Building mindfulness bottom-up: Meditation in natural settings supports open monitoring and attention restoration

Highlights

• Mindfulness meditation purportedly enhances attention through effortful training.

• We found meditation in nature was effortless and restored attention resources.

• We found conventional meditation incurred effort only after several weeks’ training.

• Restoration is a potential pathway to attentional improvements with meditation.

Abstract

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.

Introduction

Many people in modern societies routinely challenge their cognitive and emotional capabilities in efforts to meet the demands of their work and personal lives. These efforts draw down adaptive resources, like the ability to direct attention despite intrusive thoughts or external distractions. If the resources remain depleted, focus and performance will deteriorate, fatigue and chronic stress ensue, and health and well-being suffer (Cohen, 1980, Kaplan, 1995, von Lindern et al., 2017). Different approaches have been proposed to prevent these negative effects. Some aim to enable periodic relief from demands and promote restoration of depleted resources, like restorative environments approaches (e.g., Hartig et al., 2014, Kaplan, 1995). Others target a presumed need for individual training to strengthen the capabilities needed to meet demands, like mindfulness training (e.g., Brown et al., 2007, Tang et al., 2015; cf. Kaplan, 2001, Tang and Posner, 2009). In this paper we offer an integration of these approaches that takes advantage of their respective strengths to overcome their respective weaknesses. In the following, we first consider the restorative environments and mindfulness training approaches alone, and then we indicate points of connection between the two. We draw on these connections in our integrated approach which we call restoration skills training (ReST).

Restoration refers to the replenishment of an adaptive resource that has been taxed in efforts to meet demands, so that the associated functional capabilities are reinstated (Hartig, 2017, Hartig et al., 2014, Kaplan, 1995). Given a need for restoration, some environments support its fulfillment better than others. Restorative environments are places that not only permit but facilitate restoration by supporting (1) a sense of psychological distance from stressors, distractions and demanding routines, and (2) pleasantly interesting experiences that engage attention effortlessly and evoke positive emotions (Hartig et al., 2011, Kaplan, 1995, Ulrich, 1983). In their attention restoration theory (ART), Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989, Kaplan, 1995 termed the key restorative processes being away and soft fascination. Working together, these processes help to relieve the overworked adaptive systems, shield the experiential field from unwanted intrusions, stimulate soft and unconstrained attentiveness in the present, and aid psychophysiological stress recovery, all without imposing any additional self-regulation needs. Importantly, restorative experience is not just a matter of environmental qualities but of qualities of the transaction between individual and environment (Hartig, Korpela, Evans, & Gärling, 1997). The way someone engages with the environment is presumably amenable to training in relevant skills (Kaplan, 2001).

Most research on restorative environments has considered experiences with widely available natural settings, as with strolling in an urban park, visiting the countryside, or gardening (Hartig and Kahn, 2016, von Lindern et al., 2017). Research generally affirms that, for stressed and fatigued individuals, engaging with nature restores capabilities for directing attention and regulating emotions better than spending time in other commonly accessible environments (for reviews, see Bowler et al., 2010, Hartig et al., 2014, Ohly et al., 2016; cf. Hartig & Jahncke, 2017). Many people can occasionally leave obligations aside, enter a restorative environment, and enjoy its benefits without any special skills or effort; however, the social, economic, geographic, architectural, and technological fabric of modern life tends to constrain opportunities for and the quality of restorative experiences (Hartig and Kahn, 2016, Staats et al., 2016, von Lindern, 2017). Consequently, some studies have begun to consider ways to enhance engagement in limited contacts with nature (e.g., Duvall, 2011, Korpela et al., 2017). Training in mindfulness skills could be one way to accomplish that.

Mindfulness means a curious, yet detached, quality of attention to present experience (e.g., Bishop et al., 2004); that is, to connect with openness and acceptance with experiences while also maintaining some psychological distance in the experiential process. The psychological distance allows for breadth and flexibility of awareness and behavioral options. Similar to restorative experience, mindfulness can be considered as a state that can vary momentarily as people go through different activities and environments (Brown et al., 2007, Davidson and Kaszniak, 2015, Kaplan, 2001, Lutz et al., 2015, Tang and Posner, 2009). However, mindfulness is more commonly considered as a trait; a set of cognitive-behavioral skills or a neurocognitive capability that can be enhanced over weeks, months, or years with regular meditation exercise. As such, mindfulness training (like other training approaches) requires a significant initial investment of time, effort, and cognitive resources to establish practice habits and learn skills (Kaplan, 2001, Lutz et al., 2015, Lymeus et al., 2017, Malinowski, 2013, Tang and Posner, 2009). Once learned, however, mindfulness skills can help people to balance their resources and function more efficiently in many different situations. Mindfulness training can thus have a wide range of benefits (Eberth & Sedlmeier, 2012). Our focus here, however, is on attentional processes and outcomes, as several authors have proposed that attentional enhancements are fundamental to many of the other self-regulation and health enhancements that have been reported with meditation training (see e.g., Chiesa et al., 2011, Malinowski, 2013, Tang et al., 2015).

