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Maliyah Greaves

English 1201.513

Professor Carter

26 March 2022

Research Essay

Is mindfulness truly effective and in what ways? That is the question in which this

research paper is over. What is mindfulness you may ask? Mindfulness is the practice of

maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts,

emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis. I came to really ask that question after

realizing my whole life I have been told, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” Is that true

and how so? The answer to that question is yes and mindfulness. While you cannot do

anything, you can do most things with the practice of mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness

can help you live a healthier life, get better sleep, become a better student, and help you with a

variety of other things.

The ideas and information known about mindfulness and its practices have changed

many times over many decades. While time changes, so do social norms, views, and eventually

history. The history of mindfulness became increasingly popular in the West. It was most

popular, however, amongst the Buddhist community. It was a practice of meditation. Meditation,

of course, is a big part of Buddhist culture. According to the “History of Mindfulness” published

by the Office of Human Resources at Clark University, “In the 50’s and 60’s, Buddhism started to

spread to the US, gaining footholds in the Beat Movement in the 50’s, which heavily inspired the

Hippies and the Counterculture of the 60’s and 70’s.” But when Buddhism was combined with

Western Medicine and Psychology in the late 1990’s it would really become the origins of what

has come to be known as Mindfulness today.

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This was done by University of Massachusetts medical doctor Jon Kabat-Zinn who

further spread the popularity of Buddhist Meditation by treating patients who suffered from

chronic pains with it. He decided to try this method of treatment after no previous treatment

methods were working at the UMass clinic. It became a huge success and gained notoriety due

to the undeniable effectiveness the patients and spectators noticed. Throughout the 1980s he

published many academic journals showing the effectiveness of Buddhist meditation techniques

in reducing chronic pain, improving life satisfaction, and increasing happiness among this

chronic pain population. He also worked on taking the core meditative principles from these

Buddhist practices, and worked to separate the tie of religion from it to better apply the best

practices to his own experiments. This combination came to be called Mindfulness, a distinct

form of Meditation (LaPlante). After the practice of mindfulness continued to increase,

Kabat-Zinn published another popular read that gained much notoriety. Now, mindfulness is

mentioned regularly by scientists, TV shows, magazines, the internet, social media, and more.

Mindfulness can increase your health and make you a better student. With all the

information we already know, we know that focusing on what you want can make that want

become reality. This can be accomplished by specific meditation practices. During these

meditative, focused- breathing exercises, we manifest our thoughts with a clear mind and

good intentions. This is mindfulness, which is practiced by many ages, races, and cultures

across the world throughout history. According to Anh Bui Ngoc Tuan and Minh Pham, the

people who should practice mindfulness are students. They mention that students are

working hard to become social entrepreneurs but could not figure out what they needed to

become a social entrepreneur. According to the text, “mindfulness may be a solution to this

problem. Besides, in addition to increasing awareness of business opportunities, practicing

mindfulness increases compassion, which turns into making more ethical decisions
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regarding others. Meaning, mindfulness can help make a person more successful and

conditioned to be a social entrepreneur.

One thing that mindfulness is sure to affect positively is your health. Practicing

mindfulness and all that comes with it can be a big help in maintaining your physical and mental

health. According to Doctor Jill Suttie, author of “5 Science-Backed Reasons Mindfulness

Meditation Is Good for Your Health” published by Mindful.org, “studies suggest that mindfulness

may impact our hearts, brains, immune systems, and more.” Before doing any further research,

scientists already knew the benefits of mindfulness when it comes to the mental side of it but

they did not have enough research on the physical aspect of it. The scientist conducting this

research thought instead of using biased measures such as limited groups of participants like in

previous research, that they should focus on conducting a less-biased physiological or

corporeal markers and do more randomly controlled experiments to get the answer.

