June 26, 2022 • 24 mins
Mindfulness and meditation are ancient practices that can now be accessed via your smart phone. Mindfulness is everywhere: there’s mindful learning, mindful parenting, mindful business leadership — even mindful soldiers. We’re told these practices reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and blood pressure. And they're being sold for billions. If something sacred has been co-opted by capitalism, is it still ‘good’ for us? Learn more about how to navigate the complex world of mindfulness and meditation, and what to look for if you're considering giving these practices a try.
Hosted by Lynne Malcolm for the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences. Featuring Associate Professor Nicholas Van Dam and Nerida Lennon, User Experience Researcher and Certified Meditation Teacher. Our production team is: Carly Godden (producer), Amy Bugeja and Mairead Murray (assistant producers), Arch Cuthburtson (sound engineer) and Chris Falk (music).
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lynne Malcolm (00:00):
This podcast is made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people,
the Woiwurrung and the Bununrong. We'd like to acknowledge and
pay respects to their elders, both past and present, and emerging.
From the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University
of Melbourne, this is PsychTalks.
(00:24):
Hello there, I'm Lynne Malcolm. Welcome back to PsychTalks, where
we explore what psychology research can tell us about modern
life in Australia and the wider world.
For this episode, first, let me hand you over to Nerida.
Nerida Lennon (00:41):
Sitting in a comfortable and balanced posture, alert and upright,
yet relaxed in your seat. I invite you just to
gently close your eyes and if that feels comfortable, or
you could lower your gaze to the tip of your nose.
And just notice that your body is breathing.
(01:01):
And see if you can focus your attention where you
feel the sensation of your breath is the strongest.
Lynne Malcolm (01:08):
Nerida Lennon is taking us through the opening stages of
a loving kindness style meditation.
Nerida Lennon (01:15):
The exercise invites us to think about three people, someone
you're close to and care about, a more neutral acquaintance,
and someone you might find slightly difficult to deal with.
As you imagine these three people before you.
Just take a moment to notice how you feel about
each one of them.
Lynne Malcolm (01:36):
Then the exercise prompts you to potentially take on a
new perspective.
Nerida Lennon (01:41):
You might like to consider that like you, these people
simply want to be happy.
And they desire to be healthy.
And if it feels OK for you, you could send
good wishes to these people for them to be happy
and healthy.
Lynne Malcolm (01:59):
Nerida has been practising meditation for over 13 years. She's
now training to teach meditation to others and is also
studying contemplative psychotherapy.
Nerida Lennon (02:10):
So the meditation that we just did was aimed at
expanding our capacity to basically be more prosocial and show
and feel more compassion to people that we interact with
that might be close but also might be more neutral
or difficult and
Hopefully, I guess the practise can become more habitual in
our everyday interactions and lives.
Lynne Malcolm (02:32):
The last 30 years has seen a boom in meditation
and mindfulness practises in Western nations. Science has also taken
a keen interest.
Nerida Lennon (02:42):
In terms of the science, the neurobiology shows that compassion
is actually built into our human brains and nervous systems.
So this basically means that we have this innate capacity
to see and treat others with compassion, and we also
know that uh practising compassion is really good for strengthening
our resilience and our psychological and physical health.
Lynne Malcolm (03:04):
But there's still a lot more for researchers to discover
about what these practises are actually doing to our minds
and our bodies. Meanwhile, the growth of the mindfulness and
meditation industry in the West has continued at a cracking pace.
Nerida Lennon (03:19):
To understand more, we turned to Dr Nicholas Van Dam,
the inaugural director of the newly formed Contemplative Studies Centre
at the University of Melbourne.
Nicholas Van Dam (03:30):
So one of the reasons and the goals for us
setting this up is that it is very difficult for
people to actually access information about authentic contemplative practises. The
wellness industry has commodified many of these forms of practise
and has tried to sell them.
Uh, and, and there are many sort of traditional teachers
that have been around for a long time and they
have long traditions in certain um faith context.
(03:53):
But that does not necessarily mean that what they are
teaching people is evidence based or that necessarily works just
because it has been around for a long time does
not necessarily mean it works. So the Centre's real goal
is to try to help the public, to help government,
to help businesses, to help individuals and academics as well
to get this information and also to produce this information
(04:14):
so for us.
To really start having conversations about what are the different
types of practises out there, how do you use them,
when can they help you and when might they actually
hurt you and to create much greater opportunities for people
from those different faith traditions to get together and talk
about these practises.
Lynne Malcolm (04:32):
First, it is important to distinguish between mindfulness and meditation.
Nicholas Van Dam (04:37):
But many people use the term mindfulness and meditation interchangeably.
are not the same thing.
So meditation refers to any set of a number of
practises that really is designed to focus the attention often
on a particular object like the breath, but it could
also be a mantra or an image. And so these
meditation practises come from many different traditions and are used
(05:00):
in many different ways from goals ranging to relaxing a
bit to calming the mind.
Ultimately sort of towards things like developing connection to God
or achieving things like enlightenment. So really the range can
be quite broad. Mindfulness on the other hand is
A term that reflects a particular idea originating from within
Buddhism and it typically focuses on the way in which
(05:23):
one focuses their attention, integrating that with awareness.
