![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Oct. 1st, 2006
(I am posting this to my journal so I can add it to my Memories so I don't lose it.)
Topic posted Yesterday, 8:10 PM by libramoon
Forms of Consciousness Expansion - Tribe.net
Original document from Stanford University
Mindfulness: A Proposed Operational Definition
Scott R. Bishop, Ph.D., Mark Lau, Ph.D., Shauna Shapiro, Ph.D., et al
* * *
These approaches involve a rigorous program of training in meditation to cultivate the capacity to evoke and apply mindfulness to enhance emotional well-being and mental health. Mindfulness approaches are not considered relaxation or mood management techniques however, but rather a form of mental training to reduce cognitive vulnerability to reactive modes of mind that might otherwise heighten stress and emotional distress, or that may otherwise perpetuate psychopathology.[1] The cultivation and practice of mindfulness through this program of mental training is thus thought to mediate observed effects on mood and behaviour (Kabat-Zinn, 1990) but these speculations remain yet untested and thus unsubstantiated.
Although mindfulness has been described by a number of investigators (Kabat-Zinn, 1990, 1998; Shapiro & Swartz, 1999, 2000; Teasdale, 1999b; Segal et al., 2002), the field has thus far proceeded in the absence of an operational definition (Bishop, 2002). There have been no systematic efforts to establish the defining criteria of its various components or to specify implicated psychological processes, and general descriptions of mindfulness have not been entirely consistent across investigators. As long as fundamental questions concerning construct specificity and operational definitions remain unaddressed it is not possible to undertake important investigations into the mediating role and mechanisms of action of mindfulness, or to develop instruments that allow such investigations to proceed. Thus we must move toward a definition that is more precise and that specifies testable theoretical predictions for the purpose of validation and refinement.
( Read more... )
Topic posted Yesterday, 8:10 PM by libramoon
Forms of Consciousness Expansion - Tribe.net
Original document from Stanford University
Mindfulness: A Proposed Operational Definition
Scott R. Bishop, Ph.D., Mark Lau, Ph.D., Shauna Shapiro, Ph.D., et al
* * *
These approaches involve a rigorous program of training in meditation to cultivate the capacity to evoke and apply mindfulness to enhance emotional well-being and mental health. Mindfulness approaches are not considered relaxation or mood management techniques however, but rather a form of mental training to reduce cognitive vulnerability to reactive modes of mind that might otherwise heighten stress and emotional distress, or that may otherwise perpetuate psychopathology.[1] The cultivation and practice of mindfulness through this program of mental training is thus thought to mediate observed effects on mood and behaviour (Kabat-Zinn, 1990) but these speculations remain yet untested and thus unsubstantiated.
Although mindfulness has been described by a number of investigators (Kabat-Zinn, 1990, 1998; Shapiro & Swartz, 1999, 2000; Teasdale, 1999b; Segal et al., 2002), the field has thus far proceeded in the absence of an operational definition (Bishop, 2002). There have been no systematic efforts to establish the defining criteria of its various components or to specify implicated psychological processes, and general descriptions of mindfulness have not been entirely consistent across investigators. As long as fundamental questions concerning construct specificity and operational definitions remain unaddressed it is not possible to undertake important investigations into the mediating role and mechanisms of action of mindfulness, or to develop instruments that allow such investigations to proceed. Thus we must move toward a definition that is more precise and that specifies testable theoretical predictions for the purpose of validation and refinement.
( Read more... )