Mindfulness is a mental mode characterized by purposefully paying attention to present-moment experience without elaboration, editorializing, or emotional reactivity [23]. MT programs aim to cultivate this mental mode through repeated engagement in specific mindfulness exercises and in-class group discussions. MT has been viewed as a form of neurocognitive training with parallels to PT [24, 25]. During PT, body systems are targeted by engaging in specific physical exercises. To bolster physical fitness of a particular system (e.g., cardiovascular), physical exercises must be repeated consistently over time. Similarly, mindfulness exercises may target specific mental processes (e.g., attentional control) to bolster neurocognitive fitness. Practicing mindfulness exercises multiple times per week over a multi-week MT program interval may repeatedly engage these mental processes, strengthening selective focus, meta-awareness, and decentering over time [24, 26; see details below]. Moreover, there is growing evidence that MT improves neurocognitive functioning, as demonstrated by improvements in cognitive processes [27] and changes in the resting state functional connectivity of specific large-scale brain networks over MT training intervals [28, 29].

Reports from mindfulness practitioners offer valuable insights into the cognitive changes in information processing that occur with repeated mindfulness practice. One noteworthy example of MT’s capacity to bolster cognitive tendencies is from now-retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General (LTG) Walter Piatt who said, “Mindfulness exercises are like push-ups for the mind. They have helped me focus and stay focused on a situation or person more easily, without getting lost-in-thought or distracted by information being thrown at me. I can watch my mind and pull it back if it gets stuck in a memory or worry. I can drop the story of what I think should be happening, so I don’t become blind to what is actually happening.” [14, pg. 4].

To better understand how MT leads to these subjective changes, it’s essential to examine the mental processes that practitioners are guided to engage during mindfulness exercises. MT programs typically include two categories of formal exercises: focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM). In FA exercises, practitioners select a specific object of focus, such as breath-related sensations (e.g., the sensations of the breath at the nostrils or abdomen), and aim to maintain selective focus on this object, moment-by-moment. When they notice they are off-track, they are instructed to refocus back to the target object. FA is the exercise depicted at the start of this article. During OM, practitioners are instructed to maintain a receptive and open state, non-reactively monitoring the contents of conscious experience moment by moment, without sustaining focus on any specific object.

Recent theoretical models of MT [26] propose that successful engagement in mindfulness exercises requires execution of three core mental actions: (1) selective focus, processing specific information (such as an object or specific aspect of experience) while ignoring distractions [26]; (2) meta-awareness, monitoring and being aware of ongoing mental processes—such as sensing, feeling, and thinking—that are subjectively experienced [30, 31]; and (3) decentering, observing items that arise in the mind (feelings, thoughts, and memories) from a healthy psychological distance, recognizing them as mental events rather than direct reflections of reality [32].

These core mental actions, while essential for mindfulness exercises, are also useful during a variety of everyday situations. For example, when attempting to read a book in a noisy cafe, selective focus enables you to concentrate on the text while tuning out the clatter of dishes and background conversations. Meta-awareness comes into play when you suddenly realize your mind has drifted to thoughts about the weekend instead of following the words on the page. This recognition allows you to decide whether or not to refocus on reading. Decentering, in turn, helps create psychological distance from distracting thoughts or emotions. If an anxious thought arises—perhaps about an upcoming deadline—you can note, “I’m having an anxious thought” rather than becoming immersed in the emotion.

In addition to being relevant for ad hoc use during everyday circumstances, when these mental actions are stable, trait-like cognitive tendencies, they may be especially beneficial in high-stakes situations like those faced by military leaders. Indeed, this likely benefit aligns with the subjective experience described by LTG Piatt, in his observation of how MT helped him (see above). Specifically, selective focus was described as the ability to “focus and stay focused,” meta-awareness as the ability to “watch the mind,” and decentering as the ability to “drop the story.” Beyond this subjective account, numerous studies have reported improvements in validated measures of selective focus, meta-awareness, and decentering with MT [see 26, 27, 33]. Yet, much less is known about the mechanisms by which these improvements may occur.

In Fig. 1, we depict a mechanistic framework, proposing that MT not only strengthens core mental actions (selective focus, meta-awareness, and decentering), but bolsters attentional control itself through its varied and repeated engagement during mindfulness exercises. Attentional control is the ability to regulate information processing in a flexible, goal-directed manner [34]. Because the objective of each mindfulness exercise—FA and OM—differs, the way in which core mental actions (selective focus, meta-awareness, and decentering) are engaged during each practice will also vary.

