The therapeutic perks of mindfulness are indisputable. But if you’re anything like my clients (or myself), prompts like “sit mindfully” or “acknowledge your thoughts and let them pass” are deceptively difficult to follow on the best of days. In fact, they can be downright anxiety-inducing.
This begs the question: Why does mindful engagement challenge so many of us, despite the purported advantages and volumes of peer-reviewed evidence?
Competing for attention
Explaining these struggles starts with an understanding of how attention is allocated. Mindfulness requires voluntary attention, and choosing where to apply that attention operates under two basic assumptions:
- We have a limited amount of attention to work with.
- We have a choice about how our attention is dispersed.
In other words, we have a handful of jelly beans to put in various jars. Let’s say, for example, there is a jar for preparing for the worst, a jar for planning our future, and a jar for grounding exercises like mindfully counting five things we can see, four things we can hear and so on.
Where do our instincts tell us to put our jelly beans? It comes as no surprise that the brain prioritizes perceived threats like filing a tax return over frivolous psychological spending like considering the texture of a raisin as we roll it across the surface of our tongue.
The difficulty here is the competition for our attention. There is no immediate danger in neglecting our mindfulness practice, but the threat of an IRS audit might as well be a grizzly bear crouched in the bushes beside us. Because our brains are built to prioritize safety, the hierarchy of threats will always push out the lesser risk in favour of impending conflict.
To the anxious brain, failing to take advantage of any chance to prepare is too costly.
A 2015 review of mindfulness meditation in Nature Reviews Neuroscience claimed that attention could be broken down into three distinct functions:
- Alerting
- Orienting
- Conflict monitoring
Alerting is associated with anxiety as it enables the mind to visualize potential danger. Orienting gives us the ability to choose which stimuli we address, and conflict monitoring— also called executive attention—allows us to block other inputs to better focus on our chosen stimuli.
Alerting identifies a threat. Then, any stimulus related to this perceived threat is oriented to the front of the line while lesser priorities are pruned. (This process was dubbed “bandwidth taxing” in a 2013 publication by Sendhil Mullainathan, titled “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.”)
Narrowing our focus increases our chances of successfully managing risk, but it comes at the cost of flexibility. And, unfortunately, our brains are wonderful accountants. They will keep records of this strategy, should it prove successful. This means that if we effectively avoid danger, our brains will seek to replicate this behaviour, despite the unforeseen toll on our ability to adapt.
The good news is that a 2009 study from the National Academy of Sciences reported that, although prolonged or chronic stress did decrease mental flexibility in test subjects, one month of reduced stress returned these individuals back to normal levels of attentional control. The question then becomes: Can we achieve this stress reduction through mindfulness?
The “weathervane brain”
Jon Kabat-Zinn’s model of mindfulness-based stress reduction defines mindfulness as “paying attention … non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience.” And Paul Gilbert, one of the founders of Compassion Focused Therapy, defines mindfulness as intentionality and non-judgment.
Let us consider non-judgment for a moment. Without it, the brain isn’t analyzing, computing or scheming. Instead, we focus on collecting information from our internal and external environments and simply feel. This is the aim of mindfulness: to reconnect to the present moment. In this capacity, our minds work like a bellwether, open to unprocessed stimuli.
Just as a weathervane moves with the changing winds, the mind floats along, constantly changing inputs, when in a mindful state. When sitting becomes painful, our attention shifts to the discomfort in our lower back. If a woodpecker starts in on the crabapple tree out back, our mind drifts towards the jackhammer sound of its beak. We respond and we react, but we don’t judge.
The downside is that, just as the weathervane can point the way but can’t get us there, mindful awareness provides us with information but not the opportunity to analyze that information.
The hidden cost
The true hidden cost of mindfulness is time. The more time spent in the here-and-now, the less time the mind has to apply previous knowledge and analyze potential outcomes. Sitting quietly in the lotus position or mindfully box-breathing for five minutes may sound peaceful, but it deprives us of precious seconds to organize and calculate. Our frontal cortexes were shaped by evolution to prioritize the latter.
During my time as a Peace Corps volunteer, it was difficult to daydream of a nice riverside picnic when thoughts of pit vipers, dengue fever and looming civil unrest constantly fought for my attention. According to my brain, mindfulness was a luxury I couldn’t afford; there was too much risk.
The true hidden cost of mindfulness is time. The more time spent in the here-and-now, the less time the mind has to apply previous knowledge and analyze potential outcomes.
Likewise, in the counselling office, the lives of my clients often intrude on their peace because the danger of not addressing these thoughts far exceeds the concern of skipping today’s meditation. In place of slower moments, the anxious mind seeks to replace relaxation with preparation. This is an adaptation, a safety strategy designed by our minds to keep us sharp in case that grizzly bear hiding in the bushes suddenly decides to lunge.
The problem lies with the likelihood that our brains have become so well-trained in approximating threats that, oftentimes, the bear is merely a mental projection. There is no risk in the physical world, merely a psychological exercise playing out in the mind. Does it keep us sharp? Yes. Does it have a cost? You bet it does.
Now, the prospect of mindfulness becomes a cost-benefit analysis. Do we roll the dice and pull our minds back into the present moment, or stay focused on how to stay safe? The answer seems obvious on the surface, but what if that bear is simply a figment of a hypervigilant imagination? What are the disadvantages of remaining perpetually poised to respond to threats?
Well, exhaustion, burnout and panic attacks, to name a few. Sustained sympathetic nerve response is a slow, crushing pain.
Accepting the cost
By training our minds to come back to the here-and-now, we can gain insight into the reality of our surroundings and our perceived threats. The mind may recoil at this and demand that we keep our guard up, but after taking stock of our circumstances, we often realize there is no immediate danger. It then becomes critical to explore whether or not the enemy still exists, and this is what mindfulness can do. It recalibrates us so we can make better decisions about the current world we inhabit.
Suddenly, focusing on our breath, along with counting five things we see, four things we hear and so on, potentially leads to the revelation that the bear has retreated into its den. Then we can switch out of fight-or-flight mode and begin to access the restorative properties of our autonomic nervous system. We observe the weathervane, process the information and correct our course.
It may feel like lost time, but mindfulness practice is a vital step in data collection, allowing us to sharpen our minds before applying that clarity to task-focused attention. In this way, mindfully attuning to our thoughts and feelings as well as our environment can be just as vital to our health and safety as looking both ways before crossing a busy street. It helps to activate our parasympathetic nerve response—that calming rest-and-digest mentality that bestows feelings of calmness and safety—and assists in resetting our threat systems.
Mindfulness is no longer a luxury we can’t afford; it’s an essential component to mental preparation and psychological health.
Medical disclaimer: This page is for educational and informational purposes only and may not be construed as medical advice. The information is not intended to replace medical advice offered by physicians. Please refer to the full text of our medical disclaimer.
«RELATED READ» 3 LIFE LESSONS FROM BREAKFAST: What eating breakfast taught me about mindful living»
images: Depositphotos
