Benefits of Mindful Citizens in the Society

Mindfulness and its benefits in any society have grown in popularity over the last decade, and both the public press and psychotherapists recognize this trend. This technique has evolved from a previously veiled Buddhist concept developed 2600 years ago to a modern mainstream psychotherapy design (Valentine et al. 59).
This article will attempt to explain or expose the overall outlook of studies on mindfulness, as well as quickly outline the influence in society and how places where mindfulness is still low can be trained to accept it. The definition of mindfulness is given as time to time awareness of individual’s experience without judgment, and in this, it is seen as a state of life and not a trait as could be seen in other definitions. Almost all the advocates of mindfulness try as much as possible to ensure that we all virtually believe that we can benefit from being in a mindful state or rather be aware of our experiences without judgment. In the list of benefits are self-control, goal oriented, influence tolerance, enhance flexibility, improved participation in mind activities, emotional awareness and the ability to interact with everyone kindly, self-acceptance and compassion. But the research question is that, is mindfulness so good just as it is being advertised? (Davis et al. 198).

The question asked by many individuals about this mindfulness is answered by the numerous benefits of mindful people in the society. Research has correctly identified benefits of mindfulness, and these give conviction to the doubting lot of the people. Among these are; Reduction of stress, practising mindfulness in the life of an individual helps to give peace of mind, according to Hoffman et al., the research that he conducted involving 39 individuals, he confirmed that using the stress reducing mindful-based approach and the mindful-based cognitive therapy is the most effective ways to alter the affective and cognitive processes that bear the foundation of several clinical issues (Moore, Adam, and Peter 177),

Secondly, it improves the thinking memory capacity. With continuous practice of mindfulness, research has shown that there is an improvement of the thinking capacity. Using an example in the research of the Moore, Adam, and Peter (2009), among the military group, there are those who were involved in short-term mindfulness training and some who just remained in the non-meditating situation. The two groups were initially in a stressful life before they were deployed, and the meditating militants were showing a continual improvement in their memory capacity while the non-meditating militants had a reduction in the working memory capacity. Because of this example, it is then clear that meditation practice influences the memory working capacity of the people.

Alertness is another benefit of the mindful meditation. The study reveals that those who mindfully meditate have by greater extend the ability to concentrate on one thing while suppressing the destructing information. Comparing two groups of mindful meditators and non-meditators, it is found that experienced meditators do well in attention than the non-meditators. Moreover, the experienced meditators had their experience closely and directly related to the cognitive flexibility (Moore, Adam, and Peter 178).

Another benefit of practicing mindfulness is that it gives one ability to relate well with his/her partner. That is with reduced stress in mind; the relationship will be fostered in that one can be able to communicate well his emotions which underlie the self-understanding between the relating parties. Due to this, the stressful emotional related conflicts will be easily avoided, and this means a good and satisfying relationship is easily predicted (Valentine et al, 60).

According to Orter et al., mindful meditation in his study helps people to disengage in emotionally disturbing activities. In a study on people between 1-348 months of mindfulness meditation, those who had enough time in meditation had the ability to cut off themselves from emotionally upsetting activities and engage better in the cognitive activities when compared with those people who had the engagement in the similar activities but did not meditate either (Moore, Adam, and Peter 177).

Apart from, making people less reactive to emotions, mindfulness has also been seen to help them to recover easily from the past time experience effects and fit into the present situations. When a person was previously provoked negatively, the one who has the meditation experience can switch quickly than the person who was on the similar experience but did not meditate over the experience. A study revealed that people practicing mindfulness meditation manifested faster acquisition of skills which help to neurologically cut off the automatic course of life created by the experience, and enabling the present experience to be integrated in a new manner (Davidson et al. 565).

Also, to the brain related importance of the mindful meditation, it also has health benefits and among these advantages are; increased immune functioning (Davidson et al. 568), reduction in psychological distress, increased information processing speed (Moore, Adam, and Peter 180). Therefore, mindfulness meditation has a great impact in the general life of people who practice it with great enthusiasm. Therapists and therapist trainees are also affected in a way by this mindful meditation; it is not only the psychotherapy clients who benefit but also therapists who practice mindful meditation. Among this benefits on the therapists and their trainees include; counseling skills- as the therapist trainee is intervening in the psychotherapy training, he/she may develop skills which make them more efficient in their training activities. According to the study done by (Newsome et al. 1881), in a four-year study which involved counseling students for example students who took a four-month course on mindfulness meditation, resulted that it made the counsellor pay enough concentration to the counseling process, and friendly to the clients themselves.

