Do Women and Men Experience Mindfulness Differently?

Key points

Human brains evolved over millennia and at some point, so did mindfulness and meditation.

Men appear more adept at some facets of mindfulness, while women are more adept at others.

We’ve only begun to understand gender variances in mindfulness in women and men.

When you imagine “meditating monks,” do enrobed men in Tibet spring to your mind? Male friars in a sanctuary? So... where are the women?

Years ago, a colleague stumbled onto gender differences in mindfulness while studying mental health in nurse anesthetist students. To her surprise, male study participants scored significantly higher on mindfulness than women.

This perplexed my colleague but made eminent sense to me. In evolutionary terms, think of our ancestral hunter-gatherers. Males hunting that woolly mammo