Mindfulness and Meditation Therapy

First, it has been confirmed by global multi-center clinical studies that the standardized 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) are 58%, 45%, and 52% effective in intervention for mild to moderate anxiety, chronic primary pain, and adult insomnia respectively. They are neither metaphysics nor IQ tax.； Second, its core mechanism of action is not to “empty the brain”, but to cut off the vicious cycle of “unconscious thinking and rumination – negative emotion amplification – somatic symptoms intensification” through attention anchoring training. ； Third, it is only applicable to the general population without severe psychotic symptoms or acute trauma. It can only be used as an auxiliary means for clinical treatment of severe depression, bipolar disorder and other diseases, and it absolutely cannot replace drugs and standardized psychological treatment.

Speaking of which, when I was leading a mindfulness growth group at a university psychology center two years ago, I encountered a very typical example. A junior girl studying computer science always suffers from nervous diarrhea one week before each exam. After three or four gastroenterological examinations, there was no organic problem. Even taking antidiarrheal medicine can only cure it for a day or two. When she first came to practice, she was restless and distracted eight times during the five-minute breathing training. At the end, she blushed and asked me if she was too impetuous and not suitable for practice. As a result, in the fourth week, she came to me specifically and told me that when she saw the exam schedule a few days ago, her first reaction was not to immediately make the assumption that "if she fails in the exam, she will not be able to go to graduate school or graduate." Instead, she first noticed that her abdomen had become tense and turned into a stone.

Interestingly, the debate over mindfulness therapy in the industry has never stopped. Many practitioners of the traditional Vipassana school feel that the current mainstream clinical mindfulness therapy has completely stripped away the religious core, leaving only fragmented technologies such as breath scanning and body awareness. This is "picking up sesame seeds and losing watermelons" and cannot achieve the true state of "freedom from suffering". They even feel that 90% of commercial mindfulness courses on the market are charging IQ taxes. Researchers from the clinical psychology school have just the opposite view: It is precisely because of the stripping of religious attributes that mindfulness can enter hospitals, schools, and companies, and help more ordinary people who just want to have a good night's sleep and be less anxious. You can't ask a programmer who is forced to suffer from insomnia by working overtime to first understand Buddhist classics and then practice it, right? I am actually standing in the middle. I have seen an Internet product manager who stopped sleeping pills after practicing with a free meditation app for three months. I have also seen a marketing director who paid tens of thousands of dollars for a meditation class and came back and was so anxious that he collapsed because he asked himself to have "no distracting thoughts at all". There is no right or wrong in the tool itself. The key is that you have to know what you want. If you practice with the expectation of "eliminating all negative emotions" and "enlightenment", you will most likely be disappointed.

Many people actually have more misunderstandings than arguments about mindfulness. Last time, a visitor came to me to complain after practicing once, saying that my mind was all about work and I couldn't calm down at all. Do I have no talent at all? In fact, it’s not true. The core of mindfulness has never been “the absence of distracting thoughts”, but that after you find yourself distracted, you can bring your attention back to the anchor point of the moment without judgment. This “pull back” action is the core of training. Just like when you practice biceps, the process of muscle exertion when doing curls is the process of muscle growth. You can’t say that you are not suitable for fitness just because you feel sore after lifting once, right? When I lead exercises now, I always tell everyone, if you find that your mind wanders, don’t scold yourself, just smile lightly and bring your attention back to your breathing. Even if your mind wanders 20 times in a 10-minute practice, you have done 20 effective attention trainings, which is not a loss at all.

Some people say that the threshold for mindfulness is too high and that you have to set aside time to find a quiet place, light incense and sit cross-legged to practice it. This is not true. When I work hard on my plan until I get a headache, I stop for a minute, touch the mug in my hand, feel the temperature of the ceramic, the concave and convex logo pattern on the cup wall, take a sip of warm water, and feel the warmth of the water flowing from the tip of my tongue to my throat, and then into my stomach. This is a standard mindfulness practice. When you are waiting for the subway, pay attention to the touch between the soles of your feet and the ground. When you are eating, do not check your mobile phone. Take a serious taste of the sweetness of the rice and the crispness of the vegetables. These are mindfulness exercises that can be done anytime and anywhere. There are not so many ritual requirements.

Of course, not everyone is suitable for practicing, which is what I have repeatedly stressed to my clients. For people with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, if they do body scanning exercises from the beginning without professional guidance, they may trigger traumatic flashbacks and worsen their symptoms. ； There are also patients who are in the stage of severe depression. If they force themselves to sit down and meditate, they will easily get stuck in negative emotions and be unable to get out. I have seen news before that someone attended a closed Vipassana camp without a professional assessment and developed an acute mental disorder after meditating for a week. This is really not alarmist. It is best to seek an assessment from a professional before starting to practice. Don’t practice blindly on your own.

Speaking of which, I often lose my mind when cooking. I am still thinking about the consultation plan for the next day while I am chopping vegetables. I only realize when I touch the cold feeling of the kitchen knife, oh, I have run away again. Then he smiled and turned his attention back to the vegetables in his hand. Listening to the thud of the knife on the cutting board and smelling the aroma of green onions popping into the pot, he felt much more at ease than when he was thinking about the plan. In fact, mindfulness is not a high-level therapy. To put it bluntly, it just teaches you to live well—eat well, walk well, and feel what you are doing at the moment. It’s that simple.