Sit down. Close your eyes. Focus on your breath. Observe your thoughts objectively as if you were a scientist.
There, you’ve achieved it: mindfulness, a heightened awareness and acceptance of the present moment without judgment.
As simple as it seems, mindfulness, with its origins in the 2,500-year-old Buddhist practices of meditation and yoga, has become the latest buzzword in wellness, as study after study confirms its power to relieve anxiety and improve mood when combined with Western therapies.
Last month University of Toronto researchers reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which mixes mindfulness meditation with cognitive behavioral therapy, is as effective as antidepressants for preventing relapses in depression.
Dr. Zindel Segal, head of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Clinic at the University of Toronto, and his colleagues gathered 84 participants who had all recuperated from at least two spells of depression.
Participants were then divided into three groups. One group underwent weekly group therapy. Another received an antidepressant. The third took a placebo.
Over the span of one and a half years, 70 percent of the participants who had taken the placebo had one or more relapses of depression. Only 30 percent of those who received the therapy or the antidepressant suffered from another relapse.
