How Meditation Promotes Well‐Being: Applying a Dual‐System Theory

ABSTRACT Mindfulness meditation and Buddhist‐informed contemplative approaches promote health and well‐being in part by helping meditators view present‐moment reality from a less immersed perspective. Contemplative practices build meta‐awareness and help practitioners psychologically distance from mental activity, thereby reducing negative emotions and craving while promoting mental flexibility. Metcalfe and Mischel's dual‐system model contrasts cool analytic processes with more emotional hot system processes. Contemplative practices facilitate adaptive coping in part by reducing hot and promoting cool system activation. Buddhist philosophies emphasizing the importance of present‐moment awareness, the futility of striving for self‐focused goals (worldly concerns), and the self‐perpetuating nature of negative emotions are used to explain how contemplative practices deter hot system activation and promote cool system activation over time.