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Can Mindfulness Practice Help Attention Under Stress?

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Mindfulness and attentionmindfulness researchattentionworking memorystress managementbreathing exercisemental fitness

A small study tested an eight-week mindfulness course with Marines preparing for deployment. Learn what it found—and what a short practice can and cannot show.

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Can Mindfulness Practice Help Attention Under Stress? — AudioAlona Short English narration about mindfulness practice, working memory, and focused attention.
You sit down to read one email. A notification appears. You answer it, remember another task, and suddenly the original email is still open and your mind is racing through three other things. Attention is not a switch we turn on once. It is something we repeatedly bring back to what matters.
Welcome to the Health and Wellness community on Spark, a voice-first blogging platform where we share experiences, learn from each other, and connect in communities.
Today we’ll learn what one study of Marines found about mindfulness and working memory—the mind’s short-term workspace—what the study cannot prove, and a simple attention exercise you can try for one minute.

What is working memory?

Working memory is the mental space we use to hold and use information for a short time—like remembering the start of a sentence as we read to the end. Under heavy demands, it can become harder to keep information in mind and stay focused.

What the Marine study found

In a 2010 study by Amishi Jha and colleagues, researchers followed two groups of Marines preparing for deployment. One group took an eight-week mindfulness course with about 24 hours of classroom instruction and a recommended 30 minutes of daily practice. The other group did not take the course.
The study was small, and people were not put into the groups at random. The researchers found that working-memory scores fell in the comparison group and among course participants who practiced less; scores rose among those who practiced more. This is promising, but it cannot prove that mindfulness caused the difference, and the results may not apply to everyone. Most importantly, the study tested repeated training—not just a few minutes of meditation.

A short attention exercise

The practice studied was not simply “take one deep breath and become focused.” It involved instruction and repeated practice. A short exercise can still help you rehearse the basic move: notice distraction and return attention.
Let’s try three steps now.
  1. Choose one anchor. It could be the feeling of your feet on the floor, the sound around you, or the movement of breathing. Keep your breathing natural; you do not need to force a deep breath.
  2. Notice when attention leaves. Your mind may jump to a task, a memory, or a noise. The moment you notice is part of the practice. It is not a mistake.
  3. Bring attention back gently. Return to the anchor once. If your mind wanders again, return again. For this exercise, success is noticing and returning—not staying perfectly focused.
Try it for three breaths. Feel one breath arrive and leave. If you were distracted, quietly say, “thinking,” and return to the next breath. After three breaths, ask: did anything change in your attention or body? You might notice calm; you might not. Both are valid observations.
If focusing on the breath feels uncomfortable, choose a sound or a visible object instead. And if you are dealing with serious distress, mindfulness is not a substitute for appropriate professional support.

The takeaway

The lesson is that attention can be practiced, but the research does not offer a magic minute count or a universal promise. A useful starting move is to notice distraction and return to one chosen anchor.
Remember: choose an anchor, notice the drift, return gently. Which anchor feels easiest for you: breath, sound, or touch?
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Sources and further reading

  • Jha and colleagues, “Examining the Protective Effects of Mindfulness Training on Working Memory Capacity and Affective Experience,” Emotion (2010): small, non-randomized study of Marines.
  • Jha and colleagues, “Short-Form Mindfulness Training Protects Against Working Memory Degradation over High-Demand Intervals” (2017): study.
  • The supplied New York Times feature “Breathing In vs. Spacing Out” tells the Marine-training story; this draft uses the study details and avoids treating the reported 12-minute practice figure as a universal threshold.

About the author

Alona, I founder and CEO behind Spark (My Founders) and Zai. Welcome. Please reach out if you have any questions or suggestions. We thank you for being here!

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