NEVER MIND: Thinking about ‘mindfulness.’

At Brown’s School of Public Health, students can earn a master’s in public health specializing in mindfulness or a certificate in mindfulness-based stress-reduction teacher training. Yet, across campus from the Mindfulness Center, Brown’s clinical and affective neuroscience laboratory has researched the adverse effects of mindfulness meditation, which include loss of emotion, motivation or joy.

Some universities claim their courses are rooted in Buddhist philosophy, offering a “thin, romanticized” version of Buddhism “as an academic veneer for spa treatments.”

Universities in the U.K. and Australia also offer mindfulness master’s degree, he writes. At the University of the West of Scotland, students can earn a master of science in mindfulness and compassion degree.

Mindfulness practice “can make students calmer but also less inclined to think hard, plan ahead, or engage in demanding work,” writes Schilling, citing a study.

So it’s basically soma.