Investigating the Phenomenological Matrix of Mindfulness-Related Practices from a Neurocognitive Perspective

Title: Investigating the Phenomenological Matrix of Mindfulness-Related Practices from a Neurocognitive Perspective

Authors: Antoine Lutz, Amishi P. Jha, John D. Dunne, Clifford D. Saron

Year: 2015

Summary: This review of research into mindfulness summarises a significant amount of recent nonclinical investigation into the subject. It presents mindfulness as a series of different but related practices which cover diverse phenomena. It highlights the broad spectrum of mindfulness and how it is understood from both spiritual and secular perspectives. This paper expresses the complex nature of mindfulness meditation within ‘a multidimensional phenomenological matrix which itself can be expressed in a neurocognitive framework’. Opportunities and approaches for new research in the general area of mindfulness are suggested. Several important and under researched concerns are raised in this investigation, and calls for a greater understanding of the ethical and axiological contexts are particularly welcome. This work may in due course prove to be an important milestone in the research of meditation in general and mindfulness in particular.

Perspective: Neurocognitive, phenomenological, cognitive psychology

Link: https://www.upaya.org/uploads/pdfs/DunneSaron.pdf

Author: Stephen

Neuropsychologist researching what happens when a spiritual practice (meditation) is translated to a psychological intervention; what is lost and what is gained from the curative potential? A PhD candidate writing the scientific history mindfulness. Also researching how compassion and explicitly nondual meditation methods influence our physical and mental health. Stephen has decades of personal practice in spiritual and secular forms of meditation, he has also been trained in the Himalayan Science of Mind and Perception (Tsema). Alongside the teaching and research of nondual methods, Stephen trains his own brain every day with Dzogchen practices. View all posts by Stephen