UNDERSTANDING MINDFULNESS AS NONJUDGMENTAL AWARENESS

Mindfulness is typically defined as nonjudgmental attention to experiences in the present moment [1]. Through mindfulness, you learn to regulate attention and emotions, develop body awareness, and to approach one's experiences with curiosity [1].

Cultivation of mindfulness produces beneficial effects on health and well-being [1]. Research shows that mindfulness meditation positively influences immune function, reduces blood pressure and cortisol levels and increases telomerase activity [2] - read my first entries to get to know how and why telomeres are important for our health. It also has positive effects on psychological well-being aspects such as cognitive functioning [3].

In musical practice, developing awareness of the body and mind through mindful meditation seems important in order to learn to regulate our own attention and emotion in practice and performance. In the end, playing an instrument is a physical skill, then we need to be attuned with our bodies and be relaxed and detached enough to learn to not respond with emotional reactivity to the emotions and thoughts that arise when practicing and playing [4]. 

Being able to be in a mindful state for long periods of time allows us to be in a state of mind conducive to faster improvement in practice and quicker recovery from inevitable mistakes or mental slips during performances [4].

If you want to learn mindfulness check the HeadSpace app. There you can learn the basics of mindful meditation and apply them to your practice and performance.

HOW MINDFULNESS WORKS

Mindfulness works through different mechanisms, which are:

1. Attention regulation

It is an essential skill for musicians, as we need to sustain attention for long periods of time. Many meditation traditions emphasize the necessity to cultivate attention regulation early in the practice by focusing on a single object. Whenever the practitioner notices that the mind has wandered off, she or he returns it to the chosen object [1].

This is a typical instruction for a focused attention meditation:

"Focus your entire attention on your incoming and outgoing breath. Try to sustain your attention there without distraction. If you get distracted, calmly return your attention to the breath and start again" (Smith & Novak, 2003; p.77).

Regular practice in focused attention will help you to sustain attention for longer periods of time on the chosen object or task, e.g., the music you are playing; and whenever distracted it will help you to return the attention to the task, e.g., your playing.

2. Body Awareness

It is another essential skill for musicians as we need to be attuned and relaxed to be able to perform freely and not injure ourselves.

Body awareness is understood as the ability to notice subtle bodily sensations. In mindfulness practice, the focus of attention is usually an object of internal experience: sensory experiences of breathing, sensory experiences related to emotions, or other body sensations [1]. This way, we can remain focused internally and externally on the body in and of itself [1].

3. Emotion Regulation

Music is an emotionally demanding activity. After all, we need to express emotions through music.

Emotion regulation is the alternation of ongoing emotional responses through the action of regulatory processes [1]. Improvements in emotion regulation through mindful meditation results in decreased negative and improved positive mood states and reduced distractive and ruminative thoughts and behaviours [1]. It also leads to decreased emotional reactivity and facilitates the return to the neutral emotional state after reactivity.

Strategies for emotion regulation:

Reappraisal: 

It is an adaptive process through which stressful events are reconstructed as beneficial and meaningful (e.g., thinking that one will learn something from a difficult situation). 

Exposure, extinction, and reconsolidating:

During mindfulness, you expose yourself to whatever is present in the field of awareness, including external, body sensations and emotional experiences. The point is to let themselves be affected by the experience, but not to engage in internal reactivity towards it, and instead bring acceptance to the bodily and affective experiences [1]

This way, you will turn towards and meet unpleasant emotions (such as fear, sadness, anger, and aversion) rather than turning away from them [1]. It can sound counterintuitive, but then you realize that the unpleasant emotions pass away and a sense of safety and well-being can be experienced in its place [1].

Check this article for more strategies

4. Change in perspective of the self

There is no such thing as a permanent, unchanging self [5]. Rather, the perception of the self is a product of an ongoing mental process [1]. When internal awareness becomes enhanced through meditation, you can observe your mental processes with more clarity [6] and the process of a repeatedly arising sense of self becomes observable to you through the development of meta-awareness. Meta-awareness is a form of subjective experience, in which one takes a detached perspective from the static sense of self [5].

According to Buddhist philosophy, a change in perspective on the self is thus the key in the process to enduring forms of happiness. Whereas more advanced meditation practices are required to experience this deidentification from the static sense of self, a deidentification from some parts of mental content is often experienced even in the earliest stages of meditation practice [1]. 

In mindfulness practice, all experiences are observed as they arise and pass. By closely observing the contents of consciousness, you can get closer to understand that these are in constant change and thus are transient. The mindful, non-judgmental observation fosters a detachment from identification with the contents of consciousness [1].

This entry is based on Hölzel et al., (2011) article on mindful meditation and Vázquez, C. (2019) article on mental skills development for practice and performance.