More than ever people are overwhelmed by technology, busy lives, overwork, uncertainty about our future and even that of the planet. In its own way contemporary life is “a time of trouble the world has never known.” They look for a way to cope with their stressful lives. Drug and alcohol use is prevalent, while religious faith is ignored and often mocked in an increasingly secular world.

Decades ago many westerners turned to eastern religions for a faith that wouldn’t require much sacrifice. Hollywood celebrities and new age adherents embraced it. The first term for this fad was transcendental meditation (TM) presented as coming from Buddhism and also practiced in Hinduism. It became a money maker for many “gurus” who felt Americans needed to be taught how to do this “mysterious” practice.
An important part of TM was deep breathing and the use of a mantra (a repeated word to keep the person’s mind focused on what is going on around them—this is not a trance). As the practice became westernized and showed promise for depression and anxiety, a different version developed not rooted in religion. Promoters called it mindfulness.

Mindfulness, however, is not necessarily meditation as we think of it. Meditation has many versions of which TM is only one. Meditation is hardly new but practiced by almost every religion in the world in some form or another. Prayer is often referred to as meditation. Positive or religious visualization is another kind of meditation. Christians can meditate on the Psalms or Bible promises. Catholics meditate on their rosaries with their own form of a mantra.
The original TM is one of many cultural exchanges. They are common. Yoga, for instance, thought by many to be purely an Eastern practice, actually borrows from Danish gymnastics and British army calisthenics. No matter how it is packaged, yoga is merely doing stretching exercises. Actually the west had its own version of healthy breathing exercises long before TM; but, like running for exercise, it did not become popular until around the 60s.
In 1957 Dr. K. Buteyko, A Ukrainian physician, noticed the shallow breathing of many of his ill patients. He had them do deep diaphragmatic breathing and found they recovered quicker and easier. He invented a breathing program that is still used today and can be found on line as the Buteyko technique.
In the 70s Herb Benson published The Relaxation Response that included deep breathing and relaxation exercises. Over time it became a boon to those suffering stress, anxiety, depression, and other psychological problems.
Mindfulness is the latest term for relaxing, and it has become mainstream. There is nothing mysterious or spiritualistic about mindfulness. As one critic of the practice tells us, it’s not the product they are selling, it’s how it’s being packaged. Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training.*

According to Medscape, there is little doubt that it helps reduce stress, chronic anxiety and other problems. Research shows it has a powerful effect on the brain and strengthens telomeres that protect our DNA. Harvard and other studies show a positive impact on blood pressure.*
Mindfulness is not emptying the mind as those unfamiliar with it claim, it is actually being more aware of what is going on in the vicinity. It is focusing on the moment rather than engaging in worrisome rumination as in the case of the anxiety prone. It does not need a mantra but only slowed deep breathing—as simple as that---done as little as 15 minutes a day. It can be done with relaxing music or silence.

If this practice is all it is claimed to be by its many practitioners from celebrities, CEOs, psychiatric clinics, to the average working person, it could keep many people off of long-term drug use for depression and anxiety and their side effects. It’s a more natural method that helps one to become more responsible for their healing. Mindfulness is training in self-discipline. Used in proven health programs such as Pritikin’s in conjunction with nutrition and exercise, it helps save lives.

Many, especially Christians, will point to its association with eastern religions. I don’t feel this is a legitimate argument. We don’t find masses of Christians becoming Buddhists. There appears to be nothing religious about the practice unless one chooses to bow before an image while doing it. It promotes a healthy lifestyle and often includes being vegetarian or vegan. To claim that every good thing must come from the west is rather arrogant in a global world with more and more cultural exchange needed or not; especially when we remember how missionaries insisted their converts wear western clothes. Such distrust is especially found in Adventism where anything not coming from our own sources is suspect. This was not so in the church’s beginnings when material from other Christian resources found its way into our publications and helped the church build biblical principles.

Now what could be wrong about such a natural health practice? We promote nutrition and exercise and should. But people have different motives—not always for anyone else’s good but themselves (i.e., for appearance, for pride of self, etc). Mindfulness faces some of the same issues as other health practices and do-it-yourself programs. Yet they are very necessary for those in need.

(1) Can this feel-good wide-spread method be helpful for society as a whole? For secular society it can become part of the problem it seeks to help; the rich but stressed find a way to cope with their greed without feeling guilty. TM and mindfulness provide no ethical standard for their believers, yet for the secular person it acts as a spiritual replacement; in fact its promoters tell us it must be nonjudgmental. For the nonreligious, it becomes a spiritual exercise without the commitment. There is no need of a rational faith; no sin to be repented of. Such people can become less open to the Gospel.

One promoter and founder of the movement with his own organization, Jon Kabat-Zinn, sees it as “promised for the species and the planet” through the next hundred years. Yet it does not provide the motivation for doing good.

(2) Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and similar programs have become big business targeting corporations to help employees and CEO’s feel good while making big profits (including the 1%). Writer,

Ronald Purser, attacks the movement as providing support for the status quo. Though Purser’s diatribe against capitalism may seem over the top, he has a point. According to him “anything that offers success in our unjust society, without trying to change it is not revolutionary—it just helps people cope.” In his book, McMindfulness he compares Kabat-Zinns standardized 8-week program marketed to corporations, schools, government and the military to McDonald’s billion-dollar empire. My comparison goes beyond the monetary motive to –can it be healthy without personal standards and commitment to something beyond self? Does it keep us from looking beyond our stress to making a better community? Devoid of ethics, does it offer a better way of life for us and our families? As Purser says, “The emphasis on non-judgmental awareness can easily disable one’s moral intelligence.” I recognize he is speaking to a secular audience about greed, and that couldn’t happen in Christian circles. Or could it? It all depends on motive.

(3) For the Christian, mindfulness has its place for those struggling with depression and anxiety. But it must never replace the spiritual life. Unfortunately some Christians want to denigrate it and compare it to spiritualism without any evidence. This is a tragedy for the many that have difficulty focusing such as those with ADD. Anyone who has suffered with mental instability will understand the volume of circular thought that keeps them obsessed with regret, failure, fear, and past trauma. We call this remuneration, and it traps the mind through years of treading neural pathways that such thinking has made over time. Thoughts, when focused on, cause feelings that make us happy or miserable and too many Christians get stuck in negative ones. They suffer the stigma and feel they are unworthy witnesses for their faith.

The Bible doesn’t talk about deep breathing, though our breath is sacred and comes from God as He breathed into Adam’s nostrils. It keeps us alive. But the Bible is filled with meditations, especially in the Psalms. Christian writer Ellen White talked about a kind of meditation we call visualization. She suggested following the life of Jesus, especially His last days, in our minds, Her advice to the wondering mind, was to bring it back to the object of meditation—exactly that given by practitioners of mindfulness.

The Christian’s use of meditation or mindfulness must be closely connected with one’s belief system of a moral life, helping others, a desire to serve God. Learning to focus the mind away from negative thought patterns can help us live those standards and desires and thus set the practice apart from the strange idea of being nonjudgmental in an evil world. We do not need gurus or teachers to take our money and tell us how to be mindful. We can integrate it into a healthy lifestyle as we acknowledge God’s purpose for us.

Additional information: An article in Quartz magazine 5/29/17 posed a warning about the use of the Buddhist type of zen meditation when used over a long period of time. “The researchers identified 59 kinds of unexpected or unwanted experiences, which they classified into seven domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective (related to moods), somatic, conative (related to motivation), sense of self, and social.”