ACT and Mindfulness: Understanding the Relationship

Mindfulness is a critical part of the ACT model. It is an awareness that emerges from paying attention on purpose in the present moment.

Mindfulness practice is foundational to the acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) model. It is an awareness that emerges from paying attention on purpose in the present moment. In this presentation, Dr. D. J. Moran shows how ACT leverages the influence of mindfulness practice to promote psychological flexibility.

Here are some highlights we’ve extracted from this video:

1. Mindfulness emerges through paying attention, on purpose and nonjudgmentally, to the present moment.
2. Mindfulness has many empirically-supported benefits, one of which is building psychological flexibility.

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#act #mindfulness #psychologicalflexibility #awareness

[claytonh]

Ok and what exactly is that exercise supposed to do when angry or anxious ? Still feeling the same.

[ajmarr]

WHY MEDITATION IS REST (from the perspective of a radical behaviorism, and not ACT)
In a 1984 article in the flagship journal of the APA, ‘The American Psychologist’, the psychologist David Holmes reviewed the literature on meditation and concluded that meditative states are no different from resting states. The article (linked below) was roundly criticized because resting was presumably a dormant and non-affective state, quite at odds with the fact that meditation has affective and cognitive entailments that go beyond mere resting. However, from the perspective of affective neuroscience, resting states are not simple non-affective states but are dynamic affective states that are continually modulated by information derived from inner thoughts to outward perceptions. This position is not difficult to understand, and can be summarized below and easily falsified through simple procedure.

A novel procedure demonstrating the continuity of rest from mindful to ‘flow’ states, quickly refutable with a good swift kick!

The ideal for any scientist with a great idea is to be able to explain it in a minute, and to confirm or falsify it as quickly. The world record for this arguably goes to the English philosopher Samuel Johnson, who rejected Archbishop Berkeley’s argument that material things only exist in one’s mind by striking his foot against a large stone while proclaiming, “I refute it thusly!”

Summary
Endogenous opioids are induced when we eat, drink, have sex, and relax, and are responsible for our pleasures. Opioid activity however is not static, but labile, or changeable. When elicited, opioid release is always modulated by concurrently perceived novel act-outcome expectancies which may range from negative to positive. If they are negative (e.g. a spate of bad news or bad implications of our behavior), opioid activity is suppressed and our pleasures are reduced (anhedonia), but if they are positive, then opioid activity is enhanced and our pleasures are accentuated as well (peak experience, ‘flow’). This is due to dopamine-opioid interactions, or the fact that act-outcome discrepancy, or positive or negative surprises, can induce or suppress dopaminergic activity, which in turn can enhance or suppress opioid release. This can be demonstrated procedurally, and if correct, can provide a therapeutic tool to increase arousal and pleasure, or positive wellbeing.

Basic Facts:
Endogenous opioids are induced when we eat, drink, have sex, and relax. Their affective correlate, or how it ‘feels’, is a sense of pleasure.

Fun Fact:
When we are concurrently perceiving some activity that has a variable and unexpected rate of reward while consuming something pleasurable, opioid activity increases and with it a higher sense of pleasure. In other words, popcorn tastes better when we are watching an exciting movie than when we are watching paint dry. The same effect occurs when we are performing highly variable rewarding or meaningful activity (creating art, doing good deeds, doing productive work) while in a pleasurable relaxed state. (Meaning would be defined as behavior that has branching novel positive implications). This is commonly referred to as ‘flow’ or ‘peak’ experience. The same phenomenon underscores the placebo effect, which describes how expectancies can increase dopamine and opioid activity, such as when a meal is tastier or a sugar pill reduces pain when we anticipate they will.

So why does this occur?
Dopamine-Opioid interactions: or the fact that dopamine activity (elicited by positive novel events, and responsible for a state of arousal, but not pleasure) interacts with our pleasures (as reflected by mid brain opioid systems), and can actually stimulate opioid release, which is reflected in self-reports of greater pleasure.

Proof (or kicking the stone):
Just get relaxed using a relaxation protocol such as progressive muscle relaxation, eyes closed rest, or mindfulness, and then follow it by exclusively attending to or performing meaningful activity, and avoiding all meaningless activity or ‘distraction’. Keep it up and you will not only stay relaxed, but continue so with a greater sense of wellbeing or pleasure. (In other words, this is a procedural bridge between mindful and ‘flow’ experiences that are not unique psychological ‘states’, but merely represent special aspects of resting states.) The attribution of affective value to meaningful behavior makes the latter seem ‘autotelic’, or reinforcing in itself, and the resultant persistent attention to meaning crowds out the occasions we might have spent dwelling on other meaningless worries and concerns.

A Likely Explanation, as if you need one!
A more formal explanation from a neurologically based learning theory of this technique is provided on pp. 44-51 in a little open-source book on the psychology of rest linked below. (The flow experience discussed on pp. 81-86.) The book is based on the work of the distinguished affective neuroscientist Kent Berridge, who was kind to review for accuracy and endorse the work.

From meditation to flow
Affect in rest is labile, or changeable, and rest (i.e. the general deactivation of the covert musculature) is not an inert and non-affective state, but modulates affective systems in the brain. In addition, the degree of the modulation of pleasurable affect induced by rest is not dependent upon a species of attention (focal meditation, mindfulness meditation), but is ‘schedule dependent’, and correlates with the variability of schedules or contingencies of reward and the discriminative aspects of incentives (i.e. their cognitive implications). In other words, sustained meaningful activity or the anticipation of acting meaningfully during resting states increases the affective ‘tone’ or value of that behavior, thus making productive work ‘autotelic’, or rewarding in itself, and providing a consistent feeling of arousal and pleasure, or shall we say, ‘happiness’.

References:

Rauwolf, P., et al. (2021) Reward uncertainty - as a 'psychological salt'- can alter the sensory experience and consumption of high-value rewards in young healthy adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (prepub)

Benedetti, F., et al(2011). How placebos change the patient's brain. Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 36(1), 339–354.

The Psychology of Rest

The Psychology of Incentive Motivation and Affect

Meditation and Rest- The American Psychologist
Meditation and Rest, from International Journal of Stress Management, by this author