Meditation involves attentional regulation and may lead to increased activity in brain regions associated with attention such as dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether DLPFC and ACC were activated during meditation. Subjects who meditate were recruited and scanned on a 3.0 Tesla scanner....
Mindfulness meditators practice the non-judgmental observation of the ongoing stream of internal experiences as they arise. Using voxel-based morphometry, this study investigated MRI brain images of 20 mindfulness (Vipassana) meditators (mean practice 8.6 years; 2 h daily) and compared the regional gray matter concentration to that of non-meditators matched for sex, age, education and...
As incidence of chronic hepatitis C (CHC) in the United States increases, management of physical and psychological symptoms over the long term becomes crucial. Research has shown meditation to be a valuable tool in reducing such symptoms for various chronic illnesses. In particular, the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program offers curriculum that has been shown to influence both...
Abstract Chapter 8 seeks to uncover the historical origins of kinhin, the ritual of walking meditation as it has been practiced in the Sōtō school of Japanese Zen. Practiced today between periods of zazen, the Sōtō style of kinhin entails an exceptionally slow pace of walking in order to coordinate each step with a full cycle of respiration. Although Sōtō monks typically attribute this practice...
Abstract The human brain possesses plenty of functions but little is known about its scientific relationship with mind and spirit. Conferences^1,2^ focused on the connection between science and religion were held very recently in which neuroscientists, Buddhist scholars and Dalai Lama discussed attention, mental imagery, emotion, mind, brain functions and meditation, suggesting religious...
Despite evidence that individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders experience significant and persistent symptoms of anxiety, there are few reports of the use of empirically supported treatments for anxiety in this population. This article describes how we have tried to adapt mindfulness interventions to help individuals with schizophrenia who experience significant anxiety symptoms....
This study investigated the ongoing effects of participation in a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program on quality of life (QL), symptoms of stress, mood and endocrine, immune and autonomic parameters in early stage breast and prostate cancer patients. Forty-nine patients with breast cancer and 10 with prostate cancer enrolled in an eight-week MBSR program that incorporated...
European PsychiatryNovember 1, 2007Ludwig Grepmair, Ferdinand Mitterlehner, Thomas Loew et al.
This study examined whether the promotion of mindfulness in psychotherapists in training can influence the treatment results of their patients. The therapeutic course and treatment results of 196 inpatients, who were treated during a nine week period by nine psychotherapists in training, were compared: in the first phase of the study, the treatment group without (CG, historical control group,...
Abstract This study was designed to test the hypothesis that mindfulness involves sustained attention, attention switching, inhibition of elaborative processing and non‐directed attention. Healthy adults were tested before and after random assignment to an 8‐week Mindfulness‐Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course ( n = 39) or a wait‐list control ( n = 33). Testing included measures of sustained...
The mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm that is an indicator of preattentive processing was used to study the effects of concentrative meditation. Sudarshan Kriya Yoga meditation is a yogic exercise practiced in an ordered sequence beginning with breathing exercises, and ending with concentrative (Sahaj Samadhi) meditation. Auditory MMN waveforms were recorded at the beginning and after each of...
Every moment a beginning, every moment an end. -Salzman (2000) Mindfulness is essentially about waking up to what the present moment offers. It sounds easy, but as most of us know, waking up can be...
Interest in mindfulness and its enhancement has burgeoned in recent years. In this article, we discuss in detail the nature of mindfulness and its relation to other, established theories of attention and awareness in day-to-day life. We then examine theory and evidence for the role of mindfulness in curtailing negative functioning and enhancing positive outcomes in several important life...
Recent studies suggest that months to years of intensive and systematic meditation training can improve attention. However, the lengthy training required has made it difficult to use random assignment of participants to conditions to confirm these findings. This article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation practice with the integrative body-mind training method shows...
This study investigated the effects of Chan (Zen) meditation on musical performance anxiety and musical performance quality. Nineteen participants were recruited from music conservatories and randomly assigned to either an eight-week meditation group or a wait-list control group. After the intervention, all participants performed in a public concert. Outcome measures were performance anxiety...
This study tested the theory that mindfulness contributes to greater intimate relationship satisfaction by fostering more relationally skillful emotion repertoires. A sample of married couples was administered measures of mindful awareness, emotion skills, and marital quality. We hypothesized that mindfulness would be associated with both marital quality and partners’ emotion skills and that...
Two studies examined the role of mindfulness in romantic relationship satisfaction and in responses to relationship stress. Using a longitudinal design, Study 1 found that higher trait mindfulness predicted higher relationship satisfaction and greater capacities to respond constructively to relationship stress. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings. Mindfulness was again shown to...
Zen meditation, a Buddhist practice centered on attentional and postural self-regulation, has been speculated to bring about beneficial long-term effects for the individual, ranging from stress reduction to improvement of cognitive function. In this study, we examined how the regular practice of meditation may affect the normal age-related decline of cerebral gray matter volume and attentional...