Which is better, mindfulness or meditation therapy?

There is no absolute superiority or inferiority between mindfulness and meditation therapy. They have the same origin but have different emphases. They are suitable for completely different groups of people, scenarios and needs. The one that suits you is the best.

Speaking of which, the two have a deep relationship. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), which is commonly used in clinical practice, is essentially a practical method adapted to popular psychological intervention after Dr. Kabat-Zinn de-religiousized traditional Vipassana meditation in the 1970s. It can be regarded as a "down-to-earth player" who has emerged from the traditional meditation family. I met a girl who works as an e-commerce operator a while ago. She stayed up for a month during last year's big sale. She was so anxious that she couldn't sleep for two or three hours in bed. She initially followed the blogger to learn the so-called "empty meditation" and asked herself not to think about anything in her mind. As a result, the more she sat down, the more panicked she became. For half an hour, all she could think about was "Is there an after-sales service I haven't dealt with?" and "Will tomorrow's delivery budget be exceeded?" On the contrary, she was more irritable than when she was not sitting down. Later, I asked her to try a mindfulness body scan. She didn’t have to force herself to clear her thoughts, but just treat them like clouds floating in the sky. When they came, she would watch them go without catching or chasing them. When her attention ran away, she would return to the current physical sensation. I just did it for 15 minutes every day before going to bed. Within two weeks, she said she could fall asleep after lying down in about 20 minutes.

However, I also know many practitioners who have practiced traditional meditation for more than ten years. They feel that the current mindfulness therapy is too "utilitarian". Most of them are aimed at immediate benefits such as reducing stress, alleviating anxiety, and improving concentration. They lack the role of traditional meditation in deeply exploring the inner self and adjusting cognitive models from the root. A teacher who practices Transcendental Meditation told me that he first came into contact with mindfulness because of his entrepreneurial anxiety, and it quickly helped him get through the days of greatest emotional fluctuations. Later, he gradually came into contact with more systematic traditional meditation practices, and now he meditates regularly for 40 minutes every day.

In fact, there is really no need to compare the two against each other. Just like you can't say which one is better, a portable first aid kit or a long-term conditioning supplement. After all, it all depends on what you need at the moment. If you are currently in a period of high pressure, such as taking postgraduate entrance examinations, rushing for projects, and having a lot of things at home. You are often carried away by negative emotions that suddenly appear, and you cannot spare a whole time to meditate. The small exercises of mindfulness therapy are extremely cost-effective. When you are waiting for the subway, touch the key as an anchor point to feel its texture, and when you are irritable in a meeting, bring your attention back to your breathing. You can do it at any time, and the results will be quick. If your daily mood is already relatively stable and you want to explore yourself in the longer term and can spare twenty or thirty minutes of uninterrupted time every day, then the long-term benefits of traditional meditation will be deeper. If you practice it for a long time, it will even slowly change the underlying logic of how you look at things.

Many practitioners around me start with mindfulness, slowly find the state, and then come to traditional meditation. To put it bluntly, no matter what kind of practice it is, if you can stick to it and it can really improve your state, it is the "good method" that is most suitable for you.