God’s Battle Plan for the Mind

Mindfulness meditation is ever increasing in popularity and has been shown to be effective for a variety of illnesses and ailments.

We have already discussed how and how .

But new research aimed to consider how practicing mindfulness differed between emotions:

was examined in relation to positively and negatively weighted thoughts.

The researchers from the University of North Carolina investigated if mindfulness meditation would differentiate between positive and negative thoughts.

The team conducted 2 studies:

In Study 1, trait was inversely associated with negative rumination but unassociated with positive rumination, controlling for state affect. In Study 2, participants completed either a mindful breathing meditation or a comparable control exercise, followed by a thought listing while viewing affective images.

While the researchers found that mindfulness reduced negative rumination like had been previously found they also found some new interesting results:

did not uniquely relate to emphasis on positive thoughts.

That is to say that mindfulness affected negative thoughts as well:

The study was able to show that mindfulness meditation was able to reduce cognitive emphasis on negativity:

including various types of negative cognitions that may contribute to distress and dysfunction