Mindfulness Exercises and Neurocognitive Training of Attentional Control. Mindfulness exercises strengthen domain-general attentional control functions. Practicing focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM) mindfulness exercises targets attentional control functions during the execution of three mental actions–selective focus, meta-awareness, and decentering. Repeatedly engaging in these exercises over multiple sessions offers a complex, variable, and challenging neurocognitive training environment which strengthens attentional control over time

During FA, the goal is to engage selective focus so that information processing is constrained to a single object or aspect of experience (e.g., breath-related sensations) and not toward external distractions or internal distractions such as off-task thoughts or memories that may arise. Meta-awareness supports this goal by identifying when selective focus has drifted off-track, while decentering helps loosen the attentional grip of “sticky” mental content, such as a recurring worry. In contrast, during OM, selective focus remains broad and steady, encompassing all arising mental content. Meta-awareness continuously monitors this content without engaging in evaluation and elaboration, often referred to in the mindfulness literature as discursive thought. Decentering is proactively applied during OM, allowing thoughts and emotions to be observed nonjudgmentally and from a distance.

As depicted on the left side of Fig. 1, attentional control involves subordinate functions such as maintaining, monitoring, inhibiting, and shifting [35], which in turn support selective focus, meta-awareness, and decentering. Maintaining means sustaining focus on goal-relevant information over time. Monitoring allows for the continuous tracking of information processing, detecting distractions or lapses that may interfere with performance. Inhibiting suppresses the processing of irrelevant stimuli or impulses, preventing interference from competing information. Finally, shifting enables the flexible redirection of information processing back to a goal-aligned task set based on situational demands.

As described in the right column of Fig. 1, engagement of these subordinate functions during FA and OM ensures that information processing remains aligned with each practice’s goal. For example, selective focus requires maintenance and monitoring processes to be constrained to a single target during FA but broadly distributed across all arising mental phenomena during OM. Selective focus also requires inhibiting irrelevant information—such as any stimuli unrelated to the target during FA—and inhibiting an excessive narrowing of attention during OM. Shifting is required when selective focus has been erroneously directed toward irrelevant information in FA or when it has become overly narrow in OM. For meta-awareness, monitoring allows for the detection of off-task thoughts during FA and the continuous tracking of mental events that arise during OM. Additionally, meta-awareness requires inhibiting engagement in elaboration and evaluation during both FA and OM. And for decentering, attentional control is required to maintain a nonjudgmental and distanced perspective and to inhibit a self-oriented, immersive perspective during both FA and OM. Thus, our framework proposes that a variety of attentional control functions are engaged to support selective focus, meta-awareness, and decentering during mindfulness exercises.

Importantly, during MT programs, FA and OM are practiced repeatedly. The intention behind this requirement is not merely to improve one’s ability to practice, so that it becomes easier over repeated sessions. Instead, this time investment is made to benefit participants in their everyday lives. The underlying assumption is that MT will have far transfer effects—meaning that the benefits of repeatedly practicing mindfulness exercises will not be limited to benefitting subsequent practice sessions but will transfer to new tasks [36].

Research on cognitive training has identified key factors that promote far transfer of learning to new environments and activities. Specifically, training is most effective when the training environment is complex, variable, and challenging, and when the cognitive process being trained is engaged voluntarily, flexibly, and repeatedly [24]. In line with the mechanistic framework described in Fig. 1, we argue that attentional control is not only necessary for successfully engaging in FA and OM practices, but repeating mindfulness practices over a multi-week MT program fosters the training conditions that support far transfer.

Across practice sessions, participants experience a complex, variable, and ever-changing milieu of sensory input and mental activity while potentially facing challenges in following practice instructions. They must repeatedly engage multiple subordinate functions of attentional control—maintaining, monitoring, inhibiting, and shifting—in a goal-aligned manner, not only for FA or OM practice as a whole but also tailored to the specific mental action (e.g., selective focus) they are performing. Additionally, participants must determine when attentional control is necessary and engage it voluntarily, flexibly, and repeatedly—whether they are off-track during an FA practice or overly focused during an OM practice. Furthermore, they must initiate this control endogenously, relying on their own willful engagement without external prompting.

If MT does indeed provide a robust neurocognitive training environment for attentional control, we would expect to see MT-related improvements not only on laboratory-based attention tasks that share some features with mindfulness training exercises [see 37], but also in real-world tasks requiring attentional control [see 24]. These real-world tasks may share very few features with the training exercises.

MT-related improvements have been reported in a variety of laboratory-based tasks of attentional control. A recent meta-analysis of 111 studies, primarily involving civilian cohorts [27], reported significant small-to-moderate effect sizes on various laboratory-based tasks of attentional control, such as sustained attention and working memory accuracy. Additionally, a RAND report which reviewed a subset of MT research in civilians and military personnel concluded that overall effects of MT were small; however, the strength of evidence for attention, based on 23 studies, was regarded as moderate, suggesting that one of the key benefits of MT may be enhanced attentional control [13].