Lynne Malcolm (05:26):
It's a common belief that mindfulness involves developing a sense
of awareness that's non-judgemental and what's called being present centred,
sort of like being in the moment, but Nicholas thinks
this isn't quite what's going on.
Nicholas Van Dam (05:41):
Rather than non-judgmental, I like to think of it as discerning.
Uh, so this idea is sort of that it's differentiating
between those things that help us from those things that don't.
And rather than necessarily saying that it's presence centred, I
like to think of it sort of as something that
is helping us to facilitate equanimity or balance.
Lynne Malcolm (05:59):
Meditation and mindfulness were first formally introduced to the West
as far back as 1893 at an event called the
Parliament of the World's First Religions held in Chicago in
the United States, the conference was an attempt to start
a dialogue between the world's major faiths.
Nicholas Van Dam (06:19):
Certain emissaries of Buddhism came to the Western world and
sort of really tried to frame.
Buddhism as a religious tradition or spiritual tradition that was
compatible with science. I would say and many others would
say that that is not necessarily true. So that is
a very specific view of Buddhism. It is a very
sort of converted or contemporary sort of redefining of Buddhism,
(06:41):
but that sort of really what kicked it off.
Lynne Malcolm (06:43):
In the 60s and 70s, with the rise of the
counterculture movement and people like the Beatles practising meditation.
The practises were picked up again in the west. Since
the 2000s. Mindfulness in particular has become increasingly mainstream.
Nicholas Van Dam (07:00):
So John Kabat-Zinn is really the person I guess that
we can all thank for kind of the way in
which we understand and know mindfulness in the contemporary Western world.
So what he did is he took meditation practises in
the kind of traditional Buddhist form and really translated them
or converted them in a way that made them very
accessible to a secular Western audience.
(07:24):
So he combined a number of different ideas about Buddhism,
but he also took ideas from different schools of Buddhism,
but he also took ideas from Hindu practises and other
contemplative traditions, and he created them or presented in a
way that sort of he thought would be acceptable to
a Western audience in the sense that he didn't use
complex language, he didn't make reference or didn't make strong
(07:47):
references to particular spiritual traditions.
And he really tried to promote things in a way
that were linked with scientific individuals, with people of influence
and with people that were sort of respected and credible.
Lynne Malcolm (08:00):
Technology has been a big part of the recent uptake. Nerida,
who is also a user experience designer and researcher, has
investigated the world of mindfulness and meditation apps and digital platforms.
Nerida Lennon (08:15):
Last year, the Global Wellness Institute actually published a report
on the global mental wellness market, and it showed that
there was a meditation, I guess sub-sector of the market
and that had absolutely boomed. So that includes things like
mindfulness courses and apps and wearable technology and the industry
(08:35):
apparently is worth around $2.9 billion at the moment, which
is expected to actually go up to about $9 billion
by 2027.
Lynne Malcolm (08:45):
Take apps. There are thousands available for download. One of
the biggest here in Australia is Smiling Minds. It's a
not for profit based in Melbourne, and it's a completely
free app.
Nerida Lennon (08:57):
They've had, I think, about 6 million downloads.
They offer guided training in mindfulness meditation for individuals as
well as schools and the workplace.
Lynne Malcolm (09:10):
Many apps are free but offer in-app purchases. Others are
accessed via a subscription, while some act as a marketplace
for connecting users with teachers.
Nerida Lennon (09:21):
Today, Buddhism in particular is one of the fastest growing
religions in Australia. It's around 2% of the population that
are identifying as Buddhists and
And I think people are turning to Buddhism specifically at
the moment, in my mind because modern life is increasingly stressful,
and at the same time, there's some more empirical research
(09:42):
supporting the efficacy and benefits of mindfulness meditation for relieving
things like stress, improving sleep and performance, as well as wellbeing.
And I also see that younger generations are seeking something
spiritual beyond organised religion, as well as, you know, the
rights that they're adopting technology.
And the advances in technology such as apps are converging
(10:03):
with these trends. Apps are often more accessible and more
affordable as is YouTube, even more so than say meditation
retreats or in-person classes. But also that mindfulness is being
mass marketed, I guess as this you know panacea that
can kind of help all of our issues in our lives.
Lynne Malcolm (10:24):
The business of mindfulness has even penetrated our working lives
and has been embraced by the corporate sector. Dr Nicholas
Van Dam.
Nicholas Van Dam (10:33):
Jon Kavat-Zinn really tried to establish these practises as something
that was touted by experts and individuals sort of at
high institutions. So this sort of effort to kind of
make it part of business, the way that business is done,
the effort to make it part of healthcare, the way
that healthcare is done, uh, to make it part of education,
that's made this more accessible and so there's been kind
(10:55):
of this competing interests. People are looking for something.
To help them make their lives more meaningful, to help make,
you know, make their lives better, but there's also been
this sort of interest in the business side of things
of competing with sort of increasing pressures on the bottom
line and sort of trying to help employees be more
and more productive.
Bringing mindfulness into the business context to make employees more
(11:17):
efficient is not necessarily something that many arguably many meditation
and mindfulness practises were originally intended to do.
Lynne Malcolm (11:25):
Traditionally, students of Buddhism would learn under the close guidance
of a senior teacher and take up a monastic style
of living.
Nicholas Van Dam (11:33):
That does not necessarily make sense for the average individual.
Not everybody necessarily wants to go and live in, you know,
the Himalayan foothills and you know own no possessions.
