Hayes, S. C., & Plumb, J. C. (2007) Mindfulness from the Bottom Up: Providing an Inductive Framework for Understanding Mindfulness Processes and their Application to Human Suffering. Psychological Inquiry, 18(4), 242-248.
While mindfulness processes have been used for centuries, the scientific study of mindfulness is a very recent endeavor. We agree with the authors that the most challenging aspect of a scientific study of mindfulness will be to develop empirically grounded, theoretical models that link process to outcome. However, we argue that a rigorous inductive (bottom-up) scientific approach to understanding, manipulating, and evaluating mindfulness processes is worth pursuing in addition to a top down unpacking of mindfulness meditation as a technique and mindfulness as a concept. In this commentary, we provide one account of an inductive, functional, contextual approach to mindfulness as a process and outcome.