Mindfulness meditation in nature can enhance attention effortlessly

What is it about?

Mindfulness meditation is often described as a form of attention training. As such, it demands regular training with effortful focused attention exercises that draw down limited attention resources. In contrast, restorative nature experience enhances attention and promotes mindfulness spontaneously, without requiring any skills or effort. The two studies that we report in this article show that effortful meditation training is not necessary to enhance attention. Our meditation approach called restoration skills training (ReST) draws on experiences of nature to teach mindfulness "bottom-up" and enhance attention effortlessly. We compared ReST with conventional mindfulness meditation which only began to incur effort after several weeks' training, long after attention enhancements were seen in the first weeks of training. Restoration during meditation rather than attention training may drive the attention enhancements that have been reported in numerous previous studies.

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Why is it important?

The results are important because they provide novel input to the understanding of working mechanisms in meditation training: Restoration rather than attention training may drive attention enhancements in early stages of meditation training. ReST holds promise as a relatively undemanding introduction to mindfulness training and as a method to train people with stress and concentration problems to rest and recover more efficiently from the strains they face in day-to-day life.

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