Here are my top picks from the Feb ’16 issue of the Mindfulness Research Monthly newsletter, a publication of the American Mindfulness Research Association (AMRA). The newsletter lists several interesting articles describing the effects of mindfulness interventions on military personnel. My top picks include studies of the connections between mindfulness practice and perceived stress in college students, successful parenting behaviors, and stress levels during romantic conflicts. I also picked out several review articles examining the status of mindfulness research with regard to job burnout, executive functioning, ADHD, and possible concerns about the suitability of mindfulness practice.
Author Archives: alan
United by hope
It’s Super Tuesday. Folks all over the country are either voting, counting votes, or watching the count from afar, hoping that citizens in the Super Tuesday states haven’t set the Union careening towards the cliff. Mindfulness seems to have flown out the window … but perhaps not all is lost. Consider this preview article from the May 2016 issue of Lion’s Roar: “A Buddhist psychoanalyst puts our divided country on the couch,” by Robert Langan.
Want to start a daily practice?
Have you ever considered what it might be like to meditate every day? Even 9 minutes a day? Perhaps try it out for one month and see how it goes? If you’re willing to give it a try, Tricycle magazine is ready to help. The magazine has announced that March 2016 will be their Meditation Month. Here’s their announcement: Continue reading
Brain Repair
Robin sent me this interesting article from the Well blog in the NY Times: How Meditation Changes the Brain and Body (G. Reynolds, 18 Feb 2016). Researchers divided 35 unemployed people into two groups: a meditation group and a control group (note: lack of a job was considered an adequate source of stress). Both groups were “treated” for 3 days, Continue reading
A Compassion Incubator
Life lessons can be found everywhere and in every moment. You don’t need to sit on a cushion in silence, but you do need to open yourself up to the moment and its possibilities. Meditator, writer, and gym teacher, Alex Tzelnic, describes how an elementary school gym class can function as a “compassion incubator” for the Tricycle blog (22 Feb 2016) in “(Meta)Physical Education: Temper Temper”
Nature Calls
The earth is slowly waking. Crocuses are stretching towards the sky. The first daffodils have appeared. The scent of winter daphne hovers in the air between Eliot and the lawn. It’s time to get outside again. No more hibernating in my Office Cave.
But what is this urge to go outside, to get back into nature? Is it just a habit or is there something more at work?
Urban Hermit
“Most of us have imagined what it would be like to live in a completely different way.” This is the vision that underlies the article, “Urban Hermit: A Different Way of Being in the World” by Mu Soeng (Insight Journal, 2016). Continue reading
The Exhausted Individual
According to John Makransky and Brooke Lavelle (Tricycle blog, 1 Feb 2016) we live in an age of exhausted, burned out, rugged individuals, and nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the social service professions:
Forty- to fifty-percent of teachers quit their jobs within the first five years of teaching. Nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals report increasingly less satisfaction in their work. Suicide among social workers is on the rise …
Is Mindfulness Useful? – Jan ’16 Updates
Here are my top picks from the January ’16 issue of the Mindfulness Research Monthly newsletter, a publication of the American Mindfulness Research Association (AMRA). Several articles describe how mindfulness interventions affect student stress and teacher burnout. Another article that might interest those who would like to teach meditation recommends ‘best practices’ for conducting mindfulness programs in public schools.
Continue reading
Helper’s High
The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, or CCARE, is part of Stanford’s School of Medicine. It was established and directed by Dr. James Doty, Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, with the explicit goal of “promoting, supporting, and conducting rigorous scientific studies of compassion and altruistic behavior.”