Abstract
Mindfulness has been described as an inherent human capability that can be learned and trained, and its improvement has been associated with better health outcomes in both medicine and psychology. Although the role of practice is central to most mindfulness programs, practice-related improvements in mindfulness skills is not consistently reported and little is known about how the characteristics of meditative practice affect different components of mindfulness. The present study explores the role of practice parameters on self-reported mindfulness skills. A total of 670 voluntary participants with and without previous meditation experience (n = 384 and n = 286, respectively) responded to an internet-based survey on various aspects of their meditative practice (type of meditation, length of session, frequency, and lifetime practice). Participants also completed the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), and the Experiences Questionnaire (EQ). The group with meditation experience obtained significantly higher scores on all facets of FFMQ and EQ questionnaires compared to the group without experience. However different effect sizes were observed, with stronger effects for the Observing and Non-Reactivity facets of the FFMQ, moderate effects for Decentering in EQ, and a weak effect for Non-judging, Describing, and Acting with awareness on the FFMQ. Our results indicate that not all practice variables are equally relevant in terms of developing mindfulness skills. Frequency and lifetime practice – but not session length or meditation type – were associated with higher mindfulness skills. Given that these 6 mindfulness aspects show variable sensitivity to practice, we created a composite index (MINDSENS) consisting of those items from FFMQ and EQ that showed the strongest response to practice. The MINDSENS index was able to correctly discriminate daily meditators from non-meditators in 82.3% of cases. These findings may contribute to the understanding of the development of mindfulness skills and support trainers and researchers in improving mindfulness-oriented practices and programs.
Highlights
A decade after the first meta-analysis showing the beneficial effects of mindfulness on health was published [1], the body of evidence on the benefits of mindfulness practice to treat stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms continues to grow
After controlling by sex and age, significant differences were observed between Meditator group (MG) and Non-meditator group (NMG) groups on all Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and Experiences Questionnaire (EQ) subscales, with effect sizes ranging from high to low, depending on the subscale
Our results indicated that participants with prior meditation experience reported higher scores on all mindfulness aspects versus meditation-naive participants
Summary
A decade after the first meta-analysis showing the beneficial effects of mindfulness on health was published [1], the body of evidence on the benefits of mindfulness practice to treat stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms continues to grow. According to the traditional roots of mindfulness, it is assumed that long-term meditation practice cultivates mindfulness skills and that development of such skills, in turn, promote psychological well-being [6]. From this perspective, several authors have described mindfulness as an inherent capability that can be learned and practiced by everyone [7], [8], [9]. The role of regular meditative practice seems to be highly relevant to outcomes. For this reason, most mindfulness programs teach a wide range of practices and require home-practice to improve mindfulness skills. One important area of current mindfulness research is to determine this optimal practice time in order to design more effective and cost-effective mindfulness programs and training
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