Michael Tumminia is an avid meditator, researcher, and runner. He is currently a 3rd Year Applied Developmental Psychology PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh and works in his advisor Dr. Brian Galla’s Mindfulness and Self-Regulation Lab. In his research, he utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how mindfulness meditation training can support positive youth development from adolescence to young adulthood. In addition to his research, Michael recently joined the team at BaseballMiracles.org in order to serve underserved youth across the globe through the game of baseball and softball. His idols are Alan Watts, Ram Dass, and his neurosurgeon Dr. Chandranath Sen. He is grateful for his family, friends, colleagues, and mentors for their positive influence and he loves golf, pick-up basketball, standup comedy, cycling, kayaking, and attending live music and sports.
Parts of the interview have been edited for clarity and length.
What brought you to the field of contemplative science?
In my teenage years and as a young adult, there was this propensity or mindset towards mindfulness and contemplative sciences, but I didn’t have a name for it. I have always been naturally curious about my mind, other people, and the world. In high school, I became interested in psychology. That led to reading a host of books in the field of psychology on topics ranging from body language, trauma, and the mind-body connection. That led me to take a world religion class in college where I wanted to step outside of my own perspective of the world and learn about the diversity of perspectives out there. In that class, there was an extra credit opportunity to take a trip to a Buddhist temple in upstate New York. I went on this field trip and that was my first taste of seated meditation.
My best friend joined me for this trip because he was also interested in looking inward and examining the mind with a magnifying glass. We did an hour-long sitting meditation and at the end, we started cracking up with pure joy and laughter in a Buddhist temple filled with at least 100 people. We didn’t know the reason for the uncontrollable laughter- it was just an authentic reaction to the inner peace we experienced and we weren’t even slightly concerned that we looked like we were out of line. Everyone smiled and kind of nodded as if to say, “the newbies are here and they got to experience what it’s like to come to be with the mind and really look within.”
When I was 22, I learned that I had a brain tumor the size of a softball behind my right eye. At that moment I realized that death was way closer than I would have ever imagined, perhaps even at my doorstep so to speak. That’s when I started to really get introspective and ask a lot of the big questions: What am I? Who am I? Why am I here?
Going into surgery, I had this blindly optimistic perspective and in some ways downplayed the nature and severity of the surgery. Thankfully after a 10-hour surgery, my neurosurgeon successfully removed the entire benign tumor. “We are going to go into the brain and go to war with this tumor, and leave as if we were never there,” he told me beforehand. I am sincerely grateful for his cool and calm confidence and dedication to his practice.
In the year post-surgery, I experienced debilitating PTSD. I really wasn’t taking my suffering head-on. I had panic attacks regularly, and the severe mental stress I was experiencing manifested into pseudo-seizures. That’s when I realized the true power of the mind-body connection, for better or worse. I was constantly in a fearful state of “I’m going to convulse and die.” I think it was a byproduct of not fully facing the fear I had going into my surgery and facing my own impermanence.
I doubled down on my meditation practice and engaged in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This was when I became fascinated with understanding suffering through the mind-body connection. I really dove into Alan Watts and Buddhist literature and was really inspired by one of my undergraduate instructors and meditation teachers Marcello Spinella to sign up for my first 10-day silent retreat. I dove headfirst into my suffering, and as I like to say, “serve it tea instead of kick it out of the house.” From there I’ve been devoting my life to contemplative sciences and mindfulness practice.
What was your last research study?
We recently completed a longitudinal study to administer self-report assessments to high school students across a full academic year. We captured their self-reported levels of mindfulness, rumination, and positive and negative affect, among a host of other measures. We were interested in examining rumination as a mediating psychological process linking mindfulness to positive and negative mood.
We found that higher levels of the non-judgment component of mindfulness (and total mindfulness) in September predicted a reduction in rumination in January that, in turn, predicted longitudinal reductions in negative affect at the end of the school year. In other terms, greater mindfulness predicted less rumination, which predicted less negative affect over the course of a full academic year. We didn’t see any changes in positive affect.
The way we kind of understand these findings is that the reduction of rumination may be more tightly linked with negative emotion than positive emotion, which is that simply removing causes of suffering may not be sufficient to simultaneously enhance well-being.
What is the concept of rumination and how does it contrast with the concept of mindfulness?
They’re like two sides of the same coin: they’re similar in some ways but very different. I would say rumination is a negative, cyclical, self-reflective mode of thinking that proliferates from a place of automaticity. It kind of snowballs and gets of a mind of its own. In some ways, it’s devoid of a receptive, intentional awareness of that process.
On the other hand, mindfulness is more of an intentional awareness of the ongoing mental stream of consciousness, the unfolding thought patterns and body sensations. When this cyclical negative process occurs, you might notice that it’s occurring, which can dampen the snowballing effect. You just watch that unfold and notice that proliferation without giving it fuel.
How is nonjudgmental acceptance associated with reductions in rumination?
