The Myths of Mindfulness

My journey in the formal practice of mindfulness began 40 years ago. It was an integral part of the Zen, Buddhist and Ninjutsu martial arts training I began as a teenager. At first, it seemed to me that mindfulness was a special thing that other people had that I did not, so I imitated others. Once I experienced some of the benefits of mindfulness, I began trying to convince others of what I had been told. Eventually, I began to embody it in my own life and no longer needed to convince or be convinced of anything. I have found this same pattern plays out in Zen, martial arts and clinical psychology.

In my 30s, I became a clinical psychologist and felt blessed to be a part of the wave of research to incorporate mindfulness into clinical practice. It has been fascinating to watch and participate in the movement to improve mental health and wellbeing through empirically validated mindfulness-based treatments. Most of my career has been centered on teaching mindfulness to the public and other clinicians and clarifying the myths and misconceptions surrounding it.

I would say that three of the biggest myths about mindfulness are that:

1. It is the same as meditation (there are actually hundreds of different ways to meditate)

2. The point is to always have a blank mind (we need our minds to think, as long as we understand the nature of thought)

3. Mindfulness is about making yourself think positive (it is about seeing reality as it is).

My favorite exercises for beginners are mindful walking, mindful eating and the three-minute breathing space. Normally we are lost in our heads and miss out on everything going on around us. Choosing to pay attention while we walk and while we eat helps us come back into our lives in this moment. The three-minute breathing space is a short, formal exercise that reminds us to check in with ourselves.

The best way to learn about and understand mindfulness is simply to practice it for yourself. Books and courses can be very inspirational and provide important guidelines, but you cannot learn to swim without jumping in the water.

When evaluating a course, trust your gut. Does the instructor seem down-to-earth; a natural embodiment of their mindfulness practice? The older I get, the more I steer clear of people who need to impress others or who create confusion with too much mystery. A good mindfulness program will leave you saying, “Yes, of course, that fits with my own experience.”

The research has produced mixed results about how essential daily, formal exercises are to benefit from mindfulness. Like physical exercise, a routine is likely the most efficient way to develop skills, but some people can incorporate informal mindfulness practices into their daily lives. Just as with physical exercise, it is likely that there is no one formula that is best for all individuals. In any case, one could say the goal is to be more present in each moment, and one must be cautious not to make formal practice different from their daily life.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the idea of nonjudgment in mindfulness practice. It is important to keep in mind that judgment itself is often a good thing, and having good judgment is an important life skill.

Judging in the positive sense means we discern what is good or bad for us, pay attention to what might be helpful or harmful to others, and compare how things are now with how we want them to be.

However, judgments get us into trouble when we constantly get hooked by them. In mindfulness practice, nonjudgment means temporarily suspending or setting aside our constant, habitual, compulsive tendency to judge or compare this moment with some other time or place.

The real question is, are you using judgments when you choose to, or are the judgments using you? Mindfulness helps us to more clearly notice judgments, attend to them if necessary, and set them aside when they interfere with our present-moment experiences.

A routine is helpful to “jump-start” your mindfulness practice. Our minds tend to become what we are exposed to, so if you are dealing with problems all day, your mind becomes focused on problems. Setting regular time aside can be a refuge and reminder of what matters in life.

Although I once saw a study that suggested that practicing more than 12 minutes produced a greater benefit, in my experience, regularity is more important than quantity. It would be better to practice for three minutes a day than to practice all day once a month.

Starting the morning by being present with mindfulness sets a good tone for the day. Ending the day with a mindfulness practice can help you recognize any lingering effects the day may have had on you and allows you to reset before sleep.

After you’ve been doing mindfulness for a while, you come to realize that there is no need to formally practice. After all, where else can you be but in the present moment?

First of all, I never push mindfulness on anyone. Many people will have no interest in formal practices. However, since the only time you can do, feel, or experience anything is in the current moment, your life will not be very fulfilling if you are not able to be present.

Often when I ask people what they mean by ineffective, they say it did not make them feel better right away. This starts a discussion of what mindfulness is all about. If you just lost a loved one, mindfulness will not take away your grief. If you are feeling stressed, you will become more aware of how that stress is manifesting in your body, emotions and thinking. Hence, people often feel worse when they start a mindfulness practice, but the only place to start is where we are now.

Similarly, anxiety tends to be perpetuated by attempts to avoid it. If it is there, distracting oneself provides only temporary relief at best. Learning to relate differently to anxiety is important.

Of course, cultural factors are always important considerations for every client. If you think a client might benefit from practicing mindfulness, it is important to describe what your intervention will entail and provide informed consent. 

Formal mindfulness programs, like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, are best done when clients have the cognitive capacity to engage in the practices. If individuals are too overwhelmed with panic, depression, or voices and visions, they will have difficulty doing the exercises and need individualized interventions first.

It is important to have in-depth training in working with individuals with trauma. By definition, people with PTSD have experienced something so terrible that they do not want to continually remember it. Yet, a part of their brain does not want them to forget, perhaps because it may be crucial to future survival.

Much of the distress they experience comes from an ongoing battle with intrusive memories, thoughts, feelings and body sensations. Hence, asking them to pay more attention to thoughts, emotions and sensations will be uncomfortable at best and, if not done carefully, could even exacerbate their symptoms.

If done carefully, mindfulness can help clients relate differently to their thoughts and emotions. Since avoidance is one of the primary mechanisms that perpetuates PTSD, once clients become less afraid of their own experiences, they can more easily do the work of healing from trauma.

Meta-analyses of mindfulness-based interventions show that they can be helpful for many individuals with chronic pain, but mindfulness does not always eliminate chronic pain. Chronic pain can have a wide variety of causal and maintaining factors.

When one uses mindfulness to avoid pain, they can end up feeding the struggle in a vicious cycle that increases tension, stress and inflammation, further increasing the pain. Mindfulness can be useful to help one change their relationship to pain and foster self-compassion because the pain is coming from their own body. The important thing to do is create a life worth living, even if one does have chronic pain.