In my anecdotal experience, mindfulness works really well even when separated from belief systems traditionally associated with this practice

At a page at my website devoted to an overview of mindfulness meditation, I’ve posted a comment; by way of bringing attention to it, the current post is devoted to the comment:

A March 24, 2021 BBC article is entitled: “Can companies actually help workers stay happy and healthy?: More employers are providing mental-health benefits to employees. But is this what workers want – and can they actually help keep people well?”

An excerpt reads:

Ultimately, although some workers are grateful for the extra corporate support with wellness benefits, many experts and workers alike feel there’s an extra step necessary: structural change. So, what actually may make the biggest impact is building work cultures that aren’t just not bad for mental health, but that actively promote and contribute to wellbeing.

“In the most supportive workplaces,” says Harvey, “individuals were four times more likely to say, ‘work is good for my mental health’. So much of what work offers is good for our mental state. It gives us a sense of purpose, camaraderie, connection, a feeling we’re achieving something. If you can manage the stress, and you’re given the resources you need, you get these places that are actually really good for you.”

By way of commentary: Changing workplace culture for the better, so far as dealing with stress is concerned, is feasible.

However, that requires an evidence-based approach to structural change, which is distinct from rhetorical flourishes. The same principles are at play regarding inequality; environmental racism; employment precarity; the climate crisis and habitat loss; housing affordability and dealing with homelessness; anti-racism initiatives; and efforts to eliminate stereotyping and stigmatization in relation to life situations and circumstances.

As well, based on what I’ve read and based on anecdotal experience, mindfulness meditation when practised after instruction from a competent teacher is a tremendously powerful technique. It’s also a technique that benefits (in my anecdotal experience) from being separated from associated belief systems – that is, treated as a module, so to speak, separate from whatever belief system that a person can think of.

As well, it’s a technique that, when appropriately applied and practised for a suitable period of time, can re-wire a person’s brain, for the better. In my anecdotal case, situations that in the past used to give rise to strong and not beneficial stress responses, in everyday life, no longer give rise to such responses, except on the most rare (and increasingly rare, as the years go by) occasions. Such a result serves for me as one of many anecdotal demonstrations of the neuroplasticity of the human mind/body system.