From this conducted research it was discovered that patients who suffer from heart

issues have a reduced rate of death with the practice of mindfulness. In a study where random

people with prehypertension and heart issues got the option to choose mindfulness meditation

or progressive muscle relaxation, the people who learned mindfulness had major decrease in

their systolic and diastolic blood pressure than the people who learned progressive muscle

relaxation, which is a more normalized practice. This study suggested that mindfulness does

indeed help those who are at risk for heart disease by bringing their blood pressure down. Even

if you already have a healthy heart, mindfulness can help maintain that. Meditation, which is a

practice of mindfulness, can increase respiratory sinus arrhythmia, the natural variations in heart

rate that happen when we breathe indicates better heart health and an increased chance of

surviving a heart attack.

Also according to this article, people tend to lose some of their ability to readily react to a

mental process and turn it into an action. All people have a chance of losing their short-term

memory as they age as well. But mindfulness may be able to slow cognitive decline, even in
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people with Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer's is a disease so common that almost every person

knows or heard of someone who suffers from it. Aging though is something that no one can

escape. People with Alzheimer’s disease actively participated in either mindfulness meditation,

cognitive stimulation therapy, relaxation training, or no treatment at all. These people were given

cognitive tests over a couple of years. While cognitive stimulation and relaxation training

seemed to be somewhat beneficial in comparison to no treatment, the people who practiced

mindfulness meditation had the most profound improvements in cognitive behavior than any

other group in the study.

When it comes to mindfulness, there are a few key concepts necessary to understand to

make the practice of mindfulness most effective or effective at all. Mindfulness is not a singular

thing but rather a practice. Mindfulness though, is a practice that is under the category of

meditation. You cannot really have one without the other. So if you practice mindfulness, you

most definitely meditate even if you are unaware that you are doing so. Mindfulness is effective

if you meditate which in turn is effective in your everyday life.

If you practice mindfulness you meditate. Meditation and its practices can help you live a

better life. According to Dina Kaplan, a contributor for Forbes Woman of Forbes Magazine in her

article “Meditation for Manifesting Your Dreams - And Accomplishing Your Goals” she says,

“Today I’d like to offer a powerful meditation. It’s from one of my favorite books, Into the Magic

Shop.” I mention this from her article because James Doty, a neuroscientist from Stanford

University, wrote a book about a boy who learns to meditate and ends up manifesting his

dreams that he used to think were so unrealistic. Dina Kaplin then gives a series of meditations

you can do on the daily that can better your life. She gives meditation exercises such as

relaxation, focusing, opening up your heart, and manifesting.

She gives these exercises in steps. Step one: relax. She says to relax your entire body,

from body part to body part. Relaxation will slow your heart rate, reduce stress levels, release
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physical tension, and help you maintain focus. This leads you to step two, this is where you will

begin to focus on your mind while you do focused breathing exercises. Step three: open your

heart. This means in a nutshell to have good intentions and give out good intentions. Lastly, step

four: manifest. While Dina, the author of this article believes manifestation, meditation, and

mindfulness positively affect your life, Doctor Bence Nanay does not.

According to the article, “Anti-Mindfulness” written by Mr. Nanay and published by

Psychology Today, he talks about the problems that arise with the practice of mindfulness and

all that it comes with,” there are some more serious issues, especially the worrying new findings

that mindfulness meditation often leads to panic attacks and depression.” He says this can

happen due to the stronger focus that we gain during these meditation practices. This newfound

“stronger focus” can get people to focus so much that they actually aren't focusing at all. Nanay

mentions that when mindfulness works, it works not because you are focusing on the so-called

“right” things and thoughts, but because you fail to do exactly that. What he means by this is

that your attention roams freely. When you are so fixated on a certain action or feeling or

emotion that you are trying to achieve, you almost do the opposite. All in all, the real benefit of

mindfulness meditation is subconsciously doing the exact opposite of what it is trying to get you

to do. Which in turn, amounts to the exact opposite of what the ideology of mindfulness is about.

Mindfulness practically works most effectively when you are defocused and let go. When you

completely let go of the expectations for the outcome of any given idea, thought, or situation,

you will be practicing mindfulness most effectively.

