There is a new well-being fad taking the Western world by storm. Though it has been part of mainstream psychological practice since the late 1970s, it has recently enjoyed a remarkable surge of popularity, sweeping into boardrooms, prisons, hospitals and schools all around the UK, the US and Europe. Yet, it remains poorly understood by most people. The trend is mindfulness.

The mindfulness tide

Mindfulness is a meditation practice which, instead of focusing on emptying the mind, encourages people to focus on ‘the present moment’.¹ It is being extolled as a scientifically provable pathway² to health and well-being, acting to soothe stress and restore peace to busy lives.

Unlike many alternative well-being practices, mindfulness is not merely the domain of specialist health shops. Since being exported to the USA in the 1960s and 1970s through the immigration of Buddhist monks, proponents like Jon Kabat-Zinn have helped to mainstream mindfulness in medical and academic spheres.³ From here it has been promoted to a mass audience and popularised across a variety of sectors, with the help of the internet as well as top-down endorsement from business executives, celebrities and government officials.

In the USA, a pro-mindfulness business culture is spreading thanks to its promotion by giants like Apple and Google, with immense pressure on employees to participate.⁴ This year at Davos, the six mindfulness seminars laid on for global economic leaders were “packed to capacity”.⁵

Nearer home, mindfulness is being promoted everywhere from Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council⁶, to the NHS⁷ and HM prisons⁸. It is being embraced by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Home Office and Transport for London,⁹ whilst the University of Oxford has its own Mindfulness Centre. Enthusiastic independent schools (e.g. Tonbridge, Hampton, Charterhouse) are installing mindfulness programmes and there is currently a campaign for its adoption into the national curriculum.¹⁰

Celebrities are endorsing it (e.g. Ruby Wax, Goldie Hawn, Oprah Winfrey), investigative journalists are raving about it¹¹, mindfulness mobile apps have gone viral, and courses, retreats and themed holidays are widely available. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find an untouched sector or region in the UK.

Finally, an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on mindfulness launched in May 2014 and is currently investigating the possibilities of rolling mindfulness out across “a range of policy areas”¹², with a report on its legislative efficacy due out in June 2015¹³.

Despite all this recent popularity, and freely available information, few ordinary people are really aware of what it is, or where it comes from.

Being mindful: the realities behind the practice

To the unwary, mindfulness seems harmless and uncontroversial. The very name connotes care and thoughtfulness, and it is often couched in descriptive terms like 'clarity', 'awareness', 'acceptance' and 'compassion'. Beneath these comforting descriptions, mindfulness is a deeply spiritual activity: it is actually a Buddhist practice of trying to attain nirvana, or spiritual enlightenment and liberation.

"Beneath these comforting descriptions, mindfulness is a deeply spiritual activity: it is actually a Buddhist practice of trying to attain nirvana, or spiritual enlightenment and liberation."

Despite claims of the easy removal of its religious strings, most mindfulness practitioners openly acknowledge its Buddhist core and its built-in sense of spiritual progression. Mindfulness is often intertwined with practices such as yoga, Tai-chi and Zen, and the more involved you become in mindfulness circles, the more overtly religious it becomes.

However, mindfulness is being carefully dressed and presented in secular clothing to appease Western mind-sets. This is not the hippie-driven New Age of the 1970s and 1980s, but a more subtle, palatable, postmodern update, appearing as one option among many to satisfy 21st century self-help consumers. The result, according to Melanie McDonagh of The Spectator, is a “wildly popular pseudo-religion; a religion tailor-made for the secular West”, encouraging self-centred navel-gazing and introspection.¹⁴ In her view, mindfulness is potentially dangerous because it encourages people to face the darkness of their own souls, without offering any hope of redemption.

The practical, political reality of mindfulness is that it is not a solution to the endemic problems facing UK society; it seems to be more of a narcissistic sticking plaster which appeals to a stressed-out, self-absorbed i-culture. It has nothing to say about injustice or the root causes of mental health problems.

"The message of mindfulness is that the remedy for suffering and evil lies inside yourself, not in the goodness and intervention of God. It erases the need for the Cross."

