This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of a mindfulness-based intervention for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (MI-IBD). Treatment-as-usual control versus mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention. Sixty patients participated in either the MI-IBD (n = 33) or treatment-as-usual group (n = 27) conditions. The MI-IBD consisted of an 8-week...
It is challenging for individuals to maintain their attention on ongoing cognitive tasks without being distracted by task-unrelated thought. The wandering mind is thus a considerable obstacle when attention must be maintained over time. Mental training through meditation has been proposed as an effective method of attenuating the ebb and flow of attention to thoughts and feelings that distract...
Late-life depression affects 2–6% of seniors aged 60 years and above. Patients are increasingly embracing non-pharmacological therapies, many of which have not been scientifically evaluated. This study aimed to evaluate a category of meditation, automatic self-transcending meditation (ASTM), in alleviating symptoms of depression when augmenting treatment as usual (NCT02149810). The preliminary...
Las personas con el trastorno bipolar (TB) presentan déficits neurocognitivos que dificultan el manejo de síntomas afectivos, las relaciones interpersonales y la auto-regulación. La práctica de atención plena o mindfulness se encuentra asociada a mejorías en la regulación afectiva y en el funcionamiento neurocognitivo general, por lo cual se hipotetizó que un acercamiento basado en atención...
El programa Mindfulness-Based cognitive therapy (MBCT) nace de la integración de Mindfulness y la Terapia Cognitivo-Conductual para la depresión. Inicialmente concebido para prevenir recaídas en pacientes con depresiones recurrentes, su ámbito de aplicación ha evolucionado para impartirse a un rango mucho más amplio de personas y entornos. El primer objetivo de este artículo es proporcionar una...
Mindfulness meditation research mainly focuses on psychological outcomes such as behavioral, cognitive, and emotional functioning. However, the neuroscience literature on mindfulness meditation has grown in recent years. This paper provides an overview of relevant neuroscience and psychological research on the effects of mindfulness meditation. We propose a translational prevention framework of...
Because it asserts that there is consciousness-only (vijñapti-mātratā), the difficulty in philosophically approaching the Yogācāra-Buddhist text Cheng weishi lun centers on the problem of the external world. This paper is based on a review by Lambert Schmithausen that, specifically with regard to the problem of the external world, questions Dan Lusthaus’s phenomenological investigation of the...
MindfulnessFebruary 29, 2016A. Rowe, Laura Shepstone, K. Carnelley et al.
Mindfulness practice has many mental and physical health benefits but can be perceived as ‘difficult’ by some individuals. This perception can discourage compliance with mindfulness meditation training programs. The present research examined whether the activation of thoughts and feelings related to attachment security and self-compassion (through semantic priming) prior to a mindfulness...
BackgroundThe EUDAIMON study focuses on fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), a prevalent chronic condition characterized by pain, fatigue, cognitive problems and distress. According to recent reviews and meta-analyses, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a promising therapeutic approach for patients with FMS. The measurement of biomarkers as part of the analysis of MBSR effects would help to...
Background: Meditation is increasingly showing beneficial effects for psychiatric disorders. However, learning to meditate is not straightforward as there are no easily discernible outward signs of performance and thus no direct feedback is possible. As meditation has been found to correlate with posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activity, we tested whether source‐space EEG neurofeedback from...
In Thailand the pre-reform Therav?da meditation system, bor?n kamma??h?na, is now practised only by small and isolated groups. To promote detailed comparative study of bor?n kamma??h?na, the tradition of it taught at Wat Ratchasittharam, Thonburi, is explored through a translation of a text on ?n?p?nasati attributed to Suk Kaitheun, the head of its lineage. This is followed by a detailed...
Background: Childhood and adolescent overweight is one of the most important current public health concerns. There is an urgent need to initiate community-based prevention to support healthy eating and physical activity in children. Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT) is a 12-w eek manualized intervention developed by Kristeller et al. that uses focused meditation techniques to...
The involvement of metacognition in mindfulness is already acknowledged in recent mindfulness models. The focus of the current paper is on how mindfulness may be seen to involve a particular subcategory of metacognitive feeling referred to as fringe consciousness. Fringe feelings are in themselves consciously experienced but have been demonstrated to reflect nonconscious context information and...
STUDY OBJECTIVES: We have recently shown higher parietal-occipital EEG gamma activity during sleep in long-term meditators compared to meditation-naive individuals. This gamma increase was specific for NREM sleep, was present throughout the entire night and correlated with meditation expertise, thus suggesting underlying long-lasting neuroplastic changes induced through prolonged training. The...
Mindfulness refers to an awareness that emerges by intentionally focusing on the present experience in a nonjudgmental or evaluative manner. Evidence regarding its efficacy has been increasing exponentially, and recent research suggests that the practice of meditation is associated with longer leukocyte telomere length. However, the psychological mechanisms underlying this potential...
PLoS OneFebruary 18, 2016Patrick B Williams, Heather H Mangelsdorf, Carly Kontra et al.
In this study we sought to explore how experience with specific mental and somatic practices is associated with wisdom, using self-report measures of experience and wisdom. We administered standard surveys to measure wisdom and experience among four groups of practitioners of mental and somatic practices, namely, meditators, practitioners of the Alexander Technique, practitioners of the...
A rapidly growing body of research suggests that meditation can change brain and cognitive functioning. Yet little is known about the neurochemical mechanisms underlying meditation-related changes in cognition. Here, we investigated the effects of meditation on spontaneous eyeblink rates (sEBR), a noninvasive peripheral correlate of striatal dopamine activity. Previous studies have shown a...
Introduction. Athletes who develop an immunosuppressed state because of intensive training get upper respiratory infections (URIs) and may respond to meditation. Reflective exercise (RE), a westernized form of Qigong, combines meditation, breathing, and targeted mental attention to an internal pulsatile sensation, previously shown to protect varsity swimmers from URIs during the height of...
BACKGROUND: Malignant neoplasms of the lymphoid or myeloid cell lines including lymphoma, leukaemia and myeloma are referred to as haematological malignancies. Complementary and alternative treatment options such as meditation practice or yoga are becoming popular by treating all aspects of the disease including physical and psychological symptoms. However, there is still unclear evidence about...
Objectives: Mental health professionals are particularly susceptible to occupational stress; however, there are limited formal programmes to address the problem. This paper discusses the preliminary results of a brief mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programme for practising professionals in a public hospital mental health unit. Method: A mixed-group of nine mental health professionals...