But the movement sort of I guess away from the
kind of context of you have a specific teacher, you
commit to a particular lifestyle, you have people around you
who are also practising.
(11:53):
does mean that some of the expertise and knowledge has
sort of been pulled further away so that the consumer
is further away often from the individuals who have really
developed many of these practises. The supports often are not
necessarily there. People are not necessarily learning these practises around
others who are also doing the same and so sometimes
(12:15):
that means that they do not quite have the support
networks when something does not work or even when they
are just struggling.
Nerida Lennon (12:21):
To my knowledge, Buddhism is one of the first coherent
psychologies in the world, and it really is working to
refine our mind's natural capacity for insight and wisdom and
behaviour change or ethics. So I feel as though from
what I experienced and what I've seen the insight and
wisdom and ethics are really important components and you'll only
(12:43):
get so far on this kind of self-healing or well-being
journey if you're not starting to also implement them into
your practise.
Lynne Malcolm (12:51):
Some believe that mindfulness has become so divorced from its
origins that we are experiencing a wave of what's been
dubbed as 'McMindfulness'.
Nicholas Van Dam (13:01):
This idea of McMindfulness really is the traditions or the
ideas from the traditions, particularly Buddhism have kind of been
stripped of their meaning.
Lynne Malcolm (13:09):
A good example of this kind of disconnect is mindfulness
being used by the military.
Nicholas Van Dam (13:15):
In the traditional Buddhist context, if you are really committed
to
mindfulness and meditation-based practises, you are often deeply committed to
kind of ethical principles, and those ethical principles are often
doing no harm, really often to in its sort of
most extreme form to any other sentient being.
We train individuals in the military on how to be
more quote unquote emotionally balanced or relaxed and it sounds
(13:39):
really great. It sounds like we are helping people to
potentially not develop post-traumatic stress disorder, which is arguably a
great thing, but I guess the tricky part there is,
but what is the end goal? Um from the military's perspective,
the end goal may be to create someone who is
More willing to pull the trigger, um, to do it quicker,
faster and more effectively or from the company perspective, the
(14:02):
end goal might be to create a scenario in which
employees are more OK with unreasonable working conditions because they
are sort of often they feel as if the company
is trying to look after them. So that is this
idea of mindfulness is that you stripped
The practise of kind of the ethical imperative, you stripped
it of its context and it's just being utilised for
(14:25):
a very kind of specific purpose. Often I guess the
McMindfulness thing is often argued that it is used to
pacify people.
Lynne Malcolm (14:35):
While critics of McMindfulness warn us that it may contribute
to an unhealthy and unjust society, many also say that
this doesn't mean we should entirely give up on secular
forms of mindfulness. Nerida Lennon.
Nerida Lennon (14:50):
I've benefited personally immensely from mindfulness-based interventions like mindfulness based
stress reduction, um, which was created by Jon Kabat-Zinn that
we've mentioned previously. So, I also have benefited from more traditional, say,
Buddhist type practises and retreat settings. So I think that
it's not one or the other necessarily.
Nicholas Van Dam (15:10):
It is not as if people don't reinvent or adapt
or allow for traditions or practises to evolve such that
they better suit.
The current or contemporary population, and many people have argued
that
the historic Buddha was quite pragmatic and at the end
of the day, sort of the things that he prescribed
were not necessarily dogmatic or were not necessarily about revering
(15:33):
a particular teacher or school of thought or instructor but
were about figuring out a way to live a healthy
life and it's a real challenge to figure out where
the where the balances of sort of adapting things so
that they work for a contemporary audience but still being
true to some of the original ideas and principles.
Lynne Malcolm (15:52):
For those interested in pursuing mindfulness or meditation, there are
certain things to look out for, starting with apps.
Nerida Lennon (16:00):
I like to think of 3 or 4 different things
when considering a meditation app. The first is credibility of
a teacher or perhaps it's more of a meditation framework
or path. So, traditionally, say in Buddhism, you'll have a
teacher that will tailor your meditation journey if you if
you're lucky enough. And then the second thing to keep
in mind is the efficacy of the empirical research. So
(16:24):
does it do what it claims to do? Is there
research to back that up?
And then we're looking at the engagement, which is more
to do with the user experience design, so the functionality,
the aesthetics, and really importantly, habit formation. So if you're meditating,
you want to form a habit. So you want to
see if the app has hopefully some progress tracking system
(16:46):
or something like that that might assist in creating and
maintaining a meditation routine. So.
We're looking at things like maybe nudges or notifications to
maybe help you to remember to meditate, um, maybe some rewards,
maybe it's tracking your mood, hours or types of meditation
that you're doing and hopefully it can be personalised. Maybe
(17:07):
at the beginning there's an onboarding process.
That can allow you to put in some selections of
things you're looking for. Maybe you want to reduce your
stress or sleep better, or just have more equanimity and
calmness in your life.
Lynne Malcolm (17:20):
Nicholas says that the value of an app is very
much dependent on what someone hopes to get out of it.
Nicholas Van Dam (17:26):
I think the market or sort of what people are
looking for varies dramatically and you know there's an argument
that many people who
Pick up apps may end up doing these kind of
deeper practises or committing more to regular meditation. I do
not know that there is any evidence for that that
people that sort of start with a simple app often
go on to or regularly commit to a kind of
(17:49):
daily meditation practise. My perspective is that in contrast I
guess to the argument that um meditation is just like
going to the gym, you know, that it is actually
quite a bit more complicated than that. It is not
just as simple as sort of doing, you know, your
daily exercise.
