Practice mindfulness

The argument

Mindfulness is a useful and practical skill to learn and master during the pandemic because it encourages peace and calm during uncertain and turbulent times. What makes it suited to this period in particular is that it addresses a person's relationship to their circumstances rather than the circumstances themselves, and during a pandemic very little about the circumstances lies within any individual's control. This argument rests on the assumption that people can benefit from practicing mindfulness through emotional stability and calm. Mindfulness practices reduce the effects of stress and anxiety that have been brought on by the pandemic, which is largely a matter of how attention is directed, since much of the distress of an uncertain period comes from rehearsing possibilities that have not happened and may never. This is because "Mindfulness is the quality of being present and fully engaged with whatever you're doing at the moment – free from distraction or judgment, and aware of our thoughts and feelings without getting caught up in them." The second half of that definition is the operative part. The practice does not require suppressing anxious thoughts, which would only be another thing to fail at, but noticing them without being carried along by them. Studies show that mindfulness meditation helps manage and reduce anxiety, so the benefit is not confined to how the practice feels while it is being done. This not only benefits mental health but physical health too, as decreasing stress and anxiety may help improve immune response, a consideration with obvious weight during a pandemic. A skill that can be learned at home, needs nothing to practise, and works on the part of a situation a person can actually affect is well suited to social distancing.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Advocates of the sibling positions reply that the evidence is weaker than the summary suggests and that mindfulness is a poor fit for the question. Reviews of meditation trials find modest effects on anxiety and depressive symptoms and note recurring methodological problems — small samples, absent or inactive control conditions, unblinded outcomes and expectancy effects — while the immune-response claim is a further step the underlying research does not support, resting on small studies of biomarkers rather than of illness. Adverse effects, including heightened anxiety and dissociative experiences in a minority of practitioners, are documented and go unmentioned. The stronger objection concerns the question being asked. It asks which skills are most useful to learn while social distancing, and mindfulness is a practice sustained by continued effort rather than a capability retained once acquired: a language, a programming skill, cooking or writing leave a person permanently more able, whereas the benefits described here fade when practice stops. Critics add that the argument concedes its own footing in its second line — that it rests on an assumption — and that the stress it addresses was largely a feature of the period rather than a lasting condition to prepare for.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That mindfulness encourages calm is asserted from its definition rather than shown, and the argument concedes in its own second line that it rests on an assumption. [Rejecting P2] Reviews of meditation trials find modest effects alongside recurring methodological problems — small samples, inactive controls, unblinded outcomes — while the immune-response claim rests on small biomarker studies rather than illness outcomes, and adverse effects in a minority of practitioners go unmentioned. [Rejecting C] The question asks which skills are most useful to learn, and mindfulness is a practice sustained by continued effort rather than a capability retained once acquired — unlike the languages, writing, digital and domestic skills the sibling positions advance.