The ecological crisis demands new strategies to rapidly transform our society into a more sustainable one. A growing amount of research points towards the potential of mindfulness to help transform people's motivations for sustainability. This article reviews 30 years of research in mindfulness and sustainability and disentangles theoretical knowledge from empirical evidence. We identified six leading theoretical links between mindfulness and sustainability which find backing in empirical work: reduced automaticity, enhanced health and subjective well-being, greater connectedness with nature, improved pro-sociality, recognition of intrinsic values and openness to new experiences. Many of the studies involve considerable methodological caveats, most importantly a lack of mindfulness practice indicators and environmental impact measures. To reach the point where policy makers could embrace mindfulness-based policies to promote societal well-being and sustainability, the research must go beyond the present focus on correlative research. The proof of causality posits the greatest challenge for the next decade of research. Inspired by principles from policy evaluation, we propose a research agenda that offers direction for collaborative efforts and innovative interdisciplinary study designs in a logical model: (how) does the practice of mindfulness contribute to individual behaviour change and (how) does this individual change translate into societal change?

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Mindfulness has emerged as a potential motivator for sustainable lifestyles, yet few studies provide insight into the relationship between mindfulness practice levels and individual engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. We also lack information about the significance of meditators’ behavioral differences in terms of their measurable environmental impact and the motivational processes underlying these differences in pro-environmental performance. We classified 300 individuals in three groups with varying meditation experience and compared their pro-environmental motivations and levels of animal protein consumption. Exceeding prior attempts to compare high-impact behaviors of mindfulness practitioners and non-practitioners, we created the most detailed classification of practice engagement by assessing frequency, experience and type of meditation practice. This nuanced view on mindfulness practice reveals that advanced meditators, who reported high levels of connectedness with nature (CWN), subjective happiness and dispositional mindfulness showed significantly more concern for the environment. They also demonstrated the lowest levels of greenhouse gas emissions, land occupation and water use related to their animal-protein consumption. This study is the first to follow a self-determination theory perspective to deepen our understanding of the motivational differences between meditator groups. We revealed that advanced meditators reported significantly more integrated motivation toward the environment than non-meditators. We also provided preliminary evidence for a new theoretical framework suggesting that experiential strategies such as mindfulness practices could strengthen the relational pathway of pro-environmental behaviors. Using sequential mediation analysis, we confirmed that the negative effect of mindful compassion practice on greenhouse gas emissions from animal-protein consumption is partially mediated by CWN and integrated motivation toward the environment. While our study does not support assumptions of causality, it shows that much can be learned by studying the motivations of advanced meditators for maintaining high levels of pro-environmental behavior.

Objectives While there is theoretical and empirical evidence for a positive relationship between mindfulness and pro-environmental behaviors, so far research into mindfulness-based sustainability trainings with meditation novices yielded underwhelming results. At the same time, there is a lack of qualitative research into the mindfulness and sustainability nexus. The objective of this qualitative research was to study the potential mechanisms linking mindfulness practices and individual engagement in pro-environmental behaviors in a sample of meditators. Methods This research is based on a reflexive thematic analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews with active meditators, analyzed under a constructivist epistemology and experiential orientation to data interpretation. Results Five themes describe the mindfulness-induced behavior changes experienced by the interviewees: awakening of the mind (self-regulation), awakening of the heart (relational capacities), internalizing environmental motivation, eudaimonic well-being, and deepening mindfulness. A thematic map displays the multitude of factors mediating the process of change. Conclusions This study revealed that for those interviewed, the degree to which mindfulness practices can encourage pro-environmental behaviors depends on the level of individual commitment towards mindfulness as a lifestyle. Particularly, the integration of mindful living principles in form of the informal practice of mindfulness plays a key role to implement behavior change. Yet even though this research identified five positive factors for change, the specific context of the interviewee sample combined with general methodological drawbacks call for a careful interpretation of the results regarding its applicability to the general population. Overall, this research provides valuable insights into the mindfulness-sustainability nexus and shows the potential of qualitative methods to research complex intra-individual change processes and long-term behavior change.