And part of it has to do with with those
different goals. So I think that you know if your
(18:10):
goal is just to feel a little bit less stressed,
then something like an app or really anything, I think
you know it could be exercise, it could be puzzles,
it could be something else may work quite well for
that and that's all that some people are really seeking.
Other people are looking for something more like equanimity or
emotional balance where
As other people are looking for something more like enlightenment
(18:31):
or sort of transcendence and those forms or kinds of
practises probably you know as we get more lofty in
our goals, the types of practises you likely need to
commit to are likely much more complex and likely require
very different forms of commitment and support for that.
Lynne Malcolm (18:49):
Users should also know that apps may not be entirely
risk free.
Nerida Lennon (18:54):
Popularity or high ratings of apps just doesn't necessarily equal
credibility or efficiency or safety, so it's important to have,
you know, awareness when we are choosing apps.
Nicholas Van Dam (19:07):
Meditation is increasingly promoted as a kind of alternative mental
health approach. There is evidence that suggests that if you
have a mental health issue,
Meditation probably is not the best first line treatment. Now
that is to say if you are seeking to use
meditation for management of mental illness, you should consult the
clinician and decide with that clinician whether or not it
(19:30):
is the appropriate thing to do.
Lynne Malcolm (19:32):
Meditation and mindfulness practises have been known to cause what's
called unexpected or adverse events.
Nicholas Van Dam (19:39):
We start to talk about
unexpected experiences. There is a whole range of things that
can happen, you know, um, people having weird tingling sensations,
kind of numbness in parts of their body or soreness,
you know, as we start to think about adverse events,
it can also move into mild things like people just
feeling a bit more anxious or feeling a bit of pain.
As it gets more severe as we are really moving
(20:01):
into that adverse events category, people will report things like
traumatic re-experiencing, so they are envisioning past events that they
do not really want to.
Some people will report things like hallucinations or feeling sort
of strong distortions of their sense of self or their
sense of time or feeling like they are not real
(20:22):
or really strong senses of sadness on the order of
depression or feeling incredibly irritable. There are sort of also
noted somatic changes so that is bodily sensation so people
can have weird changes to their appetite, they can feel
suddenly very warm, hot, cold.
Generally speaking, the data suggests that most of kind of
the adverse events with unexpected experiences are in the more
(20:45):
intensive practises. However, there is some evidence emerging that even
with fairly minimal practise, even with fairly light practises like apps,
there may be risks. But these things also do happen
to some extent in practises like psychotherapy. So I do
not necessarily know that we are experiencing or
We are seeing adverse events more commonly in meditation than
(21:07):
we would in other programmes of mental training or intervention,
but it is worth noting that these are not harmless
practises that for some individuals they do cause harm and
the percentage of individuals for whom they do so is
not exactly known. We can estimate it sort of at
around 8%, but we don't exactly know yet because we
haven't done enough research into the area.
Lynne Malcolm (21:27):
Severe adverse reactions are rare, but for anyone serious about
doing mindfulness or meditation, the journey can be tough in
other ways.
Nerida Lennon (21:37):
It's really a common misperception that mindfulness meditation should always
be a pleasant experience, whether that's with an app or
without an app, but I guess the reality is that
it's often hard work and sometimes meditation can initially increase
our stress due to becoming aware of the stress that
we are feeling or anxiety or low mood.
(21:58):
If we are bringing attention to these feelings, we are
going to notice that they might increase, at least initially,
but hopefully overall, like we have a good experience and
positive results.
Lynne Malcolm (22:09):
Those learning either of these practises also appear to benefit
from more structured or face to face support.
Nicholas Van Dam (22:16):
Most people who download an app within a month are
no longer using it and the numbers are like 90
to 95% of people who download apps do not continue
using them a month on.
Increasingly we're finding out or we're getting more data to
show that some of these apps particular seem to work
best when they're used in conjunction with supporting features. So
coaches or group-based practises or things like that.
(22:38):
If people are really wanting to do this, if people
kind of are further along in their journey, they've tried
some things out and they really are ready to commit,
that's probably the point at which you really want to
seek out a teacher or a facilitator or an instructor.
So once you have moved beyond the point of kind
of dabbling and trying things out.
It is worth sort of seeking out someone who really
kind of can support you and help you kind of
(23:00):
develop a habit and help you to overcome problems. It
is important to think about as you approach your practise,
what are your expectations for it? How do you think
it's going to go and be realistic about it. Our
minds are busy things, busy places and they are not just,
you know, if we sort of have someone who tends
to be hard on ourselves or we tend to be
someone who kind of overthinks things, that's not just going
to go away because we decided to sit on a
(23:21):
cushion in a lotus position.
So there is nothing magical about that. Uh, so I
guess it's important to kind of have realistic expectations as
you engage in these practises as well.
Lynne Malcolm (23:31):
And that's all from us. I'd like to thank our
PsychTalks guests for today, Nerida Lennon and Dr Nicholas Van Dam.
And if you'd like to hear Nerida's meditation exercise in full,
we've added it as a bonus episode you can download.
