{"id":96292,"date":"2023-03-26T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-26T16:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=96292"},"modified":"2025-10-03T12:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T16:00:10","slug":"what-is-mindfulness-jon-kabat-zinn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-is-mindfulness-jon-kabat-zinn\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Mindfulness? Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Solution to Stress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is mindfulness, according to Jon Kabat-Zinn? What does the practice of mindfulness require you to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mindfulness is the subject of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Wherever You Go, There You Are<\/em>. In the book, he claims that practicing mindfulness will improve your life and help you stay in the moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to learn more about why Jon Kabat-Zinn thinks mindfulness is important<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: This article is part of\u00a0Shortform\u2019s guide to stress<\/a>. If you like what you read here, there\u2019s plenty more to check out in the guide!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Is Mindfulness?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The language of mindfulness has become increasingly common in everyday vernacular. But what is mindfulness? Jon Kabat-Zinn says that mindfulness is the practice of noticing the present moment and observing it without judgment<\/strong>. Without mindfulness, he argues, many of us move through our day preoccupied with things that happened in the past, worried about things that might happen in the future, or simply caught up in the chaos of our own thoughts. By doing this, we fail to appreciate what’s happening right in front of us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Kabat-Zinn uses the terms mindfulness and meditation<\/a> interchangeably throughout the book. For the purposes of this guide, mindfulness will refer to the overarching practice of becoming aware of the present moment, while meditation will refer to structured mindfulness activities<\/a>, namely the specific postures and visualizations<\/a> discussed later on.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mindfulness is a tool to interrupt an otherwise habitual lack of awareness by offering the opportunity to pause and notice what’s going on around you and inside you<\/strong>. Kabat-Zinn clarifies that pausing (what he calls \u201cnon-doing\u201d) shouldn’t be confused with doing nothing. When we do nothing, time often passes without our awareness; mindfulness, on the other hand, requires deliberate intention and awareness. We can pause when we’re standing still or in the midst of an activity. The key is paying attention<\/a> to what\u2019s happening and detaching yourself from the desire to control or change the present moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kabat-Zinn emphasizes that the awareness required in mindfulness is different from thinking<\/strong>. Thinking is the flow of ideas<\/a> and feelings inside your head, while mindfulness is the observation of those thoughts. So mindfulness isn’t about thinking differently or thinking less, but about stepping back from your thoughts to notice them. In stepping back from your thoughts, you prevent yourself from getting lost in your thinking. Instead you can observe your thoughts<\/a> objectively and learn from them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Is Mindfulness So Hard to Describe?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In Mindfulness in Plain English<\/em><\/a>, Buddhist Monk Bhante Gunaratana explains that it\u2019s difficult to define mindfulness because it’s a presymbolic concept\u2014that is, it\u2019s an experiential state of awareness and attention that’s difficult to fully capture or convey through language or symbols. Gunaratana therefore attempts to describe mindfulness based on its characteristics<\/a>. Mindfulness is characterized by:<\/p>\n\n\n\n