The message of mindfulness is that the remedy for suffering and evil lies inside yourself, not in the goodness and intervention of God. It erases the need for redemption from the brokenness and sinfulness of human nature (and therefore erases the need for the Cross) and encourages people to look inward, not upward.

Mindfulness should not, therefore, be an option for Bible-believing Christians, despite all that you’ll hear about courses and resources with no Buddhist elements. Whilst the Bible encourages meditation on the rich truths of God's word and character under the leading of the Holy Spirit, this should never be mixed with meditation practices derived from, and rooted in, Eastern religion. God has always made it very clear that he views such mixture as spiritual idolatry, deeply hurtful to him and dangerous for us.

If you are unconvinced about the spiritual dangers of practices like mindfulness, look at some more in-depth coverage of 'alternative' therapies from a Biblical perspective, such as The Dangers of Alternative Ways to Healing by David Cross and John Berry.¹⁵ As living temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19), we should be jealously protecting the spiritual purity of his chosen and beloved dwelling-places, not grieving him by engaging in a spiritual pic-n-mix.

Looking up and out, not in

It should be a cause for deep concern amongst Christians that in an era of global uncertainty, so many are seeking peace, self-control and direction from Buddhist meditation. In business, it represents an earnest search for release from the frenzy of modern Western culture. In the NHS, it represents a subtle recognition that our best medical professionals cannot address endemic problems of depression, anxiety and fear. In Parliament, it is an acknowledgement that our uppermost echelons of leadership lack peace and direction.

Driving the popularity of mindfulness practices are spiritual cries for salvation and freedom: this should be a heart-breaking wake-up call for the Church! Christians should be pointing people to the Solution for whom they are searching: Jesus Christ, who sets the captives free (Luke 4:18) and promises to lovingly shepherd us (John 10:11) and guard us with his divine peace (Phil 4:7), if only we accept him as Lord and Saviour.

Sadly, the mindfulness phenomenon simply highlights that the majority of people in Britain are searching elsewhere to have their psychological and spiritual needs met. This is a terrible indictment of the Church's ineffectualness in offering solutions to modern pressures and problems (if the Church leaves a vacuum, something else will always move to fill it). Christianity is no longer considered even a viable option for personal healing, wholeness and freedom, let alone the only way.

"The mindfulness phenomenon simply highlights that the majority of people in Britain are searching elsewhere to have their psychological and spiritual needs met. Christianity is no longer considered even a viable option."

The Church should also beware the stealth and speed with which mindfulness practices are spreading across the nation. It could easily mean the further incursion of Eastern religious practices into church territory, as groups ask to meet on church premises. We need to equip and support Christian professionals to refuse to participate in company mindfulness sessions, as well as Christian schools that refuse to force children and teachers into daily meditations.

Perhaps the Christian response to mindfulness, therefore, should be watchfulness: instead of focusing inward, we should be looking outward to discern the signs of the times. “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes” (Luke 12:37).

References

1 Kabat-Zinn, J, 2006. Mindfulness for Beginners, Sounds True Inc, CO.

2 Eg see here and here.

3 Wilson, J, 2014. Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture, OUP.

4 Scharmer, O. Davos: Mindfulness, Hostpots and Sleepwalkers, Huffington Post Online, 26 January 2014.

5 Gelles, D. Amid the Chattering of a Global Elite, a Silent Interlude, NY Times, 21 January 2015.

6 Eg http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/libraryservices/newsandevents/healthevents.aspx

7 Eg http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/10694775/Why-does-the-Government-want-to-teach-mindfulness-in-schools.html

8 Eg http://www.prisonmindfulness.org/projects/network-directory/wpbdm-category/u-k/

9 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/10694775/Why-does-the-Government-want-to-teach-mindfulness-in-schools.html

10 http://www.mindfulnessfoundation.org.uk/

11 Eg http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/11161367/Mindfulness-does-it-really-live-up-to-the-hype.html

12 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/register/mindfulness.htm

13 See http://www.themindfulnessinitiative.org.uk/ for an interim report published in January 2015.

14 McDonagh, M, 2014. Mindfulness is something worse than just a smug middle class trend, Spectator Online, 1 November.

15 Sovereign World Ltd, 2010.