Ah, but this work was not done on CFS subjects as defined by the Oxford criteria by skilled researchers who employ those internationally recognised scientific tools such as outcome switching and redefining recovery. Surely they would have had much better outcomes if they had chosen the right researchers.
In Buddhism there is a major tradition of meditation techniques designed to develop specific personality traits, the most common being 'metta' that is variously translated as loving kindness or compassion. We generally think of the mindfulness techniques, such as focusing on the breath or on an object such as a candle as meditation, however they are only a part of meditation within either classical yoga or traditional Buddhism. However both within both Hindu Yoga traditions or Buddhism meditation is part of a much larger ethical and behavioural code, whereas modern practitioners are looking to package and market very specific and descrete components in the west. It would be hard to encapsulate these very broad definitions meaningfully into simple experimental measures.
Thoroughly agree Peter. Personally i am a fan of what i have been taught to be mindfulness meditation, for the reasons you share. But unfortunately 'mindfulness' has become a fashionable word & is now used to describe all kinds of things which seem utterly contrary to everything i have learned about it, so it's a challenge to know whether everyone is talking about the same thing when they say 'mindfulness meditation', in a similar way to when people talk about 'CF' - they might mean ME they might mean TATT they might mean all kinds of things.
Oh how true that is
. The awareness can potentially allow focus on what to be uncompassionate about.
I think you're right! I also think that with some 'therapy' that might be a lucky escape for some people.
I know! That was my thought exactly.... when someone was telling me about this "mindfulness training" she'd been on at work, it sounded nothing like mindfulness it was all about identifying and changing negative emotions - well how can you observe something non judgementally while also judging it as negative & trying to change it?!yet I hear it being used in all kinds of weird ways. I don't even know how CBT mindfulness is supposed to work? Change your thoughts while at the same time do not change your thoughts?
Maybe it's an elaborate real world organic Koan generating machine!
If you've got a smartphone, the Insight Timer app is quite good - free, no ads, and you can set your own timer with assorted tings or not, as you prefer, including no end ting if you like.
Typical. Richard Horton said he thinks maybe half of all published literature is too flawed to be valid. Just not his, not the stuff he publishes, though, it's always others who are wrong. Even though I have no doubt he fully understands PACE is a load of garbage but doesn't think it's relevant anyway because, you know, "there is no disease".
