Jan 9, 2023

Our minds perform difficult tasks every day. From sending emails to creating relationships, our mind helps us remember countless details and make choices that shape how we live. As such, our minds never truly get to relax. 

The mind is a machine that should be taken care of regularly, but we often don't carve out the time to do so. Without proper care, our mind constantly loops around with the thoughts and worries that can consume our lives. In order to break the cycle we must give it time to rest.

Mindfulness meditation can provide redirection of attention to neural objects, like your breath. Instead of judging, labeling, and ruminating on past and present experiences, mindfulness meditation directs our minds to focus on the present-moment sensation of breathing. At first mindfulness meditation takes effort, but over time the mind learns to naturally incorporate it. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to have multiple benefits which include: attention regulation, body awareness, emotional regulation, and perspective change on the self. These produce greater subjective well-being and lower stress (Wolkin, 2015).

As a student enrolled in Psychology 123 “Science of Well-being”, I participated in mindfulness meditation. To put mindfulness meditation to the test, almost one hundred students were asked to record their feelings after participating in mindfulness meditation for four days. The results from the four days were then compared to the baseline survey of well-being we had reported previously. The results showed that students reported significantly more positive emotions (and less negative emotions) on the last day of mindfulness meditation than our baseline. The data showed that mindfulness meditation produced greater subjective well-being for us!

Personally, I had never looked into mediation and knew nothing about it. Being a college student, I had a plethora of academic, social, and economic stress each day. Honestly, I had very little expectation that just four days of mindfulness meditation for 5 minutes would help my chronic stress. On day one of meditating, I felt a little awkward just focusing on my breathing. I constantly had to refocus my wandering brain on my breathing. Day two was a very similar experience. I found it very hard to not focus on all my tasks that needed to be finished. However, on day three, I was excited to start my meditation. Breathing seemed to calm my body and my mind. After five minutes of mediating I still felt stressed, but my tasks felt more obtainable and possible. On my final day, I looked forward to meditating. Instead of seeing meditation as an assignment to get to the next task, it was relaxing to take in the calm. It made me feel like, at least for those five minutes, I could just focus on being in the present.

As the semester grows more busy, things can get stressful, but practicing mindfulness meditation can be used to help.

Maddie Burke