Our producer for today was Carly Godden, and our assistant
producers were Amy Bugeja and Mairead
Nerida Lennon (23:52):
Murray. Arch Cuthbertson was our sound engineer, and music was
composed by Chris Falk. And of course, all this was
made possible by support from the University of Melbourne's School
of Psychological Sciences. You can listen to more episodes of
PsychTalks with me, Lynne Malcolm, by subscribing to our show,
wherever you get your podcasts from.
This podcast is made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people,
the Woiwurrung and the Bununrong. We'd like to acknowledge and
pay respects to their elders, both past and present, and emerging.
From the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University
of Melbourne, this is PsychTalks.
(00:24):
Hello there, I'm Lynne Malcolm. Welcome back to PsychTalks, where
we explore what psychology research can tell us about modern
life in Australia and the wider world.
For this episode, first, let me hand you over to Nerida.
Nerida Lennon (00:41):
Sitting in a comfortable and balanced posture, alert and upright,
yet relaxed in your seat. I invite you just to
gently close your eyes and if that feels comfortable, or
you could lower your gaze to the tip of your nose.
And just notice that your body is breathing.
(01:01):
And see if you can focus your attention where you
feel the sensation of your breath is the strongest.
Lynne Malcolm (01:08):
Nerida Lennon is taking us through the opening stages of
a loving kindness style meditation.
Nerida Lennon (01:15):
The exercise invites us to think about three people, someone
you're close to and care about, a more neutral acquaintance,
and someone you might find slightly difficult to deal with.
As you imagine these three people before you.
Just take a moment to notice how you feel about
each one of them.
Lynne Malcolm (01:36):
Then the exercise prompts you to potentially take on a
new perspective.
Nerida Lennon (01:41):
You might like to consider that like you, these people
simply want to be happy.
And they desire to be healthy.
And if it feels OK for you, you could send
good wishes to these people for them to be happy
and healthy.
Lynne Malcolm (01:59):
Nerida has been practising meditation for over 13 years. She's
now training to teach meditation to others and is also
studying contemplative psychotherapy.
Nerida Lennon (02:10):
So the meditation that we just did was aimed at
expanding our capacity to basically be more prosocial and show
and feel more compassion to people that we interact with
that might be close but also might be more neutral
or difficult and
Hopefully, I guess the practise can become more habitual in
our everyday interactions and lives.
Lynne Malcolm (02:32):
The last 30 years has seen a boom in meditation
and mindfulness practises in Western nations. Science has also taken
a keen interest.
Nerida Lennon (02:42):
In terms of the science, the neurobiology shows that compassion
is actually built into our human brains and nervous systems.
So this basically means that we have this innate capacity
to see and treat others with compassion, and we also
know that uh practising compassion is really good for strengthening
our resilience and our psychological and physical health.
Lynne Malcolm (03:04):
But there's still a lot more for researchers to discover
about what these practises are actually doing to our minds
and our bodies. Meanwhile, the growth of the mindfulness and
meditation industry in the West has continued at a cracking pace.
Nerida Lennon (03:19):
To understand more, we turned to Dr Nicholas Van Dam,
the inaugural director of the newly formed Contemplative Studies Centre
at the University of Melbourne.
Nicholas Van Dam (03:30):
So one of the reasons and the goals for us
setting this up is that it is very difficult for
people to actually access information about authentic contemplative practises. The
wellness industry has commodified many of these forms of practise
and has tried to sell them.
Uh, and, and there are many sort of traditional teachers
that have been around for a long time and they
have long traditions in certain um faith context.
(03:53):
But that does not necessarily mean that what they are
teaching people is evidence based or that necessarily works just
because it has been around for a long time does
not necessarily mean it works. So the Centre's real goal
is to try to help the public, to help government,
to help businesses, to help individuals and academics as well
to get this information and also to produce this information
(04:14):
so for us.
To really start having conversations about what are the different
types of practises out there, how do you use them,
when can they help you and when might they actually
hurt you and to create much greater opportunities for people
from those different faith traditions to get together and talk
about these practises.
Lynne Malcolm (04:32):
First, it is important to distinguish between mindfulness and meditation.
Nicholas Van Dam (04:37):
But many people use the term mindfulness and meditation interchangeably.
are not the same thing.
So meditation refers to any set of a number of
practises that really is designed to focus the attention often
on a particular object like the breath, but it could
also be a mantra or an image. And so these
meditation practises come from many different traditions and are used
(05:00):
in many different ways from goals ranging to relaxing a
bit to calming the mind.
Ultimately sort of towards things like developing connection to God
or achieving things like enlightenment. So really the range can
be quite broad. Mindfulness on the other hand is
A term that reflects a particular idea originating from within
Buddhism and it typically focuses on the way in which
(05:23):
one focuses their attention, integrating that with awareness.
Lynne Malcolm (05:26):
It's a common belief that mindfulness involves developing a sense
of awareness that's non-judgemental and what's called being present centred,
sort of like being in the moment, but Nicholas thinks
this isn't quite what's going on.
Nicholas Van Dam (05:41):
Rather than non-judgmental, I like to think of it as discerning.
Uh, so this idea is sort of that it's differentiating
between those things that help us from those things that don't.
And rather than necessarily saying that it's presence centred, I
like to think of it sort of as something that
is helping us to facilitate equanimity or balance.