A better quality of living is another benefit the therapists enjoy in mindfulness meditation. When the nursing students were exposed to mindfulness-based stress reduction training, they showed quality life and reduction in the negative psychological symptoms. This is also evident in the counsellor training which proves that such interventions boost the social interconnection and the stress and tension reduction (Gover 58). As mentioned above, mindfulness meditation reduces stress and anxiety, and this has been shown by people who participate in a few week training on the meditation after which they show reduced symptoms of stress and anxiety. If compared with a control group of people did not attend any training on the mindfulness-based stress reduction, they show a total decrease in the mood disturbance. Stress being the genesis of all other troubles, that is stress drives the person to engage in emotional, disturbing tasks, and poor relationship, it is then understood that when a person is undertaken through meditation training, it gives entirely a better life (Shapiro et al. 39).

Self-compassion is another benefit which is found in the health care professionals and therapist trainees after engaging in mindfulness-based stress reduction training. In 2009 Kingsbury did an investigation on the functions of self-compassion and found to be closely correlated with inability to judge and also the failure to react to issues. This therefore mediated between the relationship of perspective taking and the mindfulness. Further research reveals that mindfulness promotes empathy. To still use the example of the medical students, looking at them and the premedical students, if they attended a few-week mindfulness-based stress reduction training, it would be realized that those who attended the training showed higher self-reported empathy than the other group who did not go for the training. In 2006, a study of the therapists who had experience with the mindfulness meditation believed that the developed significant empathy towards their clients than those who did not meditate (Shapiro et al. 583).

Counselling Self-efficacy is also a benefit related with the mindfulness. Though it has not been researched on widely, Davis et al., did the study and found that counselling self-efficacy can be foreseen by the way mindfulness meditation is conducted among the master’s interns and the doctoral counselling students, because mindfulness can lead to development of self-efficacy which then is important for the psychotherapists when doing training activities. Other benefits of mindfulness meditation training are improved patience gratitude and body awareness (Davis et al. 198).

As much as the focus is on the basic significance of the mindful meditation influence the psychotherapists, therapists and the therapist trainees, it is also imperative to see the outcomes or the performance of the clients attended to by the trainees. Do the benefits of therapists translate to the psychotherapy results? Until now, one study has been done to proof this question.

In a study done by Grepmair et al. in Germany, the counsellor trainees who practiced a nine-week meditation on Zen showed better self-awareness those who did not attend the training. This great self-awareness in trainees was seen after nine weeks of treatment when the clients showed the gradual disappearance of the symptomatic implications, scored higher on precautions on their wellbeing and considered training to be working well than the clients of the non-meditating trainees (Ldwig et al. 1350). In contrary to the above example, three of the studies did not give results which were directly related to the performance of the trainees. An example of 23 doctoral- level psychological trainees, who treated a good number of adult clients at a local clinic that used man operated, empirical based treatments. Opposite to the expectations, since the trainees had good performance in their mindful meditation, the clients did poorly in the results (Hölzel et al. 540).

In comparison, some reports are consistent with this finding which suggest that contrary relations exist between the therapist’s mindfulness and the clients’ results. Moreover, some reports show that there is no relationship between therapists and the client's outcome. This results then might give way for many people to ask then, what is not correct with these contradicting results? Although many professionals may advocate the mind related and a health-wise importance of mindfulness meditation, the whole idea still becomes unclear because of the incomparable outcomes of the clients and results of therapists. There is a great need for future intensive research to try and make clear distinctions between therapist’s mindfulness, the regular mindfulness meditation factors and the common that are essential for the success or failure of the treatment outcomes. But above all the benefits explained above oversees the contradicting results and so it is understood that mindfulness meditation is beneficial to the life of society.

















Works Cited

Davidson, Richard J., et al. "Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation." Psychosomatic medicine 65.4 (2003): 564-570.

Davis, Daphne M, and Jeffrey Hayes.” What are the benefits of mindfulness? A practice review of psychotherapy-related research.” Psychotherapy 48.2(2011):198

Gover, Mark R.”The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience(book)” mind culture and activity 3.4 (1996):295-299.

Hölzel, Britta K., et al. "How does mindfulness meditation work? Proposing mechanisms of action from a conceptual and neural perspective." Perspectives on psychological science 6.6 (2011): 537-559.

Ldwig, David S. and Jon Kabat-Zinn. “Mindfulness in medicine.” Jama300.11 (2008):1350-1352.

Moore, Adam, and Peter Malinowski. “Meditation, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility.” Consciousness and cognition18.1 (2009): 176-186.

Newsome, sandy, etn al. “Teaching counsellor self care through mindfulness practice4s.” Teachers college record108.9 (2006):1881.

Shapiro, shaunal, Gary E, Schwartz, and Ginnyu Bonner. “Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on medical and premedical students.” Journal of behavioural medicine21. 6(1998) 581-599.

Valentine, Elizabeth R., and Philip LG Sweet. "Meditation and attention: A comparison of the effects of concentrative and mindfulness meditation on sustained attention." Mental Health, Religion & Culture 2.1 (1999): 59-70.