Mindfulness has definitely reached the pinnacle of popularity in American culture.

Once every decade or two a name branded relaxation technique achieves the same thing, whether

it's mindfulness, yoga, transcendental meditation, or zen.

Today we're going to trace this history to see if mindfulness is just a newer name

for more of the same.

And if it truly has any benefits that other relaxation techniques don't.

Mindfulness is coming up next on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

All about mindfulness.

Fads are ubiquitous.

They always have been and always will be.

They tend to come and go.

Some fads are goofy and some are great, and sometimes the great ones leave the realm

of fad and become mainstream.

It's only been a few years since the meditation method called mindfulness grew into a fad

of New York Times bestseller proportions, so we're still waiting to see if it finds a permanent

place there.

Today, we're going to look at the research and find out what we know, or at least what

we know so far, about mindfulness.

Is it any different from other types of meditation, and by extension is meditation really

any different from other types of relaxation?

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