How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective

Abstract

Cultivation of mindfulness, the nonjudgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment, produces beneficial effects on well-being and ameliorates psychiatric and stress-related symptoms. Mindfulness meditation has therefore increasingly been incorporated into psychotherapeutic interventions. Although the number of publications in the field has sharply increased over the last two decades, there is a paucity of theoretical reviews that integrate the existing literature into a comprehensive theoretical framework. In this article, we explore several components through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects: (a) attention regulation, (b) body awareness, (c) emotion regulation (including reappraisal and exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation), and (d) change in perspective on the self. Recent empirical research, including practitioners' self-reports and experimental data, provides evidence supporting these mechanisms. Functional and structural neuroimaging studies have begun to explore the neuroscientific processes underlying these components. Evidence suggests that mindfulness practice is associated with neuroplastic changes in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, fronto-limbic network, and default mode network structures. The authors suggest that the mechanisms described here work synergistically, establishing a process of enhanced self-regulation. Differentiating between these components seems useful to guide future basic research and to specifically target areas of development in the treatment of psychological disorders.
© Association for Psychological Science 2011.

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Perspectives on Psychological Science
6(6) 537 –559
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1745691611419671
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Mindfulness meditation has been reported to produce beneficial
effects on a number of psychiatric, functional somatic, and
stress-related symptoms and has therefore increasingly been
incorporated into psychotherapeutic programs (cf., Baer, 2003;
Grossman, Niemann, Schmidt, & Walach, 2004). A large body
of research documents the efficacy of mindfulness-based inter-
ventions in the treatment of a number of clinical disorders,
including anxiety (Hofmann, Sawyer, Witt, & Oh, 2010;
Roemer, Orsillo, & Salters-Pedneault, 2008), depression (Hof-
mann et al., 2010; Teasdale et al., 2000), substance abuse
(Bowen et al., 2006), eating disorders (Tapper et al., 2009), and
chronic pain (Grossman, Tiefenthaler-Gilmer, Raysz, & Kesper,
2007). Furthermore, mindfulness meditation positively influ-
ences aspects of physical health, including improved immune
function (Carlson, Speca, Faris, & Patel, 2007; Davidson et al.,
2003), reduced blood pressure and cortisol levels (Carlson et al.,
2007), and increased telomerase activity1 (Jacobs et al., 2010).
Not only has mindfulness successfully been used in the
treatment of disorders and improvement of health; it has also
been shown to produce positive effects on psychological well-
being in healthy participants (Carmody & Baer, 2008; Chiesa &
Serretti, 2009) and to enhance cognitive functioning (Jha,
Krompinger, & Baime, 2007; Ortner, Kilner, & Zelazo, 2007;
Pagnoni & Cekic, 2007; Slagter et al., 2007). Historically, mind-
fulness is a concept stemming from ancient Buddhist philoso-
phy (Bhikkhu, 2010), and is practiced to achieve enduring
happiness (Ekman, Davidson, Ricard, & Wallace, 2005) and to
gain insight into a view of the true nature of existence (Olen-
dzki, 2010).
Corresponding Author:
Britta K. Hölzel, Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, Justus Liebig-University,
Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10 H, 35394 Giessen, Germany
E-mail: britta@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work?
Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a
Conceptual and Neural Perspective
Britta K. Hölzel1,2, Sara W. Lazar2, Tim Gard1,2,
Zev Schuman-Olivier2, David R. Vago3, and Ulrich Ott1
1Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, Justus Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany; 2Massachusetts General Hospital,
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; and 3Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Abstract
Cultivation of mindfulness, the nonjudgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment, produces beneficial effects on
well-being and ameliorates psychiatric and stress-related symptoms. Mindfulness meditation has therefore increasingly been
incorporated into psychotherapeutic interventions. Although the number of publications in the field has sharply increased
over the last two decades, there is a paucity of theoretical reviews that integrate the existing literature into a comprehensive
theoretical framework. In this article, we explore several components through which mindfulness meditation exerts its
effects: (a) attention regulation, (b) body awareness, (c) emotion regulation (including reappraisal and exposure, extinction,
and reconsolidation), and (d) change in perspective on the self. Recent empirical research, including practitioners’ self-reports
and experimental data, provides evidence supporting these mechanisms. Functional and structural neuroimaging studies have
begun to explore the neuroscientific processes underlying these components. Evidence suggests that mindfulness practice is
associated with neuroplastic changes in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, fronto-limbic network,
and default mode network structures. The authors suggest that the mechanisms described here work synergistically, establishing
a process of enhanced self-regulation. Differentiating between these components seems useful to guide future basic research
and to specifically target areas of development in the treatment of psychological disorders.
Keywords
anxiety disorders, attention, cognition, consciousness, neuroscience, positive psychology, stress disorders

538 Hölzel et al.
Definition of Mindfulness
In current research contexts, mindfulness is typically defined
as nonjudgmental attention to experiences in the present
moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1990). Bishop et al. (2004) suggest a
two-component model of mindfulness, where the first compo-
nent is the regulation of attention in order to maintain it on the
immediate experience, and the second component involves
approaching one’s experiences with an orientation of curiosity,
openness, and acceptance, regardless of their valence and
desirability. Mindfulness is typically cultivated in formal med-
itation practices, such as sitting meditation, walking medita-
tion, or mindful movements (Kabat-Zinn, 1990). The practice
of mindfulness meditation encompasses focusing attention on
the experience of thoughts, emotions, and body sensations,
simply observing them as they arise and pass away.
Need for a Theoretical Framework
It is striking that this seemingly simplistic practice can have
such a wide range of applications and effects. Along with the
many positive implications of mindfulness arises the question:
How does mindfulness work; what are its mechanisms?
Although there is currently a large body of literature, covering
a wide range of research, including qualitative research, feasi-
bility trials, controlled clinical trials, behavioral studies, and
neuroscientific research, there is a relative paucity of theoreti-
cal reviews that consolidate the existing literature into a com-
prehensive theoretical framework.
Existing research on mindfulness includes a few theoretical
accounts describing mechanisms of mindfulness meditation
(see Table 1). Several of these accounts expound on the central
role of attention in meditation practice (Brown & Ryan, 2003;
Carmody, 2009; Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008).
Others have suggested that several components mediate the
beneficial effects of mindfulness practice. For instance, Shap-
iro, Carlson, Astin, and Freedman (2006) posit that attention,
intention, and attitude are the three critical components of
mindfulness. Intentionally paying attention with a nonjudg-
mental attitude leads to a significant change in perspective, a
so-called decentering (Fresco et al., 2007) or reperceiving.
Brown, Ryan, and Creswell (2007) also describe several pro-
cesses underlying the beneficial effects of mindfulness,
including (a) insight, (b) exposure, (c) nonattachment, (d)
enhanced mind–body functioning, and (e) integrated function-
ing. Similarly, in her 2003 review, Ruth Baer summarized sev-
eral mechanisms that may explain how mindfulness skills can
lead to symptom reduction and behavior change, namely (a)
exposure, (b) cognitive change, (c) self-management, (d)
relaxation, and (e) acceptance. A valuable empirical account
for the description of the facets of mindfulness is the Five
Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Kri-
etemeyer, & Toney, 2006), which was developed based on an
item pool of previously existing mindfulness questionnaires.
Factor analyses over these items yielded five facets of mind-
fulness: observing (attending to or noticing internal and exter-
nal stimuli, such as sensations, emotions, cognitions, sights,
sounds, and smells); describing (noting or mentally labeling
these stimuli with words); acting with awareness (attending to
one’s current actions, as opposed to behaving automatically or
absentmindedly); nonjudging of inner experience (refraining
from evaluation of one’s sensations, cognitions, and emo-
tions); and nonreactivity to inner experience (allowing
thoughts and feelings to come and go, without attention get-
ting caught in them).
The field has produced a number of studies utilizing psycho-
logical scales or behavioral tasks that provide empirical support
for some of the proposed components. Simultaneously, a grow-
ing body of neuroimaging literature begins to describe brain
activity during the meditative state as well as changes in neural
structure and function associated with meditation practice. To
our knowledge, no one has previously tried to consolidate the
existing empirical literature. Our goal is to consolidate existing
findings and address several components that have been empiri-
cally supported. Furthermore, whereas the previous models
have described the process of mindfulness almost exclusively
from a conceptual, psychological perspective, this present
review will also integrate a neuroscientific perspective. This
review is meant not as a complete description of the research in
the field but to stimulate scientific debate.
In this review, we first describe what we believe to be the
components of mindfulness meditation. We then discuss how
these components are integrated during mindfulness medita-
tion and suggest how they might interact with each other dur-
ing a given situation. Finally, the relationship of self-compassion
with the components is addressed.
Table 1. Previous Theoretical Accounts That Describe Mechanisms of Mindfulness Meditation
Publication Suggested components
Shapiro, Carlson,
Astin, and Freedman (2006) Attention, intention, attitude
Brown, Ryan, and Creswell (2007) Insight, exposure, nonattachment, enhanced mind–body functioning,
integrated functioning
Baer (2003) Exposure, cognitive change, self-management, relaxation, acceptance
Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (Baer, Smith, Hopkins,
Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006)
Observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging of inner
experience, nonreactivity to inner experience

