"spirituality ... ‘the personal quest for understanding answers to ultimate questions about life, about meaning, and about relationship to the sacred or transcendent’.
Although prayer is a common means to spiritual growth, mindfulness meditation offers another method of cultivating spirituality irrespective of religious affiliation, or non-affiliation. In theory, mindfulness meditation can foster an increased sense of spirituality by disengaging from a narrow self-focus, & engaging a much broader view of interconnectedness in which oneself is not seen as separate from everyday activities, other people, or the world. As such, the experience of mindfulness has been described as a method of self-transcendence.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a standardized 8-week program that incorporates Buddhist traditions of mindfulness meditation into a secular instructional class designed to teach skills that reduce suffering associated with stress, pain & illness. Recent reviews of clinical & non-clinical populations report that MBSR training enhances mental health & quality of life. These positive outcomes have been related in part to enhanced mindfulness.
This (current) study provides preliminary evidence for changes in mindfulness as a mediating mechanism through which changes in spirituality may partly explain the mental health benefits of MBSR — a secular behavioral medicine intervention that focuses on intensive training in mindfulness meditation. The main findings from a relatively large group of apparently healthy but mentally stressed adults showed that increases in daily spiritual experiences were directly related to increases in mindfulness, which, in turn, was associated with improved mental health-related quality of life following MBSR."
Greeson JM et al. Changes in spirituality partly explain health-related quality of life outcomes after Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. J Behav Med 2011; 34(6): 508-18.
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| John Bulmer photograph www.theguardian.com |
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