ABSTRACT

The inevitable process of aging make people experience physically and/or mentally more degenerative changes as he/she is getting older and older, and thus their quality of life has been getting lower in the second half of life. Although there have been many ways for improving the quality of life for the older adults, practical efficacy of using mindfulness meditation for that was introduced in this paper. Mindfulness has been the Buddhist meditative practice in the Southeast Asian countries over the past 2,500 years, but its positive effects have been shown in many clinical situation by the Western body-mind medicine and psychology researchers from the 1970s. Recent studies began to show its usefulness in nonclinical situations. The authors stressed the necessity of mindfulness training to the community-dwelling older adults as a preventive strategy for psychological stress and/or a strategy to foster healthy aging.