Components Of Mindfulness Meditation Essay

Components of mindfulness meditation Empirical research has recently shown that there are several mechanisms or components through which MM exerts its effects. These four mechanisms are attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and a change in perspective of the self. According to Holzel et al. (2011) attention regulation especially in regards to executive attention and conflict monitoring is often developed early in the practice, and a certain degree of attention is also necessary to stay engaged in the practice. An example of this mechanism in the practice is sustaining attention on the chosen object and whenever distracted returning attention to the object. Successful attention regulation is regarded as being the building block or prerequisite for meditators to also benefit from the other mechanisms and is the most important mechanism of MM. Body awareness is the second component of MM and builds upon component one and …show more content…
For example, enhanced body awareness may be very closely related to the changes in the perspective of the self which then may result in reappraisal of situations in specific ways providing enhanced motivation to further develop attention regulation and body awareness (Holzel et al., 2011). The occurring process can best be understood as an upward spiral. In the end, during MM, the goal is to maintain attention to present internal and external experiences with a nonjudgmental stance, and grow in acceptance, curiosity and openness. The four mechanisms described help the meditator meet this goal when emotional reactions gets triggered by something like thoughts or external stimuli. The entire process represents enhanced self-regulation which is defined as a process that enables individuals to guide their goal-directed activities by modulating thought, affect, behavior, and attention through the use of these