Spectator letters: Mindfulness, addiction, and dinner with Richard Nixon

Mind games

Sir: I hope that people are not unduly put off by Melanie McDonagh’s misrepresentation of mindfulness as a cop-out for navel-gazers who lack the moral fibre to engage in ‘proper’ religion (‘The cult of mindfulness’, 1 November). She describes it as a ‘practice of self-obsession’, but it is the opposite: it creates a space in which the self can be seen for what it is as it hops around, generating superfluous judgments. You begin to obsess less about what your ‘self’ compulsively comes up with, and to approach life from a more anchored perspective. May I invite those who think that sounds bogus and flaky to engage in a short experiment? Take two minutes to sit still, close your eyes and focus only on counting your breaths in cycles of ten. Just two minutes. That should be easy enough for an intelligent person with a smidgeon of concentration, shouldn’t it?
Richard Purnell

Datchet, Berkshire
Sir: Melanie McDonagh is concerned that ‘mindfulness’ will replace faith.