grow and to have more skills that make one stand out.

References

[1] Secularity meaning «worldly», «of a generation», «temporal», or a span of about 100 years) is the state of being separate from religion, or of not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion

Religion and Society: Mindfulness

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. A lot of people argue that having a good mental health is one of the key elements for achieving your highest potential in all their activities, which means that we should take care of it and keep it positive. One of the main and trendiest ideas people are practicing is mindfulness.  Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we are doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what is going on around us, it can be cultivated through a variety of techniques and activities, for example, meditation.

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Mindfulness and mental health in general are a tendency that became popular in recent years, people suddenly started caring for feeling, looking and staying healthy and made it a priority, in a lot of cases, this mental health care through mindfulness has replaced religious presence as the most important pillar for the spirituality of the people, this is why a religious explanation for this phenomenon may result successful.

Religion has always been there and there is a huge variety of ways in which it can be expressed in our daily lives, one of them is society. Guy Swanson was an American sociologist that explains how there is a definite correlation between certain social structures and specific types of religious beliefs, he argues that people experience supernatural qualities because specific types of social relationships inherently possess the characteristics we identify as supernatural.

Max Weber, another sociologist born in Germany also studied this concept and came to the conclusion that religious beliefs and practice also, however, play a critical role in the change and evolution of societies. Nevertheless, Weber will also recognize the complexity of this correlation, admitting there is a dependency in many variables as people are complex and these social conditions are embodied in people.

The ideas of both sociologists can be perfectly exemplified with the trend that is being analyzed throughout this essay

In his book Anatomy of the Sacred, James C Livingston, introduces the emerging denominated new age religious movements, not only in North America, but also in Europe, Africa, Japan, Melanesia, and Latin America. Because this idea is a pretty broad concept and that explaining each one of them would take a long time, Livingston describes the most important and common features of this new movements. In first place, new agers feel their lives are on a destructive path, there is a deep sense that one must be freed of this accumulated destructive baggage through a transformative experience. A second important feature is the focus on the individual and his or her spiritual healing or transformation; a worshipping community, like a church, is no longer common. The goal of all therapies and activities related to this new age movements is to get a touch with one’s inner or higher self. A final and important feature is the attention given to the denominated universal vibrational energy.

As we can clearly see, all these features perfectly define what we also know as the idea of mental health, mindfulness and the inner self. Now, how can we observe this idea presented by both Weber and Swanson that religion and society have a dependency, specifically in this New Age religious movements? In education, which is one of the most important aspects of society. Every year, the percentage of kids studying increases, so each change made in the education system represents an important change in society as a whole.

According to an article in The New York Times, up to 370 English schools are expanding the traditional curriculum as students will start practicing mindfulness. Imran Hussain, the director of policy and campaigns for a British Charity in the United Kingdom even affirmed ‘’children are experiencing a mental health crisis’’. As a result, the British government is now implementing this new program, teachers are receiving training and a variety of techniques to ‘’not only making children feel better in the short term, but equip them for later in life’’- Dr. Jessica Deighton, an associate professor in child mental health and well-being at University College London.  

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Where is all of this coming from? When did the educational system start to care about children’s mental health? This is a really drastic change considering that corporal punishment was a legal thing to do until year 1999 in British schools.  It is not magic, or a random tendency, it is the strong relation religion and society have. Contrary to the popular thought, religion goes much further than just faith and beliefs. Religion influences each aspect in our lives, and as it has been proven through this example there are many things that we do not realize and that we take for granted but actually have an explanation with a bigger system, like religion, responsible for it. A pretty interesting topic for further investigation could be the role of religion in other aspects of society, such as economy or politics.

Consulted Sources