Many contemporary mindfulness courses for beginners emphasize so-called focused attention practice in which meditators try to sustain attention to given target stimuli, such as sensations with the breath, and repeatedly redirect attention when they lose their focus (Lutz et al., 2008, Lutz et al., 2015, Malinowski, 2013, Tang et al., 2015). During the exercises, experiences of fatigue and distraction are common (Frewen et al., 2016, Hasenkamp et al., 2012, Lutz et al., 2015). In fact, the experiences of fatigue and distraction are considered as opportunities for training in managing the intensity and direction of focus. With exercise on all or most days over several course weeks, focused attention practice is thought to train cognitive-behavioral attention control skills (e.g., Bishop et al., 2004, Kaplan, 2001) and stimulate gradual development of brain networks involved in cognitive control (Fox et al., 2016, Holzel et al., 2011, Lutz et al., 2008). Posner, Tang and colleagues (e.g., Posner et al., 2010, Tang and Posner, 2009) have termed this type of training “attention network training”.

Other approaches to cognitive training have recently been criticized for conceptual shortcomings and over-extended promises (Rabipour and Raz, 2012, Simons et al., 2016), but the meditation literature has continued to accumulate evidence of enhanced performance on selective and executive attention tasks after weeks or months with regular exercise (Chiesa et al., 2011, Eberth and Sedlmeier, 2012, Gallant, 2016, Sedlmeier et al., 2012; though also see Lao, Kissane, & Meadows, 2016). Interestingly, some studies have reported such improvements after only one (Friese, Messner, & Schaffner, 2012), or as few as four (Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010), or five (Tang et al., 2007) meditation sessions.

Although many researchers construe the longer-term enhancements as resulting from attention network training, few have considered that the training can incur a cost. A recent study by Lymeus et al. (2017) found that many individuals who have weak attention to begin with struggle with the exercise requirements of the much researched Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR; Kabat-Zinn, 1990) course. Indeed, it makes sense that people who already exhaust themselves in trying to maintain focus and composure in their daily lives could be unwilling or unable to comply with requirements to spend any free time doing much the same in focused attention exercises even with the prospect of attaining benefits in the long-term. Their primary need may be for restoration before starting an attention network training regimen.

While focused attention practice constitutes the bulk of most mindfulness courses for beginners, many exercises also entail elements of a different type of practice, open monitoring, in which meditators use minimal effort to mindfully observe the changing stream of ongoing experience and attentional shifts from moment to moment (Lutz et al., 2008, Tang et al., 2015). Like focused attention practice, open monitoring requires a decision to meditate and maintenance of that decision over time in practice. In contrast to focused attention practice, however, open monitoring is presumably less effortful because meditators exercise little cognitive control (Fox et al., 2016, Lutz et al., 2015). Although open monitoring practice is not thought to train attention per se, it presumably develops the capability for curious yet detached connection with experience. Those processes can functionally support attention by enhancing contact with present experience and by facilitating disengagement from habitual and reactive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that would distract and diminish connection with present experience. Posner, Tang and colleagues (e.g., Posner et al., 2010, Tang and Posner, 2009) have termed this type of training “attention state training” (in contrast to attention network training). Building on work by Kaplan (2001), they indicate links between attention state training in open monitoring-type meditation and restorative experiences in nature.

Theory in the mindfulness field and the restorative environments field converge in multiple ways. Both describe a particular quality of attention to present experience (Kaplan, 2001, Tang and Posner, 2009; cf. Bishop et al., 2004, Kaplan, 1995, Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989); that is, attention characterized by curiosity and soft fascination, respectively. Both also describe a way to manage stressors and distractions by obtaining some psychological distance from them – detachment and being away, respectively – rather than immediately attempting to address and eliminate them. While these transactional qualities apparently overlap between mindfulness and nature experience, the approaches differ in how they see the connection with present experience and the management of distraction being supported by top-down and bottom-up processes. Mindfulness research centers on the volitional practice of certain individual skills while restorative environments research focuses on processes that tend to appear spontaneously in certain types of environments. We propose that those top-down and bottom-up processes can converge to enhance each other, in effect supporting state mindfulness as well as restorative processes.