Beyond laboratory-based tasks, MT improvements have been demonstrated in various real-world tasks in civilians including workplace safety behaviors [38], driving skills [39], athletic performance [40], and academic achievement [41], all of which are known to depend on attentional control for success [34, 42]. MT-related enhancements have also been observed in military contexts, with increased marksmanship scores among service members [21]. These findings highlight how strikingly dissimilar the training and far transfer contexts can be. For a military service member, for example, while mindfulness exercises may be practiced while sitting quietly with eyes closed in a safe place, the performance benefits may occur in the chaotic and potentially dangerous context of training or combat.

In addition to these performance-related findings, there is evidence of MT-related functional brain changes within key nodes and networks of attentional control. For instance, relative to novices, mindfulness practitioners exhibit greater resting-state functional connectivity within the fronto-parietal control network—a large-scale network supporting attentional control [e.g., 43]. Furthermore, when novices undergo MT, this network shows enhanced modulation of other large-scale networks involved in salience detection and internally generated thought [see 28, 29, 33].

Together these findings support the view that MT provides a unique neurocognitive training environment that strengthens attentional control and benefits performance and brain fitness.

While mindfulness training strengthens attentional control, the high-demand conditions often endured in military service may make attentional control vulnerable to degradation—making service members among those who stand to benefit most from this training. In both training and deployed settings, risk of harm is amplified when service members are exposed to stress, threat, and lack of sleep, conditions which may compromise attentional control functions [44]. Moreover, this exposure may last for protracted time intervals. The deleterious consequences of high-demand intervals on attention-related outcomes have been reported across military contexts, including survival school [45] and pre-deployment training [46]. In addition, a greater number of performance errors have been reported in Army warfighters spending extended periods conducting simulated combat maneuvers [47] and other high-intensity military training [48]. Overall, such degradation potentially compromises individual service member fitness, as well as mission and leadership success (See Fig. 2).

Attentional control is weakened by protracted intervals of high demand and strengthened by mindfulness training. Attentional control is conceptualized as a domain-general ‘fuel’ that supports a broad range of domain-specific processes such as cognitive, social, and emotional functions, which are critical for holistic fitness. The availability of attentional control resources determines the quality of holistic fitness, which, in turn, determines the success of the multi-domain processes they support, such as operational performance and leadership effectiveness

Military culture is deeply hierarchical, and leaders play a critical role in strategic and tactical decisions. Leaders provide direction, support unit morale, and take care of subordinates [49]. Thus, when the attention of a service member in a leadership role is degraded, their decision making may falter, negatively impacting not only the individual, but also the unit and the mission. While leaders are important in a variety of organizations, in high-stakes occupations like the military, leaders are critical to survival.

Attentional control is essential for effective cognitive, social, and emotional functioning, particularly in the demanding environment of military service [14]. However, the intense pressures of real-world military operations can compromise attentional control [50]. The cognitive neuroscience literature has reported that diminished attentional control functions correspond with impaired decision-making [51, 52], diminished social abilities [53], and poor emotion regulation [54]. Various training approaches, such as computer-based cognitive task training [see 55], have been employed to strengthen attentional control among military personnel. Despite these efforts, most approaches to date have only achieved ‘near transfer,’ with benefits limited to the specific training context.

While MT holds promise for protecting and strengthening attentional control and producing far transfer of benefits, its effectiveness depends on the participant’s ability to practice in a way that aligns with the intended goals of mindfulness exercises. Unlike computer-based training, where the process is straightforward and externally driven, MT requires a nuanced understanding of how to practice correctly [56]. For example, during FA exercises, participants are instructed to observe the sensory experience of the breath without altering the breath’s natural rhythm. These instructions may appear to be similar to breathing exercises like deep breathing or box breathing. In box (or square) breathing, an individual typically breathes in for four seconds, holds for four seconds, exhales for four seconds, and holds again for four seconds. But in MT, the focus on the breath serves as an anchor for observing arising phenomena from a nonjudgmental perspective. The goal is to see clearly what is happening in the present moment, free from bias, interpretations, and distortions that can cloud judgment and compromise effective decision making. In contrast, practices like box breathing aim to change the breath to induce a calmer physiological state. While both methods are beneficial, their mechanisms and outcomes differ, making it crucial for participants to understand these distinctions to avoid confusion.

The effectiveness of MT significantly improves when led by a skilled trainer, who can correct misunderstandings and motivate participants to stay consistent, compared to a self-guided approach [27]. Trainers who understand the specific context in which participants operate, such as military environments, can further enhance the relevance and applicability of MT practices to participants’ professional and personal lives [50].

For MT to be effectively delivered in military settings, trainers must not only have direct experience with mindfulness practices but also be adept at linking practice-related concepts to the demands of military life [50, 57]. In contrast to extensive research on trainer competencies and MT delivery fidelity in civilian settings, there has been limited research on train-the-trainer programs specifically for military MT [see 16, 50]. Although further research is necessary, several MT studies have already been conducted with military cohorts, as reviewed in the next section.