Mindfulness History and Research

Where Do Mindfulness Practices Come From?

Contemporary mindfulness approaches have roots in Buddhist traditions and philosophy. However, as previously noted, these practices are not religious per se and are best understood as a practical science of the mind. The specific mindfulness practices that have become most popular in the West and that have been the subject of most research tend to come from the Vipassana (“insight”) tradition, with Zen and Tibetan Buddhism traditions also making major contributions.

Mindfulness practices began to really take root in the West in the 1970s. A number of Westerners who had learned mindfulness approaches in India, Thailand, and other Asian countries began to lead meditation retreats and offer these teachings in the United States, and a “mindfulness movement” began to grow. Influential teachers such as Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, and Pema Chodron helped “translate” many of these Buddhist concepts into applications easily incorporated into modern life.

Studying and practicing with many of these early mindfulness pioneers, Jon Kabat-Zinn developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and began conducting extensive research in medical settings on its benefits for patients with a variety of physical and mental health challenges. Kabat-Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living (1990) made these approaches increasingly accessible to the general population, and mindfulness research and resources have grown exponentially since then.

Impressive Research Support

You’ve probably heard a number of research findings on mindfulness being touted in the popular press in recent years. Research on mindfulness practices has burgeoned in the past 20 years, and overall the results have been impressive. However, it’s important not to let the recent “hype” cause us to think that mindfulness is some kind of panacea, or that the research is farther along than it really is. Knowing the many ways these practices can contribute to wellbeing may increase a person’s interest and willingness to dive in and learn more, but there would still be important reasons to learn these practices even if the supporting research was less convincing. Here we summarize the research on the benefits of mindfulness practices for a number of psychological, cognitive, medical, and interpersonal outcomes.  

Symptom Improvement. Mindfulness practices promote improvement in a wide variety of psychological and medical symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, stress, and insomnia. Recent meta-analyses (rigorously examining and synthesizing results across numerous studies) show that mindfulness-based interventions show a robust and lasting effect in improving anxiety and depressive symptoms, comparable to other well-researched approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (Goyal et al., 2014; Hoffman et al., 2010). Mindfulness approaches have also been studied extensively in individuals with chronic and life-threatening illnesses (Carlson, 2012). For example, in cancer patients, improvements in mood, stress, fatigue, sleep, and quality of life have been observed (Lerman et al., 2012; Speca et al., 2000). Research also shows coping benefits for patients with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, HIV/AIDS, rheumatoid arthritis, and other medical issues (Carlson, 2012; DiRenzo et al., 2018).

Enhanced Wellbeing. Mindfulness practices also promote an enhanced sense of subjective wellbeing and equanimity (Goyal et al., 2014). Across a variety of measures, outcomes of mindfulness practices include improved mood, an increase in various positive emotions, and reduced stress (Basso et al., 2019; Chiesa & Serretti, 2009; Davidson et al., 2003; Kaplan et al., 2018).

Cognitive Benefits. Because most mindfulness practices work directly with attention and awareness, it’s not surprising that benefits have been observed in cognitive skills such as sustained attention (Maclean et al., 2010) and cognitive flexibility (Greenberg et al., 2012). Mindfulness also helps decrease unhelpful cognitive rumination (Brewer et al., 2011) and helps counter negativity bias (the normal tendency for unpleasant thoughts, emotions, and experience to have more of an impact on a person than positive ones; Ho et al., 2015; Kiken & Shook, 2011).

Improvements in Physical Health and Biological Markers. Many fascinating studies have demonstrated how mindfulness contributes to improvements in a variety of markers of physical health (de Frias & Whyne, 2015). For example, mindfulness practices help reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol (Matousek et al., 2009; Spiegel et al., 1998), and contribute to improved immunological responses (Creswell et al., 2012; Davidson et al., 2003).

A particularly fascinating area of biomarker research has demonstrated potential benefits of mindfulness in increasing the longevity of cells in the human body (Epel et al., 2009; Jacobs et al., 2011). This research has shown that compared to matched controls, regular meditators had increased levels of telomerase, the enzyme that helps prolong the effective life cycle of cells.

Benefits for Relationships and Interpersonal Functioning. Benefits of mindfulness practices have also been observed for a variety of interpersonal outcomes. Many studies show how mindfulness can increase empathy and compassion, including the willingness to take action to relieve others’ distress and suffering (Chiesa & Serretti, 2009; Weng et al., 2013; Weng et al., 2018). Laurent and colleagues (2016) demonstrated benefits of mindfulness practices in improving the quality of couples’ relationships. Specifically, mindfulness skills promoted a quicker cooling down following conflicts, and better emotional regulation in managing relationship conflicts. Mindfulness skills helped a partner take things less personally, and facilitated increased empathy toward the other partner. In other research on parent--child relationships, mindful parenting has been related to more adaptive child behavior (from young childhood through adolescence; Parent et al., 2016).                

This brief video summarizes some of the most important research on the benefits of meditation--the most common method for cultivating mindfulness:

There’s still a lot of work to be done in mindfulness research, including improving the methodological rigor of studies, increasing efforts to replicate previous findings, improving how mindfulness is operationalized and measured, and giving more attention to possible adverse effects of mindfulness practices. You can learn more about the current state of mindfulness research in this summary article.

If anything, the existing research on mindfulness can be a means of encouragement for people to explore these practices and see what all the “fuss” is about. In the traditional Pali language (the language in which many of the Buddha’s teachings were recorded) there is a term that captures the essence of this kind of exploration. The term is ehipassiko. Simply translated, it is an invitation to “come and see;” to put these practices to the test and learn whether they are valuable in your own experience. In the following sections, we share additional core concepts of mindfulness, and introduce you to a few simple practices to help you explore how cultivating mindful awareness can contribute to your wellbeing.