Vili Many people tend to confuse mindfulness with meditation. The simplest difference is that meditation is a broad category that covers dozens of different mind-training techniques, and mindfulness is the most widely used meditation technique in the fields of clinical psychology and public health. However, many long-term practitioners believe that mindfulness can completely exist without the formal practice scene of meditation, and the two are overlapping rather than subordinate.
Just tell me a small example around me. Last year, I had a friend who suffered from insomnia. I found a meditation APP on the Internet and practiced it for two weeks. The more I practiced, the more I became more energetic. I said that I couldn't help but be distracted, and I couldn't do it at all. Later, I went to the mindfulness intervention group in the clinical psychology department, only to find that what I practiced before was a guided imagination meditation that focused on relaxation, which was not the same as mindfulness at all. Mindfulness not only didn't require you to think about anything, but accepted "mindfulness".
For example, meditation is like a big category of "exercise", which includes stretching, aerobics, Tai Chi and aerobics. Different exercises aim at different needs, while mindfulness is more like the popular functional training in recent years. It can not only be practiced in a special venue, but also be applied to every scene of walking, sitting in an office and eating at ordinary times-you sit on the mat and count whether your breathing is positive or not.
Nowadays, a lot of popular science will put "mindfulness meditation" together, which is actually not wrong. After all, more than 90% of the meditation products that the domestic public can access at present are centered on mindfulness. If ordinary people want to relax and improve their mood, it is no problem to mix them up. Only when they delve into it, they need to break the boundary between the two. I have compiled a small table to list the points that are easy to confuse more clearly:
| Contrast dimension | mindfulness | Generalized meditation |
|---|---|---|
| Core logic | Be aware of the present without judgment, and don't pursue "empty mind" | Including relaxation, visualization, holding spells and other goals, some schools require emptying thoughts. |
| Practice scene | Formal sitting and practicing+daily walking, eating and working can be carried out. | Most of them need special quiet space and fixed time. |
| Academic application | Supported by a large number of evidence-based studies, it is widely used for anxiety and insomnia intervention. | Some branches have no clinical verification, and are more used for spiritual culture or relaxation scenes. |
Of course, there are different voices in the academic circles and practitioners' circles. Some traditional meditation researchers think that mindfulness is not a branch of meditation at all. After all, mindfulness was originally extracted by Dr. Kabajin from Southern Buddhism's meditation, and the clinical intervention technique of removing religious attributes and transforming it is completely different from the meditation goal in the traditional context. Many traditional meditations are aimed at pursuing specific spiritual experiences, while mindfulness was born to solve the emotional and health problems of ordinary people. It is completely two paths.
Seriously, if you are new to it, there is absolutely no need to struggle with names. If you want to improve your anxiety, insomnia and concentration, you should practice with the content marked "Mindfulness". If you just want to take a break and relax, it is completely enough to find a favorite meditation audio to listen to. What can help you is a good way, and you don't have to struggle with classification.
