Can Mindful Dishwashing Reduce Nervousness?

Adam Hanley, Doctoral candidate College of Education's Counseling/School Psychology program Florida State UniversityMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Adam Hanley
Doctoral candidate
College of Education’s Counseling/School Psychology program
Florida State University

Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: This study emerged from the intersection of my personal dislike of dishwashing, my grandmother’s unquestioned enjoyment of the task, and the inevitability of finding myself neck deep in her sink after holiday meals.  Contrasting my suffering with her cheer while pursuing my interest in informal meditation practices challenged me to revisit my dishwashing technique.  Approaching the dishes mindfully, attending to the full sensory experience and connecting with the task as an act of kindness, shifted my dishwashing experience.  The current study was developed to explore whether my new relationship with dishwashing was an isolated phenomenon or might be more generalizable.  To test this generalizability, 51 undergraduate college students were recruited and randomly assigned to wash a standardized set of dishes after reading instructions on either mindful or “correct” dishwashing procedures.

Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?

Response: The first, and most fundamental finding, was that dishwashing appeared to function as a mindfulness practice, with the mindful washers reporting greater mindfulness in comparison with the controls.  This result may suggest that any activity, approached intentionally, has the potential to promote mindful states.

Implications of this finding are broad and may be particularly relevant with respect to reframing mundane or traditionally undesirable tasks as personally beneficial.

The second finding was that mindful dishwashing impacted participants’ affective state, reducing nervousness and increasing inspiration.  This result provides further evidence of the link between mindfulness and well-being and offers preliminary evidence of the emotional benefits of approaching everyday activities mindfully.

The third finding was that mindful dishwashers reported significant overestimations of the amount of time they spent washing, which taken conjointly with the affective results suggests mindful washers reported longer, more enjoyable experiences at the sink.

Broadly, this study was designed to expand beliefs about mindfulness practices and promote accessibility to mindfulness.  Results suggest that mindfulness practices do not necessarily need to be seated, still retreats from daily life, but can be nested within everyday activities.  This may be of particular importance for people who find quiet time scarce during the day, for those who find stillness for extended periods physically or psychologically unmanageable, as well as for those simply seeking to augment their traditional mindfulness practice.  Very little empirical work has specifically explored informal practice, despite its historical importance within the Buddhist tradition.  As such, a great deal of scholarship is needed to more fully grasp the benefits of informal mindfulness practice.

Medical Research: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Response: Investigating alternative informal practices, such as mindful walking or eating, would be valuable areas of future research.  Also, exploring similarities and differences between traditional practices and informal practices would allow clinicians to better tailor mindfulness based interventions to fit patients needs.  While much remains to be done, informal mindfulness practices represent a unique method by which mindfulness may become more accessible to more people, allowing for the cultivation of peace and well-being even in the rush of daily life.

Citation:

Adam W. Hanley, Alia R. Warner, Vincent M. Dehili, Angela I. Canto, Eric L. Garland. Washing Dishes to Wash the Dishes: Brief Instruction in an Informal Mindfulness Practice. Mindfulness, 2014; 6 (5): 1095 DOI:1007/s12671-014-0360-9

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Adam Hanley (2015). Can Mindful Dishwashing Reduce Nervousness? 

Last Updated on October 4, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD