Beyond and Above Meditation

Power sometimes stems from little things like understanding your limited time here and how good it is to use this time for something you will never regret, it's a daily practice to remind yourself about it through being attentive.

During the past two decades, more and more scientists have studied mindfulness—a collection of practices aimed at helping us to cultivate moment-to-moment awareness of ourselves and our environment. Their early findings triggered an enormous amount of enthusiasm for meditation. Sometimes, however, journalists and even scientists (who should know better) have overstated the physical and mental health benefits, which has fed growing skepticism about mindfulness. Indeed, the science behind mindfulness meditation has often suffered from poor research designs and small effect sizes, as 15 psychologists and neuroscientists found after reviewing hundreds of mindfulness studies. Their paper, published by Perspectives on Psychological Science, argues that there is still much we don’t understand about mindfulness and meditation. Worse, many scientists and practitioners don’t even agree on the definition of those words. They end the paper calling for “truth in advertising by cont...