By Jessica Graham I’ve recently become of big fan of lovingkindness meditation, or as Shinzen Young calls it, “Focus on Positive.” From the beginning of my practice I have been ...
Spotlight
Losing Control
By Jessica Graham In mindfulness meditation we observe and explore our experience ...
Concentration II – Learning to Listen
by Michael W. Taft You’re having complex feelings about the things that ...
Latest News
Meditation Produces Opposite Effect of ‘Fight or Flight’
By Traci Pedersen for PsychCentral A new study reveals that practitioners of meditation experience changes in gene expression that are the exact opposite of what occurs during the “flight or fight” stress response. Specifically, genes associated with energy metabolism, mitochondrial function, insulin secretion, and telomere maintenance are turned on, while those involved in inflammation are [...]
Doctor’s Orders: 20 Minutes Of Meditation Twice a Day
By Sumathi Reddy for The Wall Street Journal At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, doctor’s orders can include an unlikely prescription: meditation. “I recommend five minutes, twice a day, and then gradually increase,” said Aditi Nerurkar, a primary-care doctor and assistant medical director of the Cheng & Tsui Center for Integrative Care, which [...]
How Meditation Might Boost Your Test Scores
By Jan Hoffman for The New York Times Mindfulness meditation, the ancient and flourishing practice that increases awareness of random thoughts and redirects attention to the present moment, has been used to manage stress, depression and even chronic pain. But can it improve test scores? Researchers in the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University [...]
Mindfulness meditation: boosting young people’s brain power?
by Claudine Ryan for ABC Health and Wellbeing Feeling less stressed, having better concentration and a greater resilience to life’s challenges are some of the commonly-cited reasons for trying meditation. But this quest for inner calm is not limited to adults sitting in the lotus position; inside classrooms you’ll find children and young people also [...]
Mindfulness from Meditation Associated with Lower Stress Hormone
From Science Codex Focusing on the present rather than letting the mind drift may help to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, suggests new research from the Shamatha Project at the University of California, Davis. The ability to focus mental resources on immediate experience is an aspect of mindfulness, which can be improved by [...]
Mindfulness May Boost Focus on Tests
From LiveScience If you’ve ever struggled to keep your mind from wandering during an important test or another task that requires laser-like focus, researchers say a little meditation could help you concentrate. Mindfulness training, which teaches how to center one’s thoughts on the present moment, improved both GRE reading-comprehension scores and working memory capacity in [...]
Five Amazingly Powerful Secrets of Concentration
by Michael W. Taft Are you having trouble staying focused on your tax return? Is texting so fascinating that you can’t keep your eyes on the road? Concentration can be difficult for all of us, but it doesn’t actually have to be so hard. With just a few simple tricks and hacks, you can drastically [...]
Richie Davidson on Mindfulness Meditation and Resilience
In a recent interview with the APA Monitor, Richie Davidson spoke about the effects of mindfulness meditation on resilience: “…[Speaking of] resilience again, there is a method of meditation that is very popular called mindfulness meditation. And what mindfulness meditation does is teach people to pay attention on purpose, nonjudgmentally. The nonjudgmental piece is very [...]
Mindfulness at School Lowers Depressive Symptoms in Teens
By Traci Pedersen for Psych Central Adolescents who participated in a mindfulness program at school reported reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress up to six months later. Furthermore, these teen students were less likely to develop more severe symptoms of depression. The research was conducted by Dr. Filip Raes, professor in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at [...]
Does Mindfulness Increase Compassion?
Last Friday I attended a one-day conference called Practicing Mindfulness & Compassion, put on by Cal’s Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley. The purpose of the day was to look into ways that mindfulness practice and compassion are (or are not) interrelated and help each other. Does practicing mindfulness meditation actually increase your level of [...]
Subscribe
Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter to receive updates.
