Mindfulness

Mindfulness describes a family of secular practices that adapt techniques from Buddhist meditation — especially from the Theravada and Zen traditions — for use outside a religious framework. It is taught in clinics, schools, workplaces and research settings, usually without reference to rebirth, karma or a specific cosmology.

Programmes typically combine body-based attention such as the body scan, breath awareness and sitting meditation, often structured as an eight-week course. Because the approach deliberately separates technique from doctrine, it raises its own questions about what is gained and what is left out when a contemplative practice is adapted this way.