In an initial test of these ideas, Lymeus et al. (2017) had stressed students without previous meditation experience come in after a day of work to practice unguided mindfulness meditation for 15 min with or without simultaneously viewing images of natural scenery. The students did this every other week over a period of eight weeks, during which they also participated in a MBSR course, so their mindfulness skills were expected to improve gradually over the weeks. Control participants came and viewed the nature images with instructions to just rest, and they did not attend any mindfulness training. On average, participants who just rested with nature images showed improved attentional performance (assessed with a substitution test) after the sessions compared to before. The meditating participants showed no average improvement. This result indicates that mindfulness exercise for beginners can incur attentional effort and hamper any restoration otherwise expected with the 15-min rest session. The participants who practiced mindfulness without nature stimuli had increasingly negative effects of the sessions across the eight weeks. This result suggests that they exerted more effort in the meditation as they became more skilled. The participants who practiced mindfulness with nature images instead had increasingly positive effects of the sessions across the eight weeks. Meditation with natural stimuli can thus, given some basic mindfulness skill, offset some of the effort incurred by the exercises.

Natural settings would not likely support beginners in the practice of focused attention meditation because a rich and softly fascinating environment would draw attention away from any given object of practice. The attentional demands of focused attention practice would also likely interfere with any restorative processes stimulated by the natural environment. Open monitoring practice, in contrast, would allow for attention to wander to different experiences in the environment. With open monitoring practice, we reasoned that natural stimuli can softly and effortlessly hold attention to various aspects of the present reality and stimulate mindful curiosity; and that a natural setting that supports a sense of being away from stressors, demands, and routine mental contents can facilitate mindful detachment. Thus, nature should support beginning meditators in open monitoring practice. We further reasoned that skills in curiosity can enhance soft fascination in connection with the environmental features and that skills in detachment can promote a sense of being away, above and beyond what the environment alone supports. Thus, with gradual training in a mindfulness course, meditation in nature should eventually help restore adaptive resources.

We developed a 5-week course based on open monitoring mindfulness practices and restorative environments theory, called restoration skills training (ReST). The course involved weekly classes in a garden environment, with exercise instructions aimed to stimulate participants’ effortless, restorative transactions with the environment through sensory exploration and practice in curiosity and detachment. The course also entailed daily homework. ReST was compared with a conventional mindfulness training (CMT) course held indoors. The CMT course emphasized focused attention practices because these are dominant in mindfulness courses commonly offered to beginners and are by many thought to drive the attentional enhancements in early stages of meditation training (see e.g., Chiesa et al., 2011, Malinowski, 2013, Tang et al., 2015). CMT otherwise had a structure and requirements for class attendance and homework exercises similar to those of ReST.

The CMT course was not intended to represent MBSR or any other specific pre-existing mindfulness training course. Instead, it was meant to represent the proposed dominant pathway to attentional enhancements in early stages of meditation training: attention network training through focused attention meditation. The design of the two meditation courses thus allowed us to contrast ReST with the dominant approach to achieve attentional enhancements in early stages of meditation training, in order to test their relative effectiveness and respective assumptions.

We conducted four successive rounds of data collection to develop ReST, organized into two studies. Study 1 covered the development of ReST across the first three rounds of data collection, and Study 2 tested the fully developed ReST course in a single round of data collection. Using both behavioral and self-report measures, each study assessed longer-term outcomes of participation as well as short-term outcomes that reflected on the processes engaged with ReST versus CMT. Lymeus et al. (in preparation) present analyses of the longer-term outcomes on psychological health and functioning of participation in the two courses. This paper specifically considers the attentional outcomes of participation in the ReST and CMT courses, as seen in change across the weeks of the course, as well as in the short-term outcomes of participation in the ReST and CMT classes (Study 1) and in meditation sessions within classes (Study 2).

We hypothesized generalized improvement in attentional performance with both courses (H1). We also expected that ReST participants would show signs of restoration with the classes (Study 1) and meditation sessions (Study 2) as indicated by improvement in attentional performance and emotional stress ratings, whereas CMT participants would show signs of effort as indicated by deterioration in attentional performance and hampered stress reduction. However, in line with Lymeus et al. (2017), we expected that any effects indicative of restoration and effort would appear gradually with increasing mindfulness skills acquired across the five weeks of the course. We thus hypothesized improvement with ReST practice and deterioration with CMT practice toward the end of the course (H2).