Lynne Malcolm (05:59):
Meditation and mindfulness were first formally introduced to the West
as far back as 1893 at an event called the
Parliament of the World's First Religions held in Chicago in
the United States, the conference was an attempt to start
a dialogue between the world's major faiths.
Nicholas Van Dam (06:19):
Certain emissaries of Buddhism came to the Western world and
sort of really tried to frame.
Buddhism as a religious tradition or spiritual tradition that was
compatible with science. I would say and many others would
say that that is not necessarily true. So that is
a very specific view of Buddhism. It is a very
sort of converted or contemporary sort of redefining of Buddhism,
(06:41):
but that sort of really what kicked it off.
Lynne Malcolm (06:43):
In the 60s and 70s, with the rise of the
counterculture movement and people like the Beatles practising meditation.
The practises were picked up again in the west. Since
the 2000s. Mindfulness in particular has become increasingly mainstream.
Nicholas Van Dam (07:00):
So John Kabat-Zinn is really the person I guess that
we can all thank for kind of the way in
which we understand and know mindfulness in the contemporary Western world.
So what he did is he took meditation practises in
the kind of traditional Buddhist form and really translated them
or converted them in a way that made them very
accessible to a secular Western audience.
(07:24):
So he combined a number of different ideas about Buddhism,
but he also took ideas from different schools of Buddhism,
but he also took ideas from Hindu practises and other
contemplative traditions, and he created them or presented in a
way that sort of he thought would be acceptable to
a Western audience in the sense that he didn't use
complex language, he didn't make reference or didn't make strong
(07:47):
references to particular spiritual traditions.
And he really tried to promote things in a way
that were linked with scientific individuals, with people of influence
and with people that were sort of respected and credible.
Lynne Malcolm (08:00):
Technology has been a big part of the recent uptake. Nerida,
who is also a user experience designer and researcher, has
investigated the world of mindfulness and meditation apps and digital platforms.
Nerida Lennon (08:15):
Last year, the Global Wellness Institute actually published a report
on the global mental wellness market, and it showed that
there was a meditation, I guess sub-sector of the market
and that had absolutely boomed. So that includes things like
mindfulness courses and apps and wearable technology and the industry
(08:35):
apparently is worth around $2.9 billion at the moment, which
is expected to actually go up to about $9 billion
by 2027.
Lynne Malcolm (08:45):
Take apps. There are thousands available for download. One of
the biggest here in Australia is Smiling Minds. It's a
not for profit based in Melbourne, and it's a completely
free app.
Nerida Lennon (08:57):
They've had, I think, about 6 million downloads.
They offer guided training in mindfulness meditation for individuals as
well as schools and the workplace.
Lynne Malcolm (09:10):
Many apps are free but offer in-app purchases. Others are
accessed via a subscription, while some act as a marketplace
for connecting users with teachers.
Nerida Lennon (09:21):
Today, Buddhism in particular is one of the fastest growing
religions in Australia. It's around 2% of the population that
are identifying as Buddhists and
And I think people are turning to Buddhism specifically at
the moment, in my mind because modern life is increasingly stressful,
and at the same time, there's some more empirical research
(09:42):
supporting the efficacy and benefits of mindfulness meditation for relieving
things like stress, improving sleep and performance, as well as wellbeing.
And I also see that younger generations are seeking something
spiritual beyond organised religion, as well as, you know, the
rights that they're adopting technology.
And the advances in technology such as apps are converging
(10:03):
with these trends. Apps are often more accessible and more
affordable as is YouTube, even more so than say meditation
retreats or in-person classes. But also that mindfulness is being
mass marketed, I guess as this you know panacea that
can kind of help all of our issues in our lives.
Lynne Malcolm (10:24):
The business of mindfulness has even penetrated our working lives
and has been embraced by the corporate sector. Dr Nicholas
Van Dam.
Nicholas Van Dam (10:33):
Jon Kavat-Zinn really tried to establish these practises as something
that was touted by experts and individuals sort of at
high institutions. So this sort of effort to kind of
make it part of business, the way that business is done,
the effort to make it part of healthcare, the way
that healthcare is done, uh, to make it part of education,
that's made this more accessible and so there's been kind
(10:55):
of this competing interests. People are looking for something.
To help them make their lives more meaningful, to help make,
you know, make their lives better, but there's also been
this sort of interest in the business side of things
of competing with sort of increasing pressures on the bottom
line and sort of trying to help employees be more
and more productive.
Bringing mindfulness into the business context to make employees more
(11:17):
efficient is not necessarily something that many arguably many meditation
and mindfulness practises were originally intended to do.
Lynne Malcolm (11:25):
Traditionally, students of Buddhism would learn under the close guidance
of a senior teacher and take up a monastic style
of living.
Nicholas Van Dam (11:33):
That does not necessarily make sense for the average individual.
Not everybody necessarily wants to go and live in, you know,
the Himalayan foothills and you know own no possessions.
But the movement sort of I guess away from the
kind of context of you have a specific teacher, you
commit to a particular lifestyle, you have people around you
who are also practising.
(11:53):
does mean that some of the expertise and knowledge has
sort of been pulled further away so that the consumer
is further away often from the individuals who have really
developed many of these practises. The supports often are not
necessarily there. People are not necessarily learning these practises around
others who are also doing the same and so sometimes
(12:15):
that means that they do not quite have the support
networks when something does not work or even when they
are just struggling.
