“An Antidote For Mindlessness” in New Yorker Blog

Can mindfulness training work as a protective factor against the typical stresses of life? The New Yorker blogs about the progression of mindfulness studies, and one researcher studying the lasting effects of mindfulness. 

Woman meditating for antidote for mindlessnessWhen Amishi Jha, a neuroscientist who directs the University of Miami’s Contemplative Neuroscience, Mindfulness Research, and Practice Initiative, began researching mindfulness and cognitive performance. Most studies focused on short stints of practice and its effects on immediate cognitive performance. Now, that research is expanding.

From the blog:

There had been comparatively little work done on the lasting impacts of mindfulness training, especially under conditions of high stress. The equivalent of evaluating the impact of a week of training on the results of a two-hundred-yard dash versus examining the effects of months of training on a marathon time. “The bulk of my work looks at high-stress cohorts, to see how mindfulness training can be protective against long-term stress,” Jha told me. It was also unclear how little meditation one could get away with and still emerge more mindful. “How low can you go? How little time can it take to sufficiently train people?” Jha said.

Read “An Antidote to Mindlessness.”