So whereas judgment of these cyclical negative thoughts would give it fuel, a nonjudgmental orientation towards rumination reduces resistance and slows down the proliferation of this rumination cycle. You can stop it in its tracks. Instead of saying, “I’m no good,” you can inoculate against that type of thinking. A nonjudgmental stance gives that psychological distance or space; you can watch it unfold and become curious about it.
“A nonjudgmental stance gives that psychological distance or space; you can watch it unfold and become curious about it.”
Why are longitudinal study designs important for your study of mindfulness?
It’s important to have repeated snapshots over time to be able to observe a naturalistic development of some of these psychological processes. Especially in the work that I do with adolescents and young adults, it’s a time period of profound growth and changes in metacognition and self-reflective processes. I think longitudinal designs allow you to map these trajectories across time and sometimes provide insight into critical inflection points that provide unique opportunities to intervene.
What are some of the current projects that you’re working on?
I’m writing up the results of a study I conducted in the summer of 2019 where I attended a weeklong residential mindfulness meditation retreat for adolescents. I was both a researcher and a retreatant. I administered daily diary assessments each day and conducted focus groups on the final day of the retreat with the goal of uncovering the sources of suffering for adolescents and constituents of well-being that arose during their meditation practice.
It was motivating to hold a space for their experiences instead of assuming their experiences nicely fit into an adult framework. Teens care about very different things when they are mediating and ask questions like, “who am I, how can I feel like I have a sense of belonging with my peers?” Adult approaches to mindfulness tend to put an emphasis on stress reduction. I would argue that these developmental insights add value to the conversation. It leaves us wondering how we can incorporate those youth voices, values, and experiences into our interventions to meet them “where they are” so that they are designed for youth, by youth.
Do you think there are good interventions designed for adolescents or do you think that’s a gap that could be addressed?
There are good interventions designed for teens, but I think generally there is an adult-oriented framework of stress reduction without considering the struggles they face in their practice as well as the constituents of well-being that emerge and develop. Are they learning about who they are more so than reducing stress? Are they able to kind of observe their thought patterns and motivations and align their values and their behaviors? I think there are good programs out there but I think we can still improve. I think we can honor the voices of youth by incorporating them into our programs to increase program motivation and uptake.
How are you using mobile mindfulness training programs in your research?
Currently, we are piloting and testing a tailored mobile mindfulness training program to support students’ engagement and learning. I emphasize the word tailored because this is where I think there’s a huge gap in the programs currently administered to adolescence and young adults. We built a tailored mobile mindfulness program derived from focus groups with the explicit goal of boosting engagement and learning.
I think there’s a lot of promise with mobile mindfulness interventions because adolescents and young adults are engaged with their cellular devices more than ever. I think it goes back to meeting youth “where they are” and mobile mindfulness training programs can potentially benefit youth in ways that might not be possible through traditional mindfulness training formats.
“It leaves us wondering how we can incorporate those youth voices, values, and experiences into our interventions to meet them “where they are” so that they are designed for youth, by youth.”
What is your dream study?
Honestly, I miss and appreciate retreat contexts especially since they are structured and standardized almost like a laboratory “out in the wild,” which is hard to achieve. I would say my dream study would be a long term retreat with a racially diverse sample of teens or young adults. It would either be a 15 or 30-day retreat with a group of meditation-naïve youth. I would implement a mixed-methods approach to better understand how meditative insights might promote flourishing outcomes, such as authenticity and meaning in life. I would include focus groups both pre- and post-retreat, daily diary assessments each day of the retreat, and follow-up interviews and ecological momentary assessments to map participant’s trajectories and learn whether continued practice and dosage impact participants’ authenticity and meaning in life. I’m still working out the details of my dream study but the insights gleaned from contemplative practice and the ways in which it informs who we are, who we want to be, and how we can live a life of great purpose (especially during key developmental periods) deserves greater attention!
Where do you see the field of contemplative sciences heading and how will you take it there?
I think it’s starting to move in the direction of becoming more contextualized and tailored. Mindfulness is less of a one size fits all panacea, which is becoming clearer in the literature. I think we also need to seek out opportunities to accurately describe and contextualize how it can be applied in everyday life for a diversity of people with a diversity of challenges. That level of ideographic precision is increasingly important.
At the Mind & Life Summer Research Institute, the first year I attended focused on diversity and inclusion and it really opened my eyes and mind to where we have been and where we need to go. And so I think a stronger emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches is a vital path forward that we need in order to move toward.
As far as youth and adolescent development are concerned, we should consider implementing ways to align mindfulness programs with their motives and values. Importantly, we’ll contextualize and tailor these mindfulness interventions to create more developmentally appropriate programs and ultimately foster positive youth development, setting them up on trajectories to be adults who are calm in body, clear in mind, and kind in approach. What will a world with more of that look like?
“I think we also need to seek out opportunities to accurately describe and contextualize how it can be applied in everyday life for a diversity of people with a diversity of challenges.”
Michael is the Founder & Chief Editor of the Science of Mindfulness.
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