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science and research
Mindfulness can be useful for a variety of reasons and benefits and the number of areas
that mindfulness is being applied to is growing.
Thousands of research papers have now been written on the applications of mindfulness,
and its impact on people's lives. Here we
provide links to a sample of this research. What follows has been taken from
Mindfulnet.org. If you would like to look at
more research we recommend that you visit their site.
Physical health
One of the most important areas of research has been around the use of Mindfulness within
the treatment of long-term physical health conditions.
Breathworks were one of the pioneers of using mindfulness
to ease pain and illness. As with all the courses we run it has been scientifically researched.
These are a couple of research studies on mindfulness for pain and chronic illness.
-
Evaluation of the breathworks mindfulness-based pain
management programme: effects on well-being and multiple measures of mindfulness.
(Cusens B1, Duggan GB, Thorne K, Burch V, Derriford Hospital, Plymouth, UK. bryanycusens@googlemail.com)
Mindfulness meditation-related pain relief: Evidence for unique brain mechanisms in the regulation of pain. (F. Zeidan,a,* J.A. Grant,b C.A. Brown,c J.G. McHaffie,a and R.C. Coghilla)
In the workplace
Mindfulness in the workplace has been popularised by a number of global companies including Google. However, among smaller businesses mindfulness is not yet widespread. There is growing evidence, shown by initial studies, that mindfulness in the workplace can have a number of positive effects. These include a decrease in perceived stress.
- “Effective and viable mind-body stress reduction in the workplace: A randomized controlled trial,” (Wolever, R et al Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 2012),
- Mindfulness has a powerful impact on leadership capability. November 2016 "The world’s first study of a multisession mindful leader program, which included a wait-list control group. Half of the participants received their training immediately and the other half received it later, but we measured key characteristics in both groups at the same times. By comparing the two groups’ results, we were able to discover what the effect of training really was." (Ashridge Executive Education)
research extracts
An increase in better concentration levels including memory tasks and multi-tasking
“'nitial results from a study of the effects of meditation on multitasking performance',
(Levy, D M et al, Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts
on Human factors in computing systems, 2011).
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'Poor mental health costs employers between £33 billion and £42 billion a year,
with an annual cost to the UK economy of between £74 billion and £99 billion'.
(An independent review of mental health and employers by Lord Dennis Stevenson and Paul Farmer.)
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'We have calculated the cost of poor mental health in the workplace to be a significant number at £33bn-£42bn; the mid-point of which is equivalent to almost 2% of UK GDP (2016). This cost is borne by businesses of all sizes and across all industries, with our analysis showing the costs per employee ranging from £497 – £2564, depending on the industry and sector. Our research has also found that the return on investment of workplace mental health interventions is overwhelmingly positive, with an average ROI of 4:1.' (Deloitte)
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