Mindfulness can help you sleep better as well. According to the “Mindfulness and Sleep”

article published by the Sleep Health Journal, “The practice of Mindfulness, designed with a

focus on sleep, provides an opportunity to create the mental space needed to allow sleep to

come back.” They describe mindfulness as, “an intentional act of present-moment awareness

without attachment to an outcome.” It includes elements of awareness, circumspection, and

self-compassion. Some key qualities, or principles, in practicing mindfulness include

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non-judgment, patience, non-striving, letting go, acceptance, and trusting yourself. How can

mindfulness help us sleep? According to the same article, many people may be anxious about

their sleep or catastrophizing about the consequences of poor sleep.

The article recommends trying to develop thoughts consistent with the following

mindfulness principles instead of focussing on negative aspects of your sleep.” Then the article

lists a series of ways to get your mind clear, focused, and relaxed to get the most out of a night's

rest. The article gives multiple steps and strategies to get a clear mindset to focus and relax for

the best sleep possible. You can practice “letting go,” this is done by letting go of your

attachment to the idea that sleep is a problem that needs to be fixed. If you believe you have

Insomnia, you subconsciously focus on it and begin to literally have symptoms of Insomnia. You

can also practice “non-striving,” which is finding a balance between your desire for sleep and

simply allowing sleep to unfold.

Mindfulness can increase your health and make you a better student. With all the

information we already know, we know that focusing on what you want can make that want

become reality. This can be accomplished by specific meditation practices. During these

meditative, focused- breathing exercises, we manifest our thoughts with a clear mind and good

intentions. This is mindfulness, which is practiced by many ages, races, and cultures across the

world throughout history. According to Anh Bui Ngoc, an author of the article titled, “The Role of

Mindfulness and Perceived Social Support in Promoting Students’ Social Entrepreneurial

Intention,” the people who should practice mindfulness are students. They mention that students

are working hard to become social entrepreneurs but could not figure out what they needed to

become a social entrepreneur. According to the text, “mindfulness may be a solution to this

problem. Besides, in addition to increasing awareness of business opportunities, practicing

mindfulness increases compassion, which turns into making more ethical decisions regarding

others. Thus, mindfulness is a precondition for creating motivation for a person to become a

social entrepreneur.
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According to “Mindfulness and Student Success” written by Matthew Leland,

“Mindfulness training can be valuable for helping students be more successful learners and

more connected members of an educational community.” Research was conducted to truly and

accurately test if mindfulness was effective in student success. This research used primary and

secondary sources where the participants were practicing mindfulness while in school. The

research found that mindfulness was effective in some ways. Mindfulness helped minimize the

impact of bullying, students with learning disabilities, and also helped benefit students whose

career training caused a lot of high emotion and stress. These students' education and success

was improved by practicing mindfulness techniques that helped them relax. These students

practiced mindful breathing techniques and tried to anchor their mind, if you will, to create space

to help them be more aware of their thoughts and feelings. This in turn, helped them relax to

relieve stress and anxiety, which students face on the daily.

How can mindfulness reduce stress and anxiety? Heloise, contributor to The Washington

Post, writes in the section titled “Hints from Heloise: Meditation can help anyone with stress and

anxiety” that, “Meditation involves sitting quietly and focusing your mind on one thought or

physical item for a short period of time while controlling your breathing. This practice can clear

your mind, relieve stress and improve your focus, all done naturally.” How do breathing

meditation practices clear your mind and relieve you of stress and anxiety? According to Sara E.

Zsadanyi, “being mindful and/or engrossed in the process of meditation involves many different

parts of the brain and having practiced meditation/mindfulness over many years seems to have

left an imprint on (or was facilitated by) a conglomerate of different brain regions.” This research

was conducted using neuroimaging and revealed that there is a major impact on the cingulate

cortex region of the brain. This part of the brain is an important terminal between emotional

regulation and sensing action. That is why when you meditate you feel more relaxed and less
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stress and anxiety because it significantly affects the region in your brain that is partly

responsible for making you feel that way.