Nerida Lennon (12:21):
To my knowledge, Buddhism is one of the first coherent
psychologies in the world, and it really is working to
refine our mind's natural capacity for insight and wisdom and
behaviour change or ethics. So I feel as though from
what I experienced and what I've seen the insight and
wisdom and ethics are really important components and you'll only
(12:43):
get so far on this kind of self-healing or well-being
journey if you're not starting to also implement them into
your practise.
Lynne Malcolm (12:51):
Some believe that mindfulness has become so divorced from its
origins that we are experiencing a wave of what's been
dubbed as 'McMindfulness'.
Nicholas Van Dam (13:01):
This idea of McMindfulness really is the traditions or the
ideas from the traditions, particularly Buddhism have kind of been
stripped of their meaning.
Lynne Malcolm (13:09):
A good example of this kind of disconnect is mindfulness
being used by the military.
Nicholas Van Dam (13:15):
In the traditional Buddhist context, if you are really committed
to
mindfulness and meditation-based practises, you are often deeply committed to
kind of ethical principles, and those ethical principles are often
doing no harm, really often to in its sort of
most extreme form to any other sentient being.
We train individuals in the military on how to be
more quote unquote emotionally balanced or relaxed and it sounds
(13:39):
really great. It sounds like we are helping people to
potentially not develop post-traumatic stress disorder, which is arguably a
great thing, but I guess the tricky part there is,
but what is the end goal? Um from the military's perspective,
the end goal may be to create someone who is
More willing to pull the trigger, um, to do it quicker,
faster and more effectively or from the company perspective, the
(14:02):
end goal might be to create a scenario in which
employees are more OK with unreasonable working conditions because they
are sort of often they feel as if the company
is trying to look after them. So that is this
idea of mindfulness is that you stripped
The practise of kind of the ethical imperative, you stripped
it of its context and it's just being utilised for
(14:25):
a very kind of specific purpose. Often I guess the
McMindfulness thing is often argued that it is used to
pacify people.
Lynne Malcolm (14:35):
While critics of McMindfulness warn us that it may contribute
to an unhealthy and unjust society, many also say that
this doesn't mean we should entirely give up on secular
forms of mindfulness. Nerida Lennon.
Nerida Lennon (14:50):
I've benefited personally immensely from mindfulness-based interventions like mindfulness based
stress reduction, um, which was created by Jon Kabat-Zinn that
we've mentioned previously. So, I also have benefited from more traditional, say,
Buddhist type practises and retreat settings. So I think that
it's not one or the other necessarily.
Nicholas Van Dam (15:10):
It is not as if people don't reinvent or adapt
or allow for traditions or practises to evolve such that
they better suit.
The current or contemporary population, and many people have argued
that
the historic Buddha was quite pragmatic and at the end
of the day, sort of the things that he prescribed
were not necessarily dogmatic or were not necessarily about revering
(15:33):
a particular teacher or school of thought or instructor but
were about figuring out a way to live a healthy
life and it's a real challenge to figure out where
the where the balances of sort of adapting things so
that they work for a contemporary audience but still being
true to some of the original ideas and principles.
Lynne Malcolm (15:52):
For those interested in pursuing mindfulness or meditation, there are
certain things to look out for, starting with apps.
Nerida Lennon (16:00):
I like to think of 3 or 4 different things
when considering a meditation app. The first is credibility of
a teacher or perhaps it's more of a meditation framework
or path. So, traditionally, say in Buddhism, you'll have a
teacher that will tailor your meditation journey if you if
you're lucky enough. And then the second thing to keep
in mind is the efficacy of the empirical research. So
(16:24):
does it do what it claims to do? Is there
research to back that up?
And then we're looking at the engagement, which is more
to do with the user experience design, so the functionality,
the aesthetics, and really importantly, habit formation. So if you're meditating,
you want to form a habit. So you want to
see if the app has hopefully some progress tracking system
(16:46):
or something like that that might assist in creating and
maintaining a meditation routine. So.
We're looking at things like maybe nudges or notifications to
maybe help you to remember to meditate, um, maybe some rewards,
maybe it's tracking your mood, hours or types of meditation
that you're doing and hopefully it can be personalised. Maybe
(17:07):
at the beginning there's an onboarding process.
That can allow you to put in some selections of
things you're looking for. Maybe you want to reduce your
stress or sleep better, or just have more equanimity and
calmness in your life.
Lynne Malcolm (17:20):
Nicholas says that the value of an app is very
much dependent on what someone hopes to get out of it.
Nicholas Van Dam (17:26):
I think the market or sort of what people are
looking for varies dramatically and you know there's an argument
that many people who
Pick up apps may end up doing these kind of
deeper practises or committing more to regular meditation. I do
not know that there is any evidence for that that
people that sort of start with a simple app often
go on to or regularly commit to a kind of
(17:49):
daily meditation practise. My perspective is that in contrast I
guess to the argument that um meditation is just like
going to the gym, you know, that it is actually
quite a bit more complicated than that. It is not
just as simple as sort of doing, you know, your
daily exercise.
And part of it has to do with with those
different goals. So I think that you know if your
(18:10):
goal is just to feel a little bit less stressed,
then something like an app or really anything, I think
you know it could be exercise, it could be puzzles,
it could be something else may work quite well for
that and that's all that some people are really seeking.
