Mindfulness training improves emotion regulation by enhancing executive control, according to a proposed model. Present-moment awareness and nonjudgmental acceptance increase sensitivity to affective cues in experience, refining attunement to subtle emotional changes. This heightened openness signals the need for control, thereby improving executive control and ultimately emotion regulation. The model integrates new findings from executive control research to explain how mindfulness cultivates effective emotion regulation, addressing a gap in understanding the mechanisms behind its psychological benefits.
Mindfulness training interventions can improve mental and physical health outcomes such as HIV pathogenesis, depression relapse, inflammation, and drug abuse, but the mechanisms are unclear. This article proposes a mindfulness stress buffering account, suggesting that mindfulness-based health effects are most likely in high-stress populations where stress affects disease processes. An evidence-based biological model of mindfulness, stress buffering, and health is presented.
Enduring happiness, or sukha in Tibetan Buddhism, is a state of flourishing that arises from mental balance and well-being, not from transient pleasures. Destructive emotions, such as hatred and craving, are seen as afflictive states that disrupt this balance, while nonafflictive emotions like compassion and loving-kindness support it. The Buddhist perspective challenges Western psychology to consider that lasting happiness can be cultivated through mental training and that emotions are not simply automatic reactions but can be transformed. This view raises questions for empirical research about how to measure and study such cultivated states and traits.