In conclusion, mindfulness is a practice that can improve your life in so many ways. It is

a practice that costs not much and simply comes from within. We now know that mindfulness

may not be able to get you anything but it can definitely give you the right mindset to try and do

so. Mindfulness helps your health and reduces fatality rates when it comes to your heart.

Mindfulness can help you prevent many negatives that come from the inevitable event that we

all must face: aging. It can also help decrease the rate at which Alzheimer’s progresses. It also

can help you become a better student and a better person in general. Mindfulness is a simple

practice that dates back forever in our history and can improve your life in many ways.
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Works Cited *updated

Bui Ngoc Tuan, Anh, and Minh Pham. “The Role of Mindfulness and Perceived Social Support

in Promoting Students’ Social Entrepreneurial Intention.” Entrepreneurial Business

and Economics Review, vol. 10, no. 1, 2022, pp. 145–160.,

doi.org/10.15678/eber.2022.100110.

Gehart, Diane.”Mindfulness” Masterswork Productions, Films On Demand, Infobase,

Heloise. “Perspective | Hints from Heloise: Meditation Can Help Anyone Deal with Stress and

Anxiety.” The Washington Post, 17 June 2021,

www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/advice/hints-from-heloise-meditation-can-help-anyone

-deal-with-stress-and-anxiety/2021/06/11/00748886-c704-11eb-81b1-34796c7393af_stor

y.html.

Kaplan, Dina. “Meditation for Manifesting Your Dreams - and Accomplishing Your Goals.”

Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 10 Dec. 2021,

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www.forbes.com/sites/dinakaplan/2017/04/30/meditation-for-manifesting-your-dreams-

and-accomplishing-your-goals/.

Kelsey Ogletree, freelance lifestyle journalist for R. S. B. K. O. U. O. 01. (n.d.). 12 fascinating

ways mindfulness can improve your mental (and physical) health, according to

Science. Real Simple. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from

www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/mindfulness-health-benefits

LaPlante, Justin. “History of Mindfulness.” Human Resources, 22 Nov. 2021,

www.clarku.edu/offices/human-resources/2021/11/22/history-of-mindfulness/.

Mayo Clinic. “Can Mindfulness Exercises Help Me?”Mayo Foundation for Medical Education

and Research, 15 Sept. 2020,

www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/mindfulness-exercises/

art-20046356.

“Mindfulness.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mindfulness. Accessed 29

Mar. 2022.
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“Mindfulness and Sleep.” The Sleep Health Foundation, 13 July 2020,

https://www.sleephealthfoundation.org.au/mindfulness-and-sleep-2.html.

Nanay, Bence. “Anti-Mindfulness.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 5 Sept. 2017,

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychology-tomorrow/201709/anti-mindfulne ss.

Steffon, Pattrick. Mindfulness for Everyday Living: A Guide for Mental Health Practitioners.

Springer Nature, 2021.

Suttie, Jill, et al. “5 Science-Backed Reasons Mindfulness Meditation Is Good for Your

Health.” Mindful, 25 Nov. 2021,

www.mindful.org/five-ways-mindfulness-meditation-is-good-for-your-health/.

Winfrey, Oprah. “Oprah Winfrey: Mindfulness.” Oprah.com, 23 Dec. 2020,

www.oprah.com/own-podcasts/oprah-winfrey-mindfulness.

Winston, Diana. “Guided Meditations.” Guided Meditations - UCLA Mindful Awareness

Research Center - www.uclahealth.org/marc/mindful-meditations.

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Zsadanyi, Sara E., et al. “The Effects of Mindfulness and Meditation on the Cingulate Cortex

in the Healthy Human Brain: A Review.” Mindfulness, vol. 12, no. 10, 2021, pp.

2371–2387., doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01712-7.