Other people are looking for something more like equanimity or
emotional balance where
As other people are looking for something more like enlightenment
(18:31):
or sort of transcendence and those forms or kinds of
practises probably you know as we get more lofty in
our goals, the types of practises you likely need to
commit to are likely much more complex and likely require
very different forms of commitment and support for that.
Lynne Malcolm (18:49):
Users should also know that apps may not be entirely
risk free.
Nerida Lennon (18:54):
Popularity or high ratings of apps just doesn't necessarily equal
credibility or efficiency or safety, so it's important to have,
you know, awareness when we are choosing apps.
Nicholas Van Dam (19:07):
Meditation is increasingly promoted as a kind of alternative mental
health approach. There is evidence that suggests that if you
have a mental health issue,
Meditation probably is not the best first line treatment. Now
that is to say if you are seeking to use
meditation for management of mental illness, you should consult the
clinician and decide with that clinician whether or not it
(19:30):
is the appropriate thing to do.
Lynne Malcolm (19:32):
Meditation and mindfulness practises have been known to cause what's
called unexpected or adverse events.
Nicholas Van Dam (19:39):
We start to talk about
unexpected experiences. There is a whole range of things that
can happen, you know, um, people having weird tingling sensations,
kind of numbness in parts of their body or soreness,
you know, as we start to think about adverse events,
it can also move into mild things like people just
feeling a bit more anxious or feeling a bit of pain.
As it gets more severe as we are really moving
(20:01):
into that adverse events category, people will report things like
traumatic re-experiencing, so they are envisioning past events that they
do not really want to.
Some people will report things like hallucinations or feeling sort
of strong distortions of their sense of self or their
sense of time or feeling like they are not real
(20:22):
or really strong senses of sadness on the order of
depression or feeling incredibly irritable. There are sort of also
noted somatic changes so that is bodily sensation so people
can have weird changes to their appetite, they can feel
suddenly very warm, hot, cold.
Generally speaking, the data suggests that most of kind of
the adverse events with unexpected experiences are in the more
(20:45):
intensive practises. However, there is some evidence emerging that even
with fairly minimal practise, even with fairly light practises like apps,
there may be risks. But these things also do happen
to some extent in practises like psychotherapy. So I do
not necessarily know that we are experiencing or
We are seeing adverse events more commonly in meditation than
(21:07):
we would in other programmes of mental training or intervention,
but it is worth noting that these are not harmless
practises that for some individuals they do cause harm and
the percentage of individuals for whom they do so is
not exactly known. We can estimate it sort of at
around 8%, but we don't exactly know yet because we
haven't done enough research into the area.
Lynne Malcolm (21:27):
Severe adverse reactions are rare, but for anyone serious about
doing mindfulness or meditation, the journey can be tough in
other ways.
Nerida Lennon (21:37):
It's really a common misperception that mindfulness meditation should always
be a pleasant experience, whether that's with an app or
without an app, but I guess the reality is that
it's often hard work and sometimes meditation can initially increase
our stress due to becoming aware of the stress that
we are feeling or anxiety or low mood.
(21:58):
If we are bringing attention to these feelings, we are
going to notice that they might increase, at least initially,
but hopefully overall, like we have a good experience and
positive results.
Lynne Malcolm (22:09):
Those learning either of these practises also appear to benefit
from more structured or face to face support.
Nicholas Van Dam (22:16):
Most people who download an app within a month are
no longer using it and the numbers are like 90
to 95% of people who download apps do not continue
using them a month on.
Increasingly we're finding out or we're getting more data to
show that some of these apps particular seem to work
best when they're used in conjunction with supporting features. So
coaches or group-based practises or things like that.
(22:38):
If people are really wanting to do this, if people
kind of are further along in their journey, they've tried
some things out and they really are ready to commit,
that's probably the point at which you really want to
seek out a teacher or a facilitator or an instructor.
So once you have moved beyond the point of kind
of dabbling and trying things out.
It is worth sort of seeking out someone who really
kind of can support you and help you kind of
(23:00):
develop a habit and help you to overcome problems. It
is important to think about as you approach your practise,
what are your expectations for it? How do you think
it's going to go and be realistic about it. Our
minds are busy things, busy places and they are not just,
you know, if we sort of have someone who tends
to be hard on ourselves or we tend to be
someone who kind of overthinks things, that's not just going
to go away because we decided to sit on a
(23:21):
cushion in a lotus position.
So there is nothing magical about that. Uh, so I
guess it's important to kind of have realistic expectations as
you engage in these practises as well.
Lynne Malcolm (23:31):
And that's all from us. I'd like to thank our
PsychTalks guests for today, Nerida Lennon and Dr Nicholas Van Dam.
And if you'd like to hear Nerida's meditation exercise in full,
we've added it as a bonus episode you can download.
Our producer for today was Carly Godden, and our assistant
producers were Amy Bugeja and Mairead
Nerida Lennon (23:52):
Murray. Arch Cuthbertson was our sound engineer, and music was
composed by Chris Falk. And of course, all this was
made possible by support from the University of Melbourne's School
of Psychological Sciences. You can listen to more episodes of
PsychTalks with me, Lynne Malcolm, by subscribing to our show,
wherever you get your podcasts from.
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