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? 539
Components of Mindfulness Meditation
We believe that an array of distinct but interacting mechanisms
are at play in producing the benefits of mindfulness meditation
practice and propose that the combination of the following
components—some of which have been identified in previous
accounts—describe much of the mechanism of action through
which mindfulness works:
1. Attention regulation
2. Body awareness
3. Emotion regulation, including
a. Reappraisal
b. Exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation
4. Change in perspective on the self
These components interact closely to constitute a process
of enhanced self-regulation (Carver & Scheier, 2011; Vohs &
Baumeister, 2004). However, the different components might
come into play to varying degrees within any specific moment
during mindfulness meditation. In the following sections, we
address each of these components individually (see Table 2 for
a list of the components and their characteristics).
1. Attention regulation
Many meditation traditions emphasize the necessity to culti-
vate attention regulation early in the practice (e.g., samadhi in
the Theravada Buddhist tradition [Hart, 1987]; samatha in
Tibetan Buddhist traditions [Lutz, Dunne, & Davidson, 2007];
or dharana in Indian Yoga traditions [Vishnu Devananda,
1999]). They often recommend a focused attention meditation
before moving on to other types of meditations later in the
learning process, such as those that focus on cultivating posi-
tive emotions. In focused attention meditation ( HYPERLINK
"" \l "bib148" \o "bib148" Lutz, Slagter, et al., 2008), attention
is supposed to rest on a single object. Whenever the practitio-
ner notices that the mind has wandered off, she or he returns it
to the chosen object. A typical instruction for a focused atten-
tion meditation in the mindfulness meditation tradition is the
following: “Focus your entire attention on your incoming and
outgoing breath. Try to sustain your attention there without
distraction. If you get distracted, calmly return your attention
to the breath and start again” (Smith & Novak, 2003; p.77).
Illustrating the effects of repeated practice of focused attention
meditation, meditators report that the regular practice enables
them to focus their attention for an extended period of time
(Barinaga, 2003), and distractions disturb this focus less fre-
quently during formal meditation practice and in everyday
life. In accordance with such self-reports, a number of studies
have empirically documented enhanced attentional perfor-
mance in meditators (e.g., Jha et al., 2007; Slagter et al., 2007;
Valentine & Sweet, 1999; van den Hurk, Giommi, Gielen,
Speckens, & Barendregt, 2010).
Behavioral findings on meditation and executive attention. Dur-
ing focused attention meditation, distracting external events as
Table 2. Components Proposed to Describe the Mechanisms Through Which Mindfulness Works
Mechanism Exemplary instructions
Self-reported and experimental
behavioral findings Associated brain areas
1. Attention regulation Sustaining attention on the
chosen object; whenever
distracted, returning attention
to the object
Enhanced performance: executive
attention (Attention Network
Test and Stroop interference),
orienting, alerting, diminished
attentional blink effect
Anterior cingulate cortex
2. Body awareness Focus is usually an object of
internal experience: sensory
experiences of breathing,
emotions, or other body
sensations
Increased scores on the Observe
subscale of the Five Facet Mind-
fulness Questionnaire; narrative
self-reports of enhanced body
awareness
Insula, temporo-parietal
junction
3.1 Emotion regulation:
reappraisal
Approaching ongoing emotional
reactions in a different way
(nonjudgmentally, with ac-
ceptance)
Increases in positive reappraisal
(Cognitive Emotion Regulation
Questionnaire)
(Dorsal) prefrontal cortex
(PFC)
3.2 Emotion regulation:
exposure, extinction, and
reconsolidation
Exposing oneself to whatever is
present in the field of aware-
ness; letting oneself be affected
by it; refraining from internal
reactivity
Increases in nonreactivity to inner
experiences (Five Facet Mind-
fulness Questionnaire)
Ventro-medial PFC,
hippocampus, amygdala
4. Change in perspective on
the self
Detachment from identification
with a static sense of self
Self-reported changes in self-con-
cept (Tennessee Self-Concept
Scale, Temperament and Char-
acter Inventory)
Medial PFC, posterior
cingulate cortex, insula,
temporo-parietal
junction

540 Hölzel et al.
well as memories or thoughts about future events represent con-
flicts to task goals. These are disregarded while the practitioner
concentrates on the meditative object (e.g., the breath, body sen-
sations, thoughts, emotions, a mantra, or visualization). Main-
taining the focus of attention on a pursued object, while
disregarding distractions, is referred to as conflict monitoring,
or executive attention, and is one of the three attention networks
proposed by Posner and Petersen (1990). One cognitive test that
specifically measures executive attention is the executive atten-
tion task of the Attention Network Test (Fan, McCandliss, Som-
mer, Raz, & Posner, 2002). Two studies found that experienced
meditators showed better performance on this executive atten-
tion task when compared with nonmeditators, as indicated by
smaller error scores (Jha et al., 2007; van den Hurk et al., 2010)
and lower reaction times (Jha et al., 2007). Additionally, a lon-
gitudinal study showed that only five days of meditation prac-
tice (Integrative Body–Mind Training) led to improvements on
this test (Tang et al., 2007). Findings of the influence of mind-
fulness practice on executive attention using the classical Stroop
task (Stroop, 1935) are mixed. Whereas one study did not find
effects of an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
course on Stroop interference (Anderson, Lau, Segal, & Bishop,
2007), others using this test found lower Stroop interference in
experienced meditators compared with controls (Chan & Wool-
lacott, 2007; Moore & Malinowski, 2009) and a reduction in
Stroop interference following a brief meditation intervention
(Wenk-Sormaz, 2005).
Neural mechanism of executive attention. Neuroimaging
research has established that the anterior cingulate cortex
(ACC) enables executive attention (van Veen & Carter, 2002)
by detecting the presence of conflicts emerging from incom-
patible streams of information processing. During meditation,
when distracting external events or memories conflict with
task goals, ACC activation may contribute to the maintenance
of attention by alerting the systems implementing top-down
regulation to resolve this conflict (van Veen & Carter, 2002).
Together with the fronto-insular cortex, the ACC constitutes a
network that is involved in switching between activations of
different brain networks, thereby facilitating cognitive control
(Sridharan, Levitin, & Menon, 2008). Neurons in these brain
regions have specific properties that enable a rapid relay of
control signals to multiple areas of the brain (Allman, Watson,
Tetreault, & Hakeem, 2005) to initiate responses during cogni-
tively demanding tasks (Sridharan et al., 2008).
Neuroscientific findings on meditation practice. Several neu-
roscientific studies have reported the ACC to be implicated
in meditation (Cahn & Polich, 2006). Using functional MRI
(fMRI), Hölzel et al. (2007) pursued the question of which
brain region would be distinctly activated when meditators
performed focused attention meditation. Compared with
age-, gender-, and education-matched controls, experienced
meditators showed greater activation in the rostral ACC
(Hölzel et al., 2007), suggesting an effect of meditation
practice on ACC activity. A similar effect (greater rostral
ACC activation in meditators compared with controls) was
identified when individuals engaged in a mindfulness prac-
tice while awaiting unpleasant electric stimulation (Gard
et al., 2010). Five days of Integrative Body–Mind Training
may lead to greater activation of the rostral ACC during the
resting state (Tang et al., 2009). Although ACC activation
might initially be enhanced when acquiring greater atten-
tional control, it might later decrease with higher levels of
expertise, when the focus of attention is so steady that moni-
toring distractions becomes superfluous (Brefczynski-Lewis,
Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson, & Davidson, 2007). In addition to
these functional findings, structural MRI data also indicate
that meditation practice might exert an influence on the ACC.
Cortical thickness in the dorsal ACC was greater in experi-
enced meditators compared with control subjects in an analy-
sis of brain gray matter (Grant, Courtemanche, Duerden,
Duncan, & Rainville, 2010), and 11 hr of Integrative Body–
Mind Training led to an increase in white matter integrity in
the ACC (Tang et al., 2010). In line with the assumption that
ACC function is strengthened through concentrative medita-
tion, electroencephalogram data document increased frontal
midline theta rhythm during meditation (Aftanas & Golo-
cheikine, 2002; Kubota et al., 2001). Frontal midline theta is
associated with attention demanding tasks and presumably
reflects ACC (and medial prefrontal cortex) activity (Asada,
Fukuda, Tsunoda, Yamaguchi, & Tonoike, 1999).
Clinical relevance. The strengthening of attention regulation
and accompanying ACC performance through mindfulness
practice is especially promising for the treatment of disorders
that suffer from deficiencies in these functions, such as
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; e.g., Passa-
rotti, Sweeney, & Pavuluri, 2010) or bipolar disorder (Foun-
toulakis, Giannakopoulos, Kovari, & Bouras, 2008). Although
there is currently insufficient evidence to support the effec-
tiveness of any type of meditation for ADHD (Krisanapra-
kornkit, Ngamjarus, Witoonchart, & Piyavhatkul, 2010),
initial feasibility studies have shown promising effects on
improvements in attention (Zylowska et al., 2008). Bipolar
disorder is also associated with impairments in sustained
attention and executive function, as has been established by a
large number of empirical investigations (Ancin et al., 2010;
Clark, Iversen, & Goodwin, 2002; Kolur, Reddy, John, Kan-
davel, & Jain, 2006; Kravariti et al., 2009; Maalouf et al.,
2010). Neuroanatomical models of bipolar disorder propose a
key role of the ACC, and a meta-analysis has confirmed vol-
ume changes in the ACC as well as state-dependent alterations
in resting state activity in this region (Fountoulakis et al.,
2008). Furthermore, ACC activation decreases during cogni-
tive tasks in bipolar patients (Gruber, Rogowska, & Yurgelun-
Todd, 2004). Mindfulness meditation practice might therefore
be beneficial to ameliorate these deficits in cognitive function-
ing and accompanying ACC function by strengthening these
skills in bipolar patients (Stange et al., in press). In line with
this hypothesis, a few pilot studies have shown beneficial
effects on symptoms in patients with bipolar disorder (Deck-
ersbach et al., in press; Miklowitz et al., 2009; Williams et al.,

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? 541
2008). However, further research is needed to assess the effec-
tiveness of mindfulness-based treatments on attention regula-
tion in these disorders.
Effects of meditation practice on further components of atten-
tion. Aside from the documented improvements in executive
attention through mindfulness, effects have also been reported
on other attention capacities. Within the framework of the net-
work components described by Posner and Petersen (1990),
enhanced performance in “orienting” (directing and limiting
attention to a subset of possible inputs) has been found follow-
ing an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course (Jha et
al., 2007) and in experienced meditators, as compared with con-
trols (van den Hurk et al., 2010). An improvement in “alerting”
(achieving and maintaining a vigilant state of preparedness) was
found in experienced meditators following a 1-month mindful-
ness retreat (Jha et al., 2007), as well as a 3-month samatha
retreat (MacLean et al., 2010). At a neurobiological level, these
findings may relate to functional changes in the dorsal and ven-
tral attention systems (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002; Fox, Cor-
betta, Snyder, Vincent, & Raichle, 2006). These data suggest
that early stages of mindfulness practice (represented by a short
mindfulness course) may lead to improvement in the function of
the dorsal attention system involved in orienting, and more
intensive open monitoring meditation on a 1-month retreat may
additionally result in improvements in the function of the ven-
tral attention system involved in alerting.
Other types of attention tests have shown that 3 months of
intensive mindfulness meditation lead to a smaller attentional
blink effect (a lapse in attention following a stimulus within a
rapid stream of presented stimuli) and modified distribution of
brain resources (Slagter et al., 2007; also see van Leeuwen,
Willer, & Melloni, 2009). Varying meditation practices will
differentially affect these specific attentional components (see
Lutz, Slagter, et al., 2008, for a review of focused attention
versus open monitoring meditation). Future research is neces-
sary to assess the impact of different types of meditation prac-
tice on these other attentional components.
Attention regulation—in particular conflict monitoring—
seems to be an important mechanism that is often developed
early in mindfulness practice. A sufficient degree of attention
regulation is necessary in order to stay engaged in meditation,
as opposed to drifting off into day dreaming. Thus, successful
attention regulation might be a building block for practitioners
to also benefit from the other mechanisms of mindfulness
practice, which will be described below. This connection
between attention regulation and other mechanisms should be
tested in future research.
2. Body awareness
Body awareness can be understood as the ability to notice
subtle bodily sensations (Mehling et al., 2009). In mindfulness
practice, the focus of attention is usually an object of internal
experience: sensory experiences of breathing, sensory experi-
ences related to emotions, or other body sensations. According
to Theravadan interpretations of Buddhist teachings, aware-
ness of the body was taught as the first frame of reference
(foundation of mindfulness). In Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s transla-
tion of the Satipatthana Sutta (Bhikkhu, 2010), the Buddha
guides the monks with the following meditation instructions:
In this way he [the monk] remains focused internally on the
body in and of itself, or externally on the body in and of itself,
or both internally and externally on the body in and of itself.
Or he remains focused on the phenomenon of origination with
regard to the body, on the phenomenon of passing away with
regard to the body, or on the phenomenon of origination and
passing away with regard to the body. Or his mindfulness that
“There is a body” is maintained to the extent of knowledge
and remembrance. And he remains independent, unsustained
by (not clinging to) anything in the world. This is how a monk
remains focused on the body in and of itself.
Self-report findings. Practitioners often self-report that the
practice of attending to body sensations results in an enhanced
awareness of bodily states and greater perceptual clarity of
subtle interoception. In qualitative interviews, 10 experienced
mindfulness meditators were asked what changes they experi-
enced in their lives since they had begun meditating. Seven of
the 10 meditators spontaneously reported that they noticed a
more differentiated experience of body sensations, and four of
them reported greater emotional awareness (Hölzel, Ott, Hem-
pel, & Stark, 2006). Participants in a mindfulness-based stress
reduction course further illustrate self-reported changes in
body awareness, as measured by the Five Facet Mindfulness
Questionnaire. Body awareness is represented in items of the
Observe subscale of the questionnaire, which covers the
awareness of body sensations (e.g., Item 1: “When I’m walk-
ing, I deliberately notice the sensations of my body moving”),
hearing, smelling, seeing, interoceptions, thoughts, and emo-
tions (e.g., Item 11: “I notice how foods and drinks affect my
thoughts, bodily sensations, and emotions”). Participation in
the mindfulness-based stress reduction course resulted in large
increases in scores on this scale (Carmody & Baer, 2008).
Behavioral findings. Although meditation practitioners report
improved capability for body awareness, to our knowledge
there has been no empirical evidence to verify these claims. In
fact, studies that tested this claim by assessing performance
on a heartbeat detection task, a standard measure of resting
interoceptive awareness, found no evidence that meditators
had superior performance compared with nonmeditators
(Khalsa et al., 2008; Nielsen & Kaszniak, 2006). However,
awareness of heartbeat sensations is not emphasized during
mindfulness practice and thus may not be the best index of the
awareness cultivated by the practice of meditation. Further
studies are needed that test other types of body awareness,
such as tactile acuity, which has been shown to be superior in
experienced Tai Chi practitioners compared with matched
controls (Kerr et al., 2008).
Neuroscientific findings: Functional neuroimaging. A number of
findings from the mindfulness neuroscience literature point to
changes in the function and structure of brain regions related

542 Hölzel et al.
to body awareness. The insula is commonly activated during
tasks of interoceptive awareness (Craig, 2003), and its local
gray matter volume correlates with interoceptive accuracy and
visceral awareness (Critchley, Wiens, Rotshtein, Ohman, &
Dolan, 2004). Insula activation has been found to be increased
in individuals after a mindfulness-based stress reduction
course (compared with individuals who had not practiced
mindfulness) when they focused on their momentary experi-
ence (i.e., employed an experiential focus; Farb et al., 2007).
This study also found increased activation of the secondary
somatosensory area, which is relevant for the processing of
exteroceptive sensory events. In another study, a group of par-
ticipants that had undergone mindfulness training showed
greater activation of the right insula when being presented
with sad movie clips (Farb et al., 2010). Further neuroscien-
tific evidence along the same lines comes from studies on
mindfulness in the context of pain. When presented with
unpleasant stimuli during a mindful state, mindfulness medita-
tors show stronger brain activation in the (posterior) insula and
secondary somatosensory cortex (Gard et al., 2010). Similarly,
mindfulness meditators more robustly activated the left ante-
rior, posterior, and mid-insula as well as the thalamus (Grant,
Courtemanche, & Rainville, 2010). The enhanced sensory
processing has been suggested to represent increased bottom-
up processing of the stimulus, that is, awareness of the actual
sensation of the stimulus as it is.
Neuroscientific findings: Structural neuroimaging. Two cross-
sectional studies comparing the gray matter morphometry of
the brains of experienced meditators and controls showed that
meditators had greater cortical thickness (Lazar et al., 2005)
and greater gray matter concentration (Hölzel et al., 2008) in
the right anterior insula. Although 8 weeks of mindfulness
practice did not reveal changes in gray matter concentration in
the insula (Hölzel et al., 2011), the same study did reveal that
8 weeks of practice led to increases in gray matter concentra-
tion in the temporo-parietal junction. It has been suggested
that the temporo-parietal junction is a crucial structure for
mediating the first-person perspective of bodily states (Blanke
et al., 2005), or embodiment (Arzy, Thut, Mohr, Michel, &
Blanke, 2006), and that impaired processing at the temporo-
parietal junction may lead to the pathological experience of
the self, such as out-of-body experiences (Blanke & Arzy,
2005). Morphological changes in the temporo-parietal junc-
tion might be associated with an increased awareness of the
experience of oneself within the body. Such changes seem to
correspond with translations of meditation instructions
ascribed to the historical Buddha (Bhikkhu, 2010): “His mind-
fulness that ‘There is a body’ is maintained to the extent of
knowledge and remembrance.”
Body awareness and emotion regulation. Body sensations
have been ascribed a crucial role in the conscious experience
of emotions (feelings), not only historically (James, 1884), but
also currently (Bechara & Naqvi, 2004; Damasio, 1999, 2003).
An increased awareness of the body’s response to an emo-
tional stimulus might thus lead to greater awareness of one’s
own emotional life; in turn, an awareness of one’s emotions is
a precondition for being able to regulate those emotions. Help-
ing individuals increase their body awareness can therefore be
considered a relevant aspect in the treatment of psychological
disorders. For example, a lack of awareness of internal experi-
ence—along with problems in emotion regulation—is a cru-
cial problem for individuals with borderline personality
disorder, and helping patients increase their internal awareness
might be one key element in its treatment (Linehan, Arm-
strong, Suarez, Allmon, & Heard, 1991; Wupperman, Neu-
mann, & Axelrod, 2008). Furthermore, the increase of body
awareness is also relevant in the treatment of eating disorders
(Hill, Craighead, & Safer, 2011) as well as substance abuse
disorders. In a pilot study of 16 heroin users in early recovery,
high levels of the Observe subscale of the Five Facet Mindful-
ness Questionnaire were associated with decreased heroin use
among those at high risk for relapse (Schuman-Olivier, Alba-
nese, Carlini, & Shaffer, 2011), suggesting a role for body
awareness in the recovery process.
Body awareness and empathy. Internal awareness of one’s
own experience has also been suggested to be an important pre-
condition for empathic responses. Accurate observations of the
self are required for the appropriate understanding of others
(Decety & Jackson, 2004). Self-report studies provide empirical
support for the existence of this relationship. A higher level of
mindful observation, as assessed with the Observe scale of the
Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (Baer, Smith, &
Allen, 2004), has been found to be associated with more engage-
ment in empathy (Dekeyser, Raes, Leijssen, Leysen, & Dewulf,
2008), as assessed with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index
(Davis, 1980). Neuroscientific research shows that a subset of
brain regions (namely, the insula and temporo-parietal junction)
is impacted both in awareness of one’s own body sensations and
in social cognition and empathic responses (Singer et al., 2004).
Enhanced function of these structures following mindfulness
training might therefore also correspond to improved empathic
responses and compassion attributed to meditation training
(Shapiro, Schwartz, & Bonner, 1998). Supporting this assump-
tion, research has found that Tibetan monks with over 10,000 hr
of meditation experience showed greater activation of both
regions during compassion meditation (a meditation that aims at
cultivating feelings of empathy toward the suffering of other
beings and the wish to alleviate their suffering) while they were
presented with auditory stimuli of people suffering (Lutz, Bref-
czynski-Lewis, Johnstone, & Davidson, 2008).
To summarize, body sensations are a common object of
attention during mindfulness meditation, and practitioners
report improved body awareness. Although there have been no
objective behavioral data supporting the increased awareness,
neuroscientific data on mindfulness practice point to the modi-
fication of brain regions involved in first-person conscious
experience of body awareness. The enhancement of body
awareness might have relevance for affect regulation and
empathic processes and thus may be particularly relevant in
the mindfulness-based treatment of patients with such deficits.

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? 543
Ongoing attempts to advance the development of instruments
for the valid assessment of body awareness (Mehling et al.,
2009) will help to further illuminate this connection.
3. Emotion regulation
In this section, we first describe the general findings regard-
ing the effects of mindfulness on emotion regulation. Then
we focus on two different emotion regulation strategies that
seem to be involved in mindfulness, namely, reappraisal and
extinction.
Role of emotion regulation in meditation practice. A growing
body of literature suggests that mindfulness practice results in
improvements in emotion regulation. Emotion regulation
refers to the alteration of ongoing emotional responses through
the action of regulatory processes (Ochsner & Gross, 2005). In
Theravadan translations of Buddhist teachings, the alteration
of emotional responses is addressed in the Satipatthana Sutta
in terms of the overcoming of sorrow and distress as part of
meditation practice:
This is the direct path for the purification of beings, for
the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the disap-
pearance of pain and distress, for the attainment of the
right method, and for the realization of Unbinding. . . . He
[the monk] remains focused on feelings . . . mind . . .
mental qualities in and of themselves—ardent, alert, and
mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference
to the world. (Bhikkhu, 2010)
Behavioral and peripheral physiological finding. Studies
from the field of mindfulness research have addressed
improvements in emotion regulation through a variety of
approaches, including experimental, self-report, peripheral
physiological, and neuroimaging data. Healthy novices
enrolled in a 7-week mindfulness training program showed a
reduction in emotional interference (assessed as the delay in
reaction time after being presented with affective versus neu-
tral pictures) compared with those who followed a relaxation
meditation protocol and those in a wait-list control group
(Ortner et al., 2007). Both the mindfulness and relaxation
meditation groups also displayed significant reductions in
physiological reactivity during the task. Furthermore, in a
group of long-term practitioners, participants with more mind-
fulness meditation experience showed less emotional interfer-
ence than did less experienced practitioners. Studies using
self-report data from healthy individuals have shown that
mindfulness meditation decreased negative mood states (Jha,
Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010), improved posi-
tive mood states, and reduced distractive and ruminative
thoughts and behaviors (Jain et al., 2007). A questionnaire
study investigating the immediate effects of brief (15-min)
stress management interventions found that mindful breathing
may help to reduce reactivity to repetitive thoughts (Feldman,
Greeson, & Senville, 2010).
Physiological studies also support the proposition that
meditation training leads to decreased emotional reactivity
and facilitates a return to emotional baseline after reactivity.
For example, experienced mindfulness meditators have
shown a faster decrease in skin conductance in response to
aversive stimuli (Goleman & Schwartz, 1976), as well as less
enhancement of the startle response by aversive stimuli
(Zeidler, 2007). An electroencephalogram study found that
mindfulness-based stress reduction training led to increases in
left-sided anterior brain activation after the course compared
with a wait-list control group (Davidson et al., 2003). This pat-
tern of lateralization has previously been associated with the
experience of positive emotions (Davidson, 1992). Similarly,
stronger relative left prefrontal activation was also recently
found as a state effect in previously depressed individuals fol-
lowing a short practice of mindful breathing and loving kind-
ness meditation (Barnhofer, Chittka, Nightingale, Visser, &
Crane, 2010). These findings support the proposition that
mindfulness practice has an effect on the physiological aspects
of positive emotions and thus positively influences emotional
processing.
Neural mechanisms of emotion regulation. During emo-
tion regulation, prefrontal control systems modulate emotion-
generative systems, such as the amygdala, which is responsible
for the detection of affectively arousing stimuli (Ochsner &
Gross, 2005). More specifically, these prefrontal structures
include dorsal regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC)
that have been implicated in selective attention and working
memory; ventral parts of the PFC implicated in response inhi-
bition; the ACC, which is involved in monitoring control pro-
cesses; and the dorso-medial PFC implicated in monitoring
one’s affective state (Modinos, Ormel, & Aleman, 2010; Och-
sner & Gross, 2008). A typical pattern detected when individu-
als deliberately regulate affective responses is increased
activation within the PFC and decreased activation in the
amygdala (Beauregard, Levesque, & Bourgouin, 2001; Haren-
ski & Hamann, 2006; Schaefer et al., 2002), suggesting that
PFC projections to the amygdala exert an inhibitory top-down
influence (Banks, Eddy, Angstadt, Nathan, & Phan, 2007;
Davidson, Jackson, & Kalin, 2000).2
Psychological disorders and emotion regulation. A variety
of psychological disorders are associated with reduced emo-
tion regulation capacity (Cicchetti, Ackerman, & Izard, 1995;
Davidson, 2000; Gross, 1998; Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Fol-
lette, & Strosahl, 1996; Mennin, Heimberg, Turk, & Fresco,
2002). Disorders characterized by a deficit in emotion regula-
tion are frequently associated with dysfunction in the frontal-
limbic network, that is, reduced prefrontal activation and
exaggerated amygdala activation (e.g., depression, H. C.
Abercrombie et al., 1998; borderline personality disorder, Sil-
bersweig et al., 2007; bipolar disorder, Pavuluri, O’Connor,
Harral, & Sweeney, 2007; social phobia, Phan, Fitzgerald,
Nathan, & Tancer, 2006; obsessive-compulsive disorder,

544 Hölzel et al.
Breiter & Rauch, 1996; posttraumatic stress disorder, Shin et al.,
2005; impulsive aggression, Coccaro, McCloskey, Fitzgerald, &
Phan, 2007; addiction, Bechara, 2005; generalized anxiety, Monk
et al., 2008; and trait anxiety, Etkin et al., 2004).
Neuroscientific findings on mindfulness and emotion reg-
ulation. In contrast to psychiatric disorders that are character-
ized by suboptimal or deficient emotion regulatory responses
and corresponding abnormalities in brain activation patterns, a
few neuroimaging studies have found increased prefrontal
activation and improved prefrontal control over amygdala
responses in association with mindfulness. The earliest evi-
dence for the neurophysiological basis of differences in emo-
tion regulation according to dispositional levels of mindfulness
was found in a study that investigated the effect of disposi-
tional (trait) mindfulness on brain activation while healthy
participants labeled the affect of emotional facial expressions
(Creswell, Way, Eisenberger, & Lieberman, 2007). Higher dis-
positional mindfulness, as measured by the Mindful Attention
Awareness Scale, predicted (a) increased activation at multiple
sites of the prefrontal cortex (including the ventromedial PFC,
medial PFC, and ventrolateral PFC), (b) reduced amygdala
activity, and (c) a stronger inhibitory association between
amygdala activity and regions of the PFC.
Although the above mentioned study investigated disposi-
tional mindfulness in individuals without any mindfulness
training, other studies have reported evidence that mindful-
ness meditation involves activation of brain regions relevant
for emotion regulation, and thus activation of these regions
might be modified through mindfulness practice. During
mindfulness meditation, experienced mindfulness meditators
show greater activation in the dorso-medial PFC and rostral
ACC compared with nonmeditators (Hölzel et al., 2007). After
participants completed an 8-week mindfulness-based stress
reduction course, Farb et al. (2007) found increased activity in
participants’ ventrolateral PFC, which the authors interpreted
as augmented inhibitory control. Following participation in a
mindfulness-based stress reduction course, social anxiety
patients presented with negative self-beliefs showed a quicker
decrease of activation in the amygdala as compared with mea-
sures taken before course completion (Goldin & Gross, 2010).
The observed improvements in emotion regulation associ-
ated with mindfulness practice likely underlie many of the posi-
tive effects of mindfulness practice on mental health. Indeed,
improved emotion regulation underlies the beneficial effects of
mindfulness practice on stress reduction (Garland, Gaylord, &
Fredrickson, 2011) and on reductions of depressive symptoms
(Shahar, Britton, Sbarra, Figueredo, & Bootzin, 2010).
Different strategies of emotion regulation. Although it
seems well established that mindfulness has positive effects on
emotion regulation, the exact processes underlying these
improvements seem less clear. Emotion regulation is an
umbrella term for a wide array of strategies for altering emo-
tional responses. Here, we will consider some emotion
regulation strategies that might be influenced by mindfulness
practice.
There are several proposed classifications for different
kinds of emotion regulation (Ochsner & Gross, 2005; Parkin-
son & Totterdell, 1999). Ochsner and Gross (2005) have sug-
gested a distinction between behavioral regulation (e.g.,
suppressing expressive behavior) and cognitive regulation.
Cognitive regulation can rely on attentional control (e.g.,
selective inattention to emotional stimuli, performing distract-
ing secondary tasks) or on cognitive change. Cognitive change
strategies include the controlled regulation of an ongoing
emotional response, such as reappraisal (i.e., reinterpreting
the meaning of a stimulus to change one’s emotional response
to it) and extinction (stimulus-response reversal). As discussed
in Section 1, attentional control plays a crucial role in mindful-
ness meditation. Whereas typical contemporary descriptions
regard attentional control in emotion regulation as adaptive
when attention is directed away from emotionally distressing
material, mindfulness usually involves bringing attention to
the stimulus. Keeping attention on an emotional reaction leads
to a situation of exposure with a subsequent extinction pro-
cess. Extinction plays a crucial role in producing the beneficial
effects of mindfulness meditation and will be discussed in
detail below. The following section explores the role of
reappraisal.
Reappraisal. Reappraisal has been suggested to be one of the
ways in which emotion gets regulated during mindfulness.
Garland et al. (2011) described mindful emotion regulation as
“positive reappraisal,” or the adaptive process through which
stressful events are reconstrued as beneficial, meaningful, or
benign (e.g., thinking that one will learn something from a dif-
ficult situation). A very recent self-report study showed that
mindfulness practice leads to increases in positive reappraisal
and that these increases mediate an improvement in stress lev-
els (Garland et al., 2011).
Neuroscientific findings. Cognitive reappraisal of aversive
stimuli has been found to coincide with activity in the dorso-
lateral PFC, orbitofrontal PFC, and ACC (Eippert et al., 2007;
Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli, 2002; Ochsner et al.,
2004), and dorsal PFC activity has been found to go along
with reappraisal success (Modinos et al., 2010; Wager, David-
son, Hughes, Lindquist, & Ochsner, 2008). Thus, whereas
extinction processes may depend more upon ventral frontal
systems (such as the ventromedial PFC) that are directly con-
nected with the subcortical systems (see Exposure, extinction,
and reconsolidation for details), reappraisal may depend more
on dorsal frontal systems (Ochsner & Gross, 2008).
To investigate the neural correlates of dispositional mind-
fulness in the context of reappraisal, Modinos et al. (2010)
assessed fMRI study participants’ individual differences in
dispositional mindfulness with the Kentucky Inventory of
Mindfulness Skills and asked the participants to either attend
to or reappraise negative pictures. Findings showed that levels

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? 545
of dispositional mindfulness were positively correlated with
activations in the left and right dorsomedial PFC during the
reappraisal condition. Therefore, trait mindfulness seems to be
positively associated not only with reappraisal success but
also with increased activation in brain regions that support this
kind of emotion regulation.
Does mindfulness involve reappraisal or nonappraisal?
Although the above findings suggest increased “reappraisal”
related to mindfulness (Garland et al., 2011), there also seems
to be some inconsistency in the literature. Other work has
identified decreased cognitive control associated with mind-
fulness meditation, interpreted as nonappraisal. As mentioned
earlier in the section on body awareness, experienced medita-
tors, when presented with unpleasant or painful stimuli during
a mindful state (Gard et al., 2010) or a baseline state (Grant,
Courtemanche, & Rainville, 2011) showed enhanced sensory
processing, that is, increased bottom-up processing of the
stimulus. At the same time, decreased prefrontal activation
was observed in meditators in both studies when they were
presented with the painful stimuli. These findings were
explained with a decrease in top-down control, representing a
lack of reappraisal.
This discrepancy brings to light a question: Does emotion
regulation during mindfulness involve cognitive control (and
corresponding prefrontal engagement), or is it characterized
instead by its absence? Whereas the acceptance of one’s emo-
tional response is characterized by the absence of active cogni-
tive control over the emotional reaction, bringing mindful
awareness to emotional responses might initially require some
cognitive control, in order to overcome habitual ways of inter-
nally reacting to one’s emotions. Although currently specula-
tive, it seems possible that the degree of meditation expertise
of the individual might be relevant when considering the ques-
tion of whether mindfulness involves cognitive control or its
absence. Whereas beginners might require more active cogni-
tive regulation in order to approach ongoing emotional reac-
tions in a different way and might therefore show greater
prefrontal activation, expert meditators might not employ this
prefrontal control. Rather, they might use different strategies;
they may have automated an accepting stance toward their
experience so they no longer require cognitive control efforts,
and they could have different baseline blood flow as a conse-
quence of plastic processes. A similar interpretation has previ-
ously been suggested by Brefczynski-Lewis et al. (2007) in
regard to attentional control.
To summarize, several studies have demonstrated improve-
ments in emotion regulation associated with mindfulness. Psy-
chological disorders characterized by problems in emotion
regulation, such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, or bor-
derline personality disorder, can benefit from the enhancement
of emotion regulation capacities. Different emotion regulation
strategies might show improvements following mindfulness
practice. Some studies have conceptualized the improved
emotion regulation associated with mindfulness practice as
“positive reappraisal,” and correspondingly, studies find
enhanced brain activity in multiple prefrontal regions involved
in cognitive change strategies. However, other studies have
conceptualized the changes as “nonappraisal” and have identi-
fied decreased brain activity in prefrontal regions. Further
research is needed to test the hypothesis that the amount of
required prefrontal control decreases with increased expertise.
In the following section, we will turn toward exposure, extinc-
tion, and reconsolidation as a further mechanism of action of
mindfulness meditation.
Exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation. During mind-
fulness, practitioners expose themselves to whatever is present
in the field of awareness, including external stimuli as well as
body sensations and emotional experiences. They let them-
selves be affected by the experience, refraining from engaging
in internal reactivity toward it, and instead bringing accep-
tance to bodily and affective responses (Hart, 1987). Practitio-
ners are instructed to meet unpleasant emotions (such as fear,
sadness, anger, and aversion) by turning towards them, rather
than turning away (Santorelli, 2000). Those people who are
new to meditation often initially find this process counterintui-
tive, but many practitioners discover that the unpleasant emo-
tions pass away and a sense of safety or well-being can be
experienced in their place.
Parallels between the process described here and exposure
therapy are evident. Exposure therapy is a highly effective
behavioral therapy technique for reducing fear and anxiety
responses (Chambless & Ollendick, 2001). Its core element is
to expose patients to fear-provoking stimuli and prevent their
usual response in order for them to extinguish the fear response
and to instead acquire a sense of safety in the presence of the
formerly feared stimuli (Öst, 1997). Clinical studies on expo-
sure therapy show that access to safety behaviors can interfere
with the beneficial effects of an exposure situation (Lovibond,
Mitchell, Minard, Brady, & Menzies, 2009; Salkovskis, Clark,
Hackmann, Wells, & Gelder, 1999; Wells et al., 1995). Safety
behaviors include not only overt behavior (such as avoiding
eye contact in social phobia) but also cognitive avoidance.
Mindfulness meditation includes refraining from engaging in
cognitive avoidance or other safety behaviors by using
enhanced attention regulation skills, thereby maximizing the
exposure to the experienced emotion.
Additionally, meditation is often associated with high lev-
els of relaxation in the form of increased parasympathetic tone
and decreased sympathetic activity (Benson, 2000). Peripheral
physiological changes have been observed with some consis-
tency (but see Shapiro, 1982), including decreased heart rate
(Zeidan, Johnson, Gordon, & Goolkasian, 2010), decreased
blood pressure (de la Fuente, Franco, & Salvator, 2010),
decreased cortisol levels (Carlson et al., 2007), decreased
breathing rate (Lazar et al., 2005), lowered oxygen and carbon
dioxide consumption (Young & Taylor, 1998), decreased skin
conductance response (Austin, 2006), and decreased muscle
tension (Benson, 2000). Since extinction mechanisms are

546 Hölzel et al.
thought to be supported by the experience of a state of relax-
ation while the individual encounters the feared stimuli
(Wolpe, 1958), the relaxation component of meditation might
serve to maximize the effects of the extinction process.
In the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, the capacity
to expose oneself to internal experience without reactivity is
captured in the Non-Reactivity to Inner Experience Scale.
Example items are “In difficult situations, I can pause without
immediately reacting” (Item 21), or “When I have distressing
thoughts or images I am able just to notice them without react-
ing” (Item 29). With completion of a mindfulness-based stress
reduction course, scores on this scale increase with large effect
sizes (Carmody & Baer, 2008), corroborating the theory that
mindfulness practice leads to the self-perception of decreased
reactivity. This likely is a mechanism for facilitating
exposure.
Fear conditioning, extinction, and reconsolidation. The pro-
cess of fear extinction has been studied extensively in the con-
text of conditioned fear. Fear conditioning is a learning process
in which a neutral conditioned stimulus (e.g., a tone) is paired
with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (e.g., a shock). After a
few pairings, the presentation of the conditioned stimulus comes
to also elicit various fear responses (e.g., freezing in animals;
sympathetic arousal in humans). Repeated presentations of the
conditioned stimulus in the absence of the unconditioned stimu-
lus result in the extinction of the conditioned responses. Extinc-
tion does not erase the initial association between conditioned
and unconditioned stimuli but is thought to form a new memory
trace (Quirk, 2002; Rescorla, 2001) or reconsolidate the old
memory with new contextual associations (Inda, Muravieva, &
Alberini, 2011; Nader & Einarsson, 2010; Rossato, Bevilaqua,
Izquierdo, Medina, & Cammarota, 2010). After extinction train-
ing, extinction memory is thought to compete with conditioned
memory for control of fear expression (Myers & Davis, 2007).
Recent research has shown that successful extinction memory
reliably differentiates healthy from pathological conditions
(Holt et al., 2009; Milad et al., 2008). Extinction learning and its
retention may thus be a critical process in the transformation of
maladaptive states. It allows individuals to learn not to have a
fear response to neutral stimuli, when there is no adaptive func-
tion for the fear response. Rather, individuals can flexibly elicit
other more adaptive emotional and behavioral responses.
Neural mechanisms of fear extinction and extinction
retention. Recent fMRI research on fear conditioning has
identified a network of brain regions that are crucial for the
extinction of conditioned fear responses and its retention. As
outlined below, this network seems to strengthen through
mindfulness practice. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex
(vmPFC) has been shown to be important for the successful
recall of the extinction (Milad & Quirk, 2002; Morgan,
Romanski, & LeDoux, 1993; Quirk, Russo, Barron, & Lebron,
2000), with the magnitude of vmPFC activation (Milad et al.,
2007) and the cortical thickness of the vmPFC (Milad et al.,
2005) positively correlated with extinction recall. In addition,
hippocampal activation has also been found to be involved in
fear extinction recall. Functional connectivity analysis reveals
that the vmPFC and hippocampus work in concert during
extinction recall to inhibit fear, suggesting that they comprise
a network that mediates the expression of extinction memory
in the appropriate context (Milad et al., 2007). Hippocampal
activation during extinction recall is likely related to signaling
the extinguished context (contextual safety; Corcoran, Des-
mond, Frey, & Maren, 2005; Corcoran & Maren, 2001). The
amygdala has been implicated in both human and animal stud-
ies as playing a crucial role during the acquisition and expres-
sion of conditioned fear (Davis & Whalen, 2001; LeDoux,
2000; Pare, Quirk, & Ledoux, 2004; Phelps & LeDoux, 2005),
including the detection of stressful and threatening stimuli and
the initiation of adaptive coping responses (Hasler et al.,
2007). When individuals regulate their emotions, the amyg-
dala is thought to be down-regulated by the vmPFC and hip-
pocampus (Banks et al., 2007; Davidson et al., 2000; Milad,
Rauch, Pitman, & Quirk, 2006), both of which have extensive
connections with the amygdala. This inhibition of the amyg-
dala serves to suppress fear (Milad et al., 2006; Rauch, Shin,
& Phelps, 2006), thereby allowing control over behavioral
reactions to emotions (Price, 2005). Deficits in fear extinction
are thought to be related to a number of psychiatric disorders,
and neuroimaging studies have shown that the aforementioned
structures are dysfunctional in several psychiatric disorders,
such as posttraumatic stress disorder (Milad et al., 2009),
schizophrenia (Holt et al., 2009), and depression (Anand et al.,
2005).
Effects of meditation practice on the neural network
underlying extinction. There is recent evidence from ana-
tomical MRI studies that the aforementioned brain regions
show structural changes following mindfulness meditation
training. Cross-sectional studies comparing mindfulness med-
itators and nonmeditators found that meditators showed
greater gray matter concentration in the hippocampus (Hölzel
et al., 2008; Luders, Toga, Lepore, & Gaser, 2009). Further-
more, Hölzel et al. (2011) recently observed that structural
changes in the hippocampus were detectable within a period
of only 8 weeks in participants that underwent mindfulness-
based stress reduction, and Hölzel et al. (2008) found that
cumulative hours of meditation training were positively
correlated with gray matter concentration in the vmPFC in
experienced meditators. In a longitudinal study enrolling par-
ticipants in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction
course, Hölzel et al. (2010) found an impact of the stress-
reducing effects of mindfulness meditation on the amygdala;
the greater the decrease in participants’ scores on perceived
stress over the 8 weeks, the greater a decrease they showed in
gray matter concentration in the right amygdala. Modified
gray matter concentration in these regions that is dependent on
meditation training might potentially be related to the improved
ability to regulate emotional responses. Furthermore, fMRI

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? 547
studies show that meditation involves activation of the hippo-
campus and medial PFC (Lazar et al., 2000; Lou et al., 1999;
Newberg et al., 2001), suggesting that regular meditation prac-
tice enhances the function of these brain regions. Additionally,
for those with social anxiety disorder, amygdala activation is
reduced following 8 weeks of mindfulness practice (Goldin &
Gross, 2010). There thus appear to be striking similarities
in the brain regions being influenced by mindfulness medita-
tion and those involved in mediating fear extinction. These
findings suggest that mindfulness meditation could directly
influence one’s capacity to extinguish conditioned fear by
enhancing the structural and functional integrity of the brain
network involved in safety signaling. The neuroscientific con-
siderations described here support the previously held view
that extinction might contribute to some of the beneficial
effects of mindfulness practice (Baer, 2003; Brown et al.,
2007).
The impact of extinction processes within meditation
practice. The role of extinction processes in the improve-
ments following mindfulness-based treatments is most obvi-
ous in the treatment of anxiety disorders, which have reliably
been found to benefit from mindfulness practice (Kabat-Zinn
et al., 1992; Kimbrough, Magyari, Langenberg, Chesney, &
Berman, 2010; Roemer et al., 2008). Nonreactivity and the
successive extinction mechanism presumably also play a cru-
cial role in the stress-reducing effects of mindfulness and
might mediate decreased perceived stress scores (Carmody &
Baer, 2008; Chang et al., 2004). They might also be highly
relevant for the benefits of mindfulness in the treatment of
substance abuse (Brewer et al., 2009). Beyond that, exposure
is pursued toward whatever emotions present themselves,
including sadness, anger, and aversion, as well as pleasant
emotions, such as happiness. We therefore suggest that extinc-
tion is effective during all of these emotional experiences,
leading to an overwriting of previously learned stimulus-
response associations. Buddhist teachings claim that the non-
clinging to unpleasant and pleasant experiences leads to
liberation (Olendzki, 2010). Framed in Western psychological
terminology, one could say that nonreactivity leads to unlearn-
ing of previous connections (extinction and reconsolidation)
and thereby to liberation from being bound to habitual emo-
tional reactions.
4. Change in perspective on the self
The essence of Buddhist psychology lies in the teaching that
there is no such thing as a permanent, unchanging self (Olen-
dzki, 2010). Rather, the perception of a self is a product of an
ongoing mental process. This perception reoccurs very rapidly
in the stream of mental events, leading to the impression that
the self is a constant and unchanging entity. The self is experi-
enced as being the one who inhabits the body, being the one
who is thinking the thoughts, being the one experiencing emo-
tions, and being the agent of actions; having free will
(Olendzki, 2010). When internal awareness becomes enhanced
through meditation, meditators report that they can observe
mental processes with increasing clarity (cf. MacLean et al.,
2010) and increasing temporal resolution. Within this enhanced
clarity, the process of a repeatedly arising sense of self becomes
observable to the meditator through development of meta-
awareness. Meta-awareness is a form of subjective experience
and executive monitoring, in which one takes a nonconceptual
perspective as a distributed form of attention toward the con-
tents of conscious experience and the processes involved.
Meta-awareness is not entangled in the contents of awareness
(Deikman, 1982; Raffone & Pantani, 2010; Varela, Thompson,
& Rosch, 1991) and facilitates a detachment from identifica-
tion with the static sense of self. Rather than as a static entity
or structure, the sense of self can be experienced as an event
(Olendzki, 2006). It has been postulated that paying close
attention to the transitory nature of this sense of self leads to
the “deconstruction of the self” (Epstein, 1988). The Dalai
Lama describes the resulting understanding that practitioners
reach: “This seemingly solid, concrete, independent, self-
instituting I under its own power that appears actually does not
exist at all” (Gyatso, 1984, p.70). In place of the identification
with the static self, there emerges a tendency to identify with
the phenomenon of “experiencing” itself.3
From a Buddhist perspective, identification with the static
sense of self is the cause of psychological distress, and dis-
identification results in less afflictive experience and the free-
dom to experience a more genuine way of being (Olendzki,
2010). As the psychologist Jack Engler (2004) puts it:
When it is realized that no self is to be found in the ele-
ments of our experience, it begins the process of liberation.
Understanding that our sense of “I” is not as solid, permanent,
or substantial as we habitually hold it to be ultimately uproots
clinging, attachment, and hostility. Understanding this burns
up the fuel that runs our repetitive habits. Those who have
understood this report a sense of spacious lightness and free-
dom. They exhibit deep concern and tenderness for others.
According to Buddhist philosophy, a change in perspective
on the self is thus the key in the process to enduring forms of
happiness.
Whereas more advanced meditation practices are required
to experience this drastic disidentification from the static sense
of self, a de-identification from some parts of mental content
is often experienced even in the earliest stages of meditation
practice. In mindfulness practice, all experiences are observed
as they arise and pass. By closely observing the contents of
consciousness, practitioners come to understand that these are
in constant change and thus are transient. The mindful, non-
judgmental observation fosters a detachment from identifica-
tion with the contents of consciousness. This process has been
termed “reperceiving” or “decentering” (Carmody, Baer,
Lykins, & Olendzki, 2009; Fresco et al., 2007; Shapiro et al.,
2006) and has been described as the development of the
“observer perspective” (Kerr, Josyula, & Littenberg, 2011).
We suggest that although this stage is not yet the full

548 Hölzel et al.
disidentification from a static and unchanging self described
above, it is a change in perspective about the sense of self and
an alteration in first-person subjective experience.
Philosophical considerations, theoretical accounts, and
experiential reports ascribe to the change in the perspective on
the self a crucial role for development and maturity in medita-
tion. However, perspective on the self is rather difficult to
operationalize, and little empirical research has been pub-
lished that documents these types of changes following mind-
fulness meditation. This area of research could benefit from
the introduction of clear and consistent definitions of self-
related processes as well as terms that until now have been
applied inconsistently among various authors and disciplines
(e.g., I, me, ego, self, etc.). Although a clarification of the defi-
nitions, theories, and conceptualization is far beyond the scope
of this article and is not its focus (but see Legrand & Ruby,
2009, and Strawson, 2000), we summarize the few self-report
and neuroimaging studies that touch on a change in the per-
spective on the self through mindfulness practice.
Self-report findings. Self-report studies have begun to docu-
ment the experienced changes in perspective on the self fol-
lowing mindfulness practice. In a qualitative analysis of
diaries, Kerr and colleagues focused on the development of an
“observing self,” or meta-perspective on experience, and have
described how participants experience this shift over the
course of an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course
(see Kerr et al., 2011, for a description of participants’ self-
reports). Questionnaire studies have also documented changes
in individuals’ self-concept following mindfulness meditation
practice. Participants’ self-reports of internal and external
aspects of self-representation (assessed with the Tennessee
Self Concept Scale; Roid & Fitts, 1988) showed highly sig-
nificant changes on almost all of the subscales after comple-
tion of a 7-day mindfulness retreat (Emavardhana & Tori,
1997). Changes can be summarized as a more positive self-
representation, more self-esteem, and higher acceptance of
oneself. A cross-sectional study (Haimerl & Valentine, 2001)
that examined the Self-Concept scales of the Temperament
and Character Inventory (Cloninger, Svrakic, & Przybeck,
1993) of Buddhist meditators with varying levels of medita-
tion experience found that increased meditation experience
was associated with positive development on each of the three
scales. More experienced meditators showed self-concept
styles that are typically associated with less pathological
symptoms. Although these studies do not describe the drastic
change in sense of self that highly experienced meditators
have reported following deep states of meditation, they sug-
gest that some beneficial changes in the perspective on the self
can happen resulting from mindfulness meditation practice.
Neuroscientific findings: Functional neuroimaging. Neuroim-
aging studies of mindfulness meditation have demonstrated
that brain structures that support self-referential processing
are structurally and functionally impacted by mindfulness
meditation. Self-referential processing robustly activates cor-
tical midline structures of the brain (Northoff et al., 2006),
including areas of the medial PFC (Gusnard, Akbudak, Shul-
man, & Raichle, 2001; Kelley et al., 2002; Sajonz et al., 2010),
posterior cingulate cortex /anterior precuneus (Sajonz et al.,
2010), and also the inferior parietal lobule (Sajonz et al.,
2010). The medial PFC has been shown to support an array of
self-related capacities, including memory for self-traits (Kel-
ley et al., 2002; Macrae, Moran, Heatherton, Banfield, & Kel-
ley, 2004) or reflected self-knowledge (Lieberman, Jarcho, &
Satpute, 2004). The posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus
are engaged when individuals assess the relevance or signifi-
cance of a stimulus for themselves (Gusnard et al., 2001;
Schmitz & Johnson, 2007) and have been suggested to be par-
ticularly important for the integration of self-referential stim-
uli in the emotional and autobiographical context of one’s own
person (Northoff & Bermpohl, 2004). All of these structures
show high activity during rest, mind wandering, and condi-
tions of stimulus-independent thought (Northoff et al., 2006)
and have therefore also been characterized as the “default
mode” of the brain or as the default mode network (Buckner,
Andrews-Hanna, & Schacter, 2008; Gusnard & Raichle,
2001).
A few MRI studies have begun looking at activity in the
default mode network in association with mindfulness prac-
tice. Comparing brain activation during mindfulness medita-
tion versus a resting state reveals decreased brain activity in
subsystems of the default mode network (Ott, Walter, Geb-
hardt, Stark, & Vaitl, 2010). The authors interpret this decrease
as a diminished involvement in the habitual mode of self-
reference during meditation practice. Meditators show greater
resting-state functional connectivity within the default mode
network than do nonmeditators (Jang et al., 2010). Another
study of experienced meditators also reports increased func-
tional connectivity between posterior cingulate cortex and
dorsal ACC and dorso-lateral PFC both during rest and during
mindfulness meditation among experienced meditators com-
pared with novices, suggesting increased conflict monitoring
and cognitive control over the function of default mode net-
work after significant meditation training (Brewer et al.,
2011). Although still limited in scope, these studies suggest
that default-mode network activity and connectivity might be
affected in some way by mindfulness meditation practice.
Probably the most insightful neuroimaging study to address
the neural correlates of a change in perspective on the self is by
Farb et al. (2007), which investigated brain activity during
two forms of self-reference in participants who completed a
mindfulness-based stress reduction training; these participants
were compared with another group of individuals who had not
yet undergone training; the forms of self-reference included a
narrative focus (evaluative monitoring of enduring traits) and an
experiential focus (momentary first-person experience). Indi-
viduals with the mindfulness training showed larger reductions
in the medial PFC during the experiential (compared with the
narrative) focus, along with increased engagement of the right
lateral PFC, the right insula, secondary somatosensory cortex,
and inferior parietal lobule. Functional connectivity analyses

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? 549
revealed an uncoupling of the right insula and medial PFC, and
there was increased connectivity of the right insula with dorso-
lateral PFC regions in the experiential focus after the mindful-
ness training. The authors interpret these findings as representing
a shift in self-referential processing, namely, as a shift “toward
more lateral prefrontal regions supporting a more self-detached
and objective analysis of interoceptive (insula) and exterocep-
tive (somatosensory cortex) sensory events, rather than their
affective or subjective self-referential value [which is repre-
sented by medial PFC activation]” (Farb et al., 2007, p. 319).
Furthermore, given the higher activity of regions supporting
body and internal awareness, these data also suggest that
increased body awareness might be closely related to changes in
the perspective on the self, consistent with Buddhist philosophy.
Greater internal awareness might replace the previous, narrative
form of self-reference.
Neuroscientific findings: Structural neuroimaging. In the recent
longitudinal structural study mentioned above (Hölzel et al.,
2011), the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporo-parietal
junction, and the hippocampus showed increased gray matter
concentration following mindfulness-based stress reduction.
Given the relevance of these brain structures for the experi-
ence of the self, it seems possible that the structural changes
might be associated with changes in the perspective on the
self. It is interesting to note that the hippocampus, temporo-
parietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, and parts of the
medial prefrontal cortex form a brain network (Vincent et al.,
2006) that supports diverse forms of projecting the self onto
another perspective (Buckner & Carroll, 2007), including
remembering the past, thinking about the future (Schacter,
Addis, & Buckner, 2007), and conceiving the viewpoint of
others, also referred to as a theory of mind (Saxe & Kanwisher,
2003). These abilities have been suggested to share a common
set of processes, by which autobiographical information is
used adaptively to enable the perception of alternative per-
spectives (Buckner & Carroll, 2007). Structural changes in
this brain network (involved in the projection of the self onto
another perspective) may be associated with the perceptual
shift in the internal representation of the self following mind-
fulness practice.
The change in the perspective on the self is precisely
described in the Buddhist literature but has yet to be rigorously
tested in empirical research. The findings reviewed here exem-
plify early steps in the process of changing the perspective on
the self but are still far from addressing the experiences
described by highly trained meditation practitioners. Research
studies that are currently under way will help elucidate this
process further and will give us more insight into the underly-
ing neuroscientific mechanisms.
Integration
The above described components (see Table 2 for a summariz-
ing overview) are presumably highly interrelated. In fact, they
might interact so closely with one another that a distinction
between each component might seem artificial. We want to
illustrate the interaction of the components with an example:
During mindfulness meditation, the meditator’s goal is to
maintain attention to current internal and external experiences
with a nonjudgmental stance, manifesting acceptance, curios-
ity, and openness. When an emotional reaction gets triggered
by thoughts, sensations, memories, or external stimuli (e.g., a
memory of a frightening event), the executive attention system
(Section 1) detects the conflict to the task goal of maintaining
a mindful state. Heightened body awareness (Section 2) helps
to detect physiological aspects of the feelings present (e.g.,
body tension, rapid heartbeat, short shallow breath), and the
provided information about the internal reaction to the stimu-
lus is a prerequisite for accurate identification of the triggered
emotional response (i.e., fear). Emotion regulation processes
(Section 3) then become engaged, in order to relate to the
experience differently rather than with a habitual reaction (i.e.,
simply noticing the fear as opposed to engaging in avoidance
mechanisms). The first two mechanisms (sustained attention
[1] to body awareness [2]) lead to a situation of exposure, and
the third mechanism (regulating for nonreactivity) facilitates
response prevention, leading to extinction and reconsolidation
(3). Rather than being stuck in the habitual reactions to the
external and internal environment, the meditator can experi-
ence the transitory nature of all related perceptions, emotions,
or cognitions in each moment of experience. The awareness of
the transitory nature of the self and one’s momentary experi-
ence leads to a change in the perspective on the self (4), where
self-referential processing (i.e., the narrative of the relevance
of the stimulus for oneself) becomes diminished, while first-
person experiencing becomes enhanced. The entire process
represents enhanced self-regulation, which—according to
Karoly (1993)—is defined as a process that enables individu-
als to guide their goal-directed activities by modulation of
thought, affect, behavior, or attention via deliberate or auto-
mated use of specific mechanisms.
As illustrated by the example, the described components
mutually facilitate each other. Attention regulation is espe-
cially important and, as the basis of all meditation tech-
niques, appears to be a prerequisite for the other mechanisms
to take place. Focused attention on internal events is neces-
sary in order for practitioners to gain an increased awareness
of bodily sensations with the resultant ability to recognize
the emergence of emotions. The ability to keep attention
focused on conditioned stimuli is also a prerequisite for the
successful extinction of conditioned responses. Enhanced
body awareness might be very closely related to the changes
in the perspective on the self and might replace a narrative
form of self-reference. The change in perspective on the self
may result in reappraisal of situations in specific ways, which
might provide motivation for further development of atten-
tion regulation and body awareness. As the components
mutually facilitate each other, the occurring process could be
understood as an upward spiral process (cf. Garland et al.,
2011).

550 Hölzel et al.
Self-Compassion
The concept of self-compassion is closely related to mindful-
ness. According to the definition proposed by Neff (2003a),
self-compassion entails three components: self-kindness
(being kind and understanding toward oneself in instances of
perceived inadequacy or suffering rather than being harshly
self-critical), common humanity (perceiving one’s experi-
ences as part of the larger human experience rather than seeing
them as separating and isolating), and “mindfulness” (in this
context defined as “holding one’s painful thoughts and feel-
ings in balanced awareness rather than over-identifying with
them” (Neff, 2003a, p. 223). According to Neff’s definition
(2003a), mindfulness thus constitutes one of the three compo-
nents of self-compassion.
The relationship between self-compassion and
mindfulness
In their current conceptualization and operationalization
within contemporary research contexts (Baer et al., 2006;
Neff, 2003a), mindfulness and self-compassion are highly cor-
related. The total score of the Five Facet Mindfulness Ques-
tionnaire and the total score of the Self-Compassion Scale
have been found to be correlated (r = .69) in a sample of non-
meditators (Hollis-Walker & Colosimo, 2011). Assumptions
have been put forth about the nature of their relationship, and
it has been suggested that mindfulness is required in order for
self-compassion to develop because the former enables one to
clearly see mental and emotional phenomena as they arise
(Neff, 2003b). In line with this assumption, changes in mind-
fulness have been found to predict changes in self-compassion
(Birnie, Speca, & Carlson, 2010). It has also been suggested
that self-compassion partially mediates the relationship
between mindfulness and well-being (Hollis-Walker & Colo-
simo, 2011). Furthermore, the cultivation of self-compassion
has been suggested to explain much of the success of
mindfulness-based interventions. Kuyken et al. (2010) found
that the positive effects of a mindfulness-based cognitive ther-
apy intervention on depressive symptoms were mediated by
the enhancement of self-compassion across treatment. In
patients with anxious distress, scores on the Self-Compassion
Scale have been found to correlate more strongly with symp-
tom severity and quality of life than scores on the Mindful
Attention Awareness Scale (Van Dam, Sheppard, Forsyth, &
Earleywine, 2011). However, given the strong interrelatedness
of both constructs, it might be difficult to tease their effects
and relationship apart.
The cultivation of self-compassion in
meditation practice
Meditation is typically practiced with an intention—implicit
or explicit—to cultivate self-compassion as well as compas-
sion toward other beings. Different types of meditation
practices vary in the degree to which they foster its increase.
Some types of practices are pursued with the primary goal of
cultivating (self-) compassion (Germer, 2009; Salzberg, 1995),
while others strongly emphasize self-compassion within the
context of traditional mindfulness meditation (Brach, 2003).
In mindfulness-based stress reduction, even though it is not
the declared primary goal of the program, self-compassion is
implicitly and explicitly interwoven into meditation instruc-
tions, exemplified by reminders included in focused attention
meditation: “whenever you notice that the mind has wandered
off, bring it back with gentleness and kindness.” The gentle
yoga stretches are practiced with an emphasis on “exploring
what feels good for oneself and one’s body in this moment.”
Whenever participants encounter physical pain or emotional
suffering, they are encouraged to “take care of themselves.”
In line with these practices, self-report studies show that
self-compassion scores increase over an 8-week mindfulness-
based stress reduction course (Birnie et al., 2010; Shapiro,
Astin, Bishop, & Cordova, 2005; Shapiro, Brown, &
Biegel, 2007; but also see P. D. Abercrombie, Zamora, &
Korn, 2007).
Self-compassion within the theoretical
framework proposed here
Within the framework of mechanisms proposed in this study,
self-compassion is presumably most related to emotion regu-
lation as well as to the change in perspective on the self. The
generation of feelings of kindness toward oneself in instances
of perceived inadequacy or suffering (self-kindness) is an act
of emotion regulation. When cultivating self-compassion,
seeing one’s difficult experiences as part of the larger human
experience rather than seeing them as separating and isolat-
ing (common humanity) might initially require reappraisal.
This reframing might ultimately result in a change in the per-
spective on the self, where one relates to oneself in a less
identified manner. However, there is currently only a very
small empirical basis for the explanation of the mechanisms
of self-compassion, and it is possible that unique aspects of
self-compassion are not addressed within the suggested
components.
We are unaware of any published data on the neural corre-
lates of self-compassion in the context of mindfulness training
or on the neural basis of self-compassion (but see Lutz,
Brefczynski-Lewis, et al., 2008, for altruistic compassion).
However, with the availability of the Self-Compassion Scale
(Neff, 2003a), there has been a drastic increase in the investi-
gation of self-compassion in the context of mindfulness-based
interventions in the last few years, and a considerable body of
literature documents the improvement of self-compassion
with mindfulness meditation practice. The question about the
exact nature of the relationship between both constructs and
their interconnection from an empirical and neuroscientific
perspective will have to be revisited once more research is
available.

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? 551
Further Considerations
We have suggested here that mindfulness meditation practice
comprises a process of enhanced self-regulation that can
be differentiated into distinct but interrelated components,
namely, attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regula-
tion (reappraisal and extinction), and the change in perspective
on the self. Previous work has often focused on one of these
components, neglecting the others and attempting to describe
the beneficial effects of mindfulness-based interventions
solely through one of the mechanisms (Brown & Ryan, 2003;
Carmody, 2009). Other work has suggested an array of distinct
components, but these components were not related to one
another (Baer, 2003; Brown et al., 2007). Our work in estab-
lishing relations between identified components of mindful-
ness meditation practice is a step toward a more complex
framework. Such a framework describing a comprehensive
process and simultaneously considering the role of subcompo-
nents will help advance the field in several ways. First, when
conducting basic mindfulness meditation research, differenti-
ating between distinct components will facilitate a more
detailed understanding of the process and stimulate multifac-
eted research questions. Second, a detailed understanding of
the different components and their relevance for clinical disor-
ders will be conducive for the flexible and more targeted
application of mindfulness training in psychiatric treatment
and will in turn facilitate the establishment of targeted and
cost-effective programs specifically utilizing components that
are most relevant for a specific disorder. Third, a better under-
standing of the state and trait effects of mindfulness practice
will also be conducive to a better understanding of the func-
tioning and cultivation of a healthy mind, thereby contributing
to the newly emerging field of positive psychology.
Presumably, the distinct components differ in their rele-
vance for types of mindfulness-based meditation practices,
levels of meditation expertise, specific psychological disor-
ders, personality types, and specific situations. In the follow-
ing section, we will suggest connections between the described
components and these variables. The suggested connections
mostly lack empirical support thus far and are mainly meant to
stimulate further research questions.
Various types of mindfulness practice may place different
emphasis on the described components. For example, during the
practice of breath awareness or the body scan (Hart, 1987), the
components of attention regulation and body awareness might
be most involved. Observing one’s emotions in emotionally
challenging situations (Kabat-Zinn, 1990) may involve body
awareness and extinction. Open awareness practice might
mostly involve the change in perspective on self, whereas lov-
ing kindness and compassion meditation (Salzberg, 1995) might
rely on emotion regulation and the change in perspective on the
self. Investigating which components are involved in mindful-
ness meditation and which are potentially strengthened by these
different types of practice can help individuals in selecting
which they would like to specifically cultivate.
In the progression of meditation expertise, the different
mechanisms might play different roles. For example, it is pos-
sible that an improvement in attention regulation evolves first
and helps facilitate other processes. Conversely, the change in
perspective on the self might develop rather late, following the
establishment of increased body awareness and improved
emotion regulation. Beyond the mechanisms formulated here,
it is possible that increased experience in mindfulness practice
facilitates the flexible access to the different components. Pos-
sibly the greatest effect of mindfulness practice for adaptive
functioning in daily life might be found in this behavioral
flexibility.
Future clinical psychological research should establish
what roles the different components play for different psycho-
logical disorders. Disorders that manifest as the dysfunction of
a certain component could especially benefit from the cultiva-
tion of that particular component. For example, strengthening
attention regulation might be most beneficial for patients suf-
fering from attention deficit disorders, while borderline per-
sonality disorder patients, people in addiction recovery, or
patients with alexithymia might benefit much from increased
internal awareness. Likewise, patients with mood disorders,
anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorder, or aggres-
sion might benefit from improved emotion regulation. Change
in self-perspective might be beneficial for patients with mood
disorders and might also enhance general sense of well-being
as well as overall quality of life in healthy populations. Rather
than solely testing the usefulness of mindfulness-based inter-
ventions for symptom reduction for these disorders in general,
future research should focus more on establishing the mecha-
nisms underlying these beneficial effects.
Different mechanisms might be relevant for different per-
sonality types. Individuals likely differ in the extent to which
they are attracted to the practice of each of these components,
and they might differ in the extent to which they can benefit
from each of the described mechanisms. For example, it has
been found that a self-compassion intervention for smoking
reduction was particularly beneficial for individuals high in
self-criticism and low in readiness to change (Kelly, Zuroff,
Foa, & Gilbert, 2010). In the same way, individual differences
should be taken into account in meditation research. Future
studies should try to identify traitlike predictors as well as bio-
logical markers for (a) attraction to specific kinds of practice
and (b) benefits from particular aspects of such practices.
Aside from differing in relevance between different disor-
ders, personality types, levels of expertise, and types of prac-
tices, these mechanisms will have distinct relevance for
different contextual situations. Depending on the kind of situ-
ation to which a practitioner is being exposed, one of the
mechanisms might move into the foreground, while others
become less relevant.
Mindfulness as a state, trait, and clinical intervention has
been extensively researched over the last two decades; how-
ever, knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of mindfulness
is still in its infancy. Future work should identify additional

552 Hölzel et al.
components of mindfulness and establish to what extent the
components described in this article are truly distinct mecha-
nisms or how they can be integrated into fewer components.
We believe that it will be necessary both to further differenti-
ate each component and to further integrate them into a com-
prehensive model. This future empirical work is critical in
order to optimally apply mindfulness in the clinical domain
and to advance techniques that aim at cultivating a healthy
mind and increased well-being.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Elizabeth Kathleen Avis, Narayan
Brach, Patricia Pop, and Erik Tobiason for their helpful comments on
this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
Britta K. Hölzel was supported by a Marie Curie International
Outgoing Fellowship within the Seventh European Community
Framework Programme.
Notes
1. Telomeres are protective DNA sequences at the ends of chromo-
somes that ensure genomic stability during cellular replication.
Telomerase is the cellular enzyme responsible for telomere length
and maintenance. Telomerase activity has been found to be a predic-
tor of long-term cellular viability that decreases with chronic psycho-
logical distress (Epel et al., 2004).
2. For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that some studies
have not found this pattern of higher PFC and lower amygdala acti-
vation while participants were decreasing negative affect (Urry et al.,
2006).
3. Of note, this decreased identification with the self is fundamen-
tally different from pathological versions of depersonalization. For a
detailed discussion of this distinction, see Engler (1995).
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