Self-Reported Mindfulness Mediates the Relation Between Meditation Experience and Psychological Well-Being

A well established notion in Buddhist literature is that meditation practice improves the ability to be mindful in daily life which in turn promotes psychological well-being. In order to test this hypothesis the relations between meditation experience, five mindfulness facets and psychological well-being were studied in a sample consisting of Buddhist meditators, Western mindfulness meditators and non-meditators. The meditators scored higher than non-meditators on all mindfulness facets except Describe, but when age and gender were controlled for there were significant differences only on Non-React and Observe. Multiple and simple mediation were tested in a path model framework. Length of meditation experience was related to Non-React and Observe, and there was a similar trend also for Non-Judge, suggesting that these mindfulness facets are the ones most strongly associated with mindfulness meditation practice. The multiple mediation analysis showed an indirect effect of meditation experience on psychological wellbeing via the five mindfulness facets. Simple mediation analyses indicated that Non-React was the primary mediator. These results support the notion that length of meditation experience is related to higher levels of mindfulness, which in turn is associated with improved well-being. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.