Just to let you know if you don’t already, mindfulness and its applications in health and disease have been a subject of increasing study and discovery over the past thirty-plus years, since the founding of the Stress Reduction Clinic and MBSR in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.
Mindfulness training in the form of MBSR and related interventions has been shown to be highly effective in reducing stress and stress-related medical problems as well as anxiety, panic, and depression in medical patients; in helping them learn to live more effectively and fully with chronic pain conditions; in enhancing quality of life for cancer patients and people with multiple sclerosis; and in reducing relapse in people with a history of major depressive disorder who are at very high risk for relapse. These are just a few of the many clinical findings reported in the scientific literature. MBSR has also been shown to positively affect the way the brain processes difficult emotions under stress, shifting activation in particular areas of the prefrontal cortex from right-sided activation to left-sided activation — in the direction of greater emotional balance — and to induce positive immune system changes that correlate with the brain changes.
Other studies have discovered that people trained in MBSR show activation in networks in the cerebral cortex that are involved in the direct experiencing of the present moment. People not trained in MBSR show less activation in such circuits and greater activation in networks that involve generating narratives about one’s experiences. These findings suggest that mindfulness practice develops a broader repertoire of ways of experiencing oneself and influences the degree to which we build stories about our experiences that may eclipse or color the experiences themselves.
It is now becoming apparent that MBSR training also results in structural changes in the brain in the form of thickening of certain brain regions, such as the hippocampus, which plays important roles in learning and memory, and thinning in other regions, for instance, the right amygdala, a structure in the limbic system that regulates our fear-based reactions such as to perceived threats of one kind or another, including the thwarting of our desires.
There are many other exciting findings in mindfulness research, and more are being reported in the scientific literature every day.