These results suggest that the benefits of mindfulness are cumulative and will continue to improve over time. There is also some laboratory evidence that suggests that people who have a longer mindfulness habit are better at ignoring emotional distractions than people whose mindfulness habit is shorter and those who do not practice at all (Pavlov et al., 2015). Participants also report that their attention improves significantly after regular mindful meditation compared to before they began mindful meditation (Chambers et al., 2008). Practitioners of mindfulness have better working memory than nonpractitioners (Chambers et al., 2008 Corcoran, Farb, Anderson, & Segal, 2010), which allows for better emotional regulation. These results suggest that therapeutic interventions based on mindfulness are not only successful for clinical populations, but the benefits extend to nonclinical populations. In that meta-analysis, which contained 39 studies, the effect sizes for the differences in the psychological state before and after the mindful therapy were large for clinical participants and moderate for nonclinical participants. These findings are also supported in a meta-analysis by Hofmann et al. The positive effects of mindfulness at reducing negative affect and other conditions like depression and anxiety are not limited to only one study. Read our related article on Mindful Thinking, where we discuss four ways to stop ruminating. Rumination is often linked to increased depression and anxiety (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |