Lymeus Freddie, Lindberg Per, Hartig Terry
Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, SE-751 42 Uppsala, Sweden.
Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, SE-751 42 Uppsala, Sweden; Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University, Box 514, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden.
Conscious Cogn. 2018 Mar;59:40-56. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2018.01.008. Epub 2018 Feb 10.
Mindfulness courses conventionally use effortful, focused meditation to train attention. In contrast, natural settings can effortlessly support state mindfulness and restore depleted attention resources, which could facilitate meditation. We performed two studies that compared conventional training with restoration skills training (ReST) that taught low-effort open monitoring meditation in a garden over five weeks. Assessments before and after meditation on multiple occasions showed that ReST meditation increasingly enhanced attention performance. Conventional meditation enhanced attention initially but increasingly incurred effort, reflected in performance decrements toward the course end. With both courses, attentional improvements generalized in the first weeks of training. Against established accounts, the generalized improvements thus occurred before any effort was incurred by the conventional exercises. We propose that restoration rather than attention training can account for early attentional improvements with meditation. ReST holds promise as an undemanding introduction to mindfulness and as a method to enhance restoration in nature contacts.
正念课程传统上使用需要努力、专注的冥想方式来训练注意力。相比之下，自然环境能够轻松地支持状态正念，并恢复耗尽的注意力资源，这可能有助于冥想。我们进行了两项研究，将传统训练与恢复技能训练（ReST）进行比较，后者在五周的时间里在花园中教授低强度的开放式监测冥想。多次冥想前后的评估表明，ReST冥想越来越能提高注意力表现。传统冥想最初能提高注意力，但随后越来越费力，这体现在课程结束时表现下降。在这两种课程中，注意力的改善在训练的最初几周都具有普遍性。与既定观点相反，这种普遍性的改善是在传统练习产生任何努力之前就出现了。我们认为，恢复而非注意力训练可以解释冥想早期注意力的改善。ReST有望成为一种轻松引入正念的方法，以及一种增强与自然接触时恢复能力的方法。
