Exploring Anima: a brain–computer interface for peripheral materialization of mindfulness states during mandala coloring

Abstract

I could feel my mind buzzing after another long day at work. Driving home, I am looking forward to my “me time” ritual of playing with colors. As I arrive, I get myself comfortable, pick up an orange crayon, and start coloring a mandala with beautiful lace-like details. For that, I have to fully concentrate, and my attention is focused on the unfolding present experience of slowly and mindfully filling in the mandala with color. Once I filled in all the little spaces from the central layer, I pick up a green crayon and color the next layer. When I make mistakes is usually because I am not paying attention. I now tend to accept and work my way around them. Before I know it, my mandala is complete, and my buzzing mind has calmed down. I can even pinpoint some subtle feelings unreachable when I started, wondering also how I could do better next time. By looking at the colored mandala, I can see from my mistakes when I was less mindful and lost focus. I also know that there were other moments of lost focus, albeit I cannot see them in my mandala. Maybe because these happened while coloring larger areas, and then mistakes are easier to avoid even without concentration. This scenario inspired by our study findings illustrates the richness of mandala coloring as an illustration of a focused attention mindfulness (FAM) practice. It shows the importance of intention, attention, and non-judgmental acceptance, with an invitation to explore how the materialization of mindfulness states onto colors may provide value to this practice. While acknowledging the complexity of mindfulness constructs (Hart et al., 2013), for the purpose of our work we adopt the working definition of mindfulness as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment” [pp. 145] (Kabat-Zinn, 2009). Nevertheless, consistent findings in the literature indicate that the skills required to sustain and regulate attention are challenging to develop (Kerr et al., 2013; Sas & Chopra, 2015). Mindfulness practices have been broadly categorized under focused attention – involving sustained attention on an intended object, and open monitoring – with broader attentional focus, hence no explicit object of attention (Lutz et al., 2008). While FAM targets the focus and maintenance of attention by narrowing it to a selected stimulus despite competing others and, when attention is lost, disengaging from these distracting stimuli to redirect it back to the selected one, rather than narrowing it, open monitoring involves broadening the focus of attention through a receptive and non-judgmental stance toward moment-to-moment internal salient stimuli such as difficult thoughts and emotions (Britton, 2018). FAM is typically the starting point for novice meditators, with the main object of attention being either internal (e.g., focus on the breathing in sitting meditation (Prpa et al., 2018; Vidyarthi et al., 2012), or on bodily movements during walking meditation (S. S. Chen et al., 2015) or Tai-Chi