The Psychological and Physiological Mechanisms of Meditation

One of the important elements of mindfulness meditation is based on the fact that ‘nothing is eternal and unchanged,’ which is considered to be at the heart of Buddhist psychology. With mindfulness meditation practice, all experiences are observed as they arise and pass away. The practitioner notices things constantly changing along the way, and so they understand that all experiences are temporary. This mindfulness and non-judgmental observation promotes a separation from identifying oneself with the content of one’s consciousness. In the literature dealing with mindfulness-based therapy, the following terms are used interchangeably as terms referring to ‘the ability to observe one’s thoughts or feelings as temporary events of the mind rather than as true and accurate in themselves’: metacognitive awareness, decentering, defusion, distance, and reperceiving.