The current study compares the effects of a traditionally delivered mindfulness (TDM) intervention to a smartphone delivered mindfulness (SDM) intervention, Headspace, an audio-guided mindfulness meditation program, in a group of novice nurses. Novice nurses participating in a pediatric nurse residency program were asked to participate in either a TDM or SDM intervention. Participants (N=95)...
Mindfulness is often referred to as a receptive state of mind in which attention simply observes what is taking place at the present moment.Mindfulness research has flourished in the fields such as neuroscience and psychology, yet, it still lacks in the field of information systems (IS), especially with quantitative studies.This research conducted a pilot quantitative study that uses the...
Buddhism in the modern world offers an example of (1) the porousness of the boundary between the secular and religious; (2) the diversity, fluidity, and constructedness of the very categories of religious and secular, since they appear in different ways among different Buddhist cultures in divergent national contexts; and (3) the way these categories nevertheless have very real-world effects...
Background: Adolescents living in the United States (U.S.) report mental challenges from depressive symptoms to suicidal ideations. The positive psychology (PP) paradigm is a preventative approach to mental health challenges. Increasing gratitude, well-studied among adolescents, is a PP intervention; yet, most U.S.-based studies were limited with respect study population diversity. Few studies...
Epilepsy is a serious, common and chronic neurological condition characterized by an increased disposition to suffer occasional seizures. Psychological interventions may enhance the well-being of individuals with epilepsy. So far, no qualitative study has investigated the complex effects of psychotherapeutic interventions in epilepsy. This study examined the questions as to if and how the...
The neural substrates of Yogic meditation are not well understood. Meditation is theorized to be a conscious mental process that induces a set of complex physiological changes within the areas of the brain termed as the "relaxation response." Pilot data of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study is presented to observe and understand the selective activations of designated brain...
In the 21st century, classroom management in the school set up has become a major challenge for teachers. It is so because of the increasing level of hyperactivity and restlessness in the children due to which achieving the teaching-learning objectives inside the classroom has become quite challenging. This paper tries to focus on the significance of Transcendental Meditation on human...
Hypertension affects approximately 70 percent of patients with diabetes. Diabetic mellitus with elevated blood pressure is a stressful health problem for middle aged and older adults. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has been shown to decrease the blood pressure for individual with diabetes. Therefore the randomised pilot study was conducted to evaluate the effects of MBSR on blood...
To investigate the effects of the practice of yoga in combination with compassion meditation on the quality of life, attention, vitality and self-compassion of family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease. A total of 46 volunteers were randomly allocated to two groups, the yoga and compassion meditation program group (n = 25), and the control group (CG) that received no treatment (n =...
The purpose of this study was to assess stress levels in community college students and their beliefs of meditation. Community college students tend to report high levels of stress due to demographic factors, such low economic status, need to work at least part time, and need for remedial classes. Many of these demographic factors are particularly found in students above the age of 24, which...
Contemplative science is a transdisciplinary project aimed at understanding the effects of various kinds of mental and physical training (such as mindfulness meditation and tai chi) on the body, brain, and mind at different stages of the lifespan. As such, the goals of contemplative science are to create new knowledge regarding human plasticity and to generate new forms of human services that...
Consciousness has been one of the most important and tantalizing issues ever since the origin of philosophy and medicine. The concept of consciousness and the so-called "hard problem" (i.e., the mind-brain relationship) are highly complex topics that have yet to be elucidated, involving the realms of both science and philosophy with profound epistemological implications. In the lively debate on...
Objective To evaluate feasibility, efficacy and tolerability of Sudarshan Kriya yoga (SKY) as an adjunctive intervention in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) with inadequate response to antidepressant treatment. Method Patients with MDD (defined by DSM-IV-TR) depressed despite ≥8 weeks of antidepressant treatment were randomized to SKY or a waitlist control (delayed yoga) arm for 8...
Although minutes of a spinning episode may induce vertigo in the healthy human, as a result of a possible perceptional plasticity, Sufi Whirling Dervishes (SWDs) can spin continuously for an hour without a vertigo perception.This unique long term vestibular system stimulation presents a potential human model to clarify the cortical networks underlying the resistance against vertigo. This study,...
The following meditation trains both awareness of present moment experience (mindfulness) as well as bringing in qualities of warmth and kindness that are designed to activate the soothing care giving system (Porges, 1995). It is an adaptation of a mindfulness breath meditation (Kabbat-Zinn, 1990), the soothing breath rhythm (Gilbert, 2009), and the affectionate breath (Neff & Germer, 2012),...
An exploratory study into the recent popular emergence of mindfulness (Achsamkeit). Contemporary mindfulness practices encompass secular self-help and therapeutic pedagogies such as MBSR, spiritual exploration and religious doctrine. This study is a qualitative analysis of the concept of mindfulness as it is entertained by its practitioners. The study was conducted according to a constructivist...
Interventions using the "Four Immeasurables Meditations" (FIM) are effective for various outcomes; however, whether increased meditation practice in these interventions leads to better results has not been well investigated. This systematic review included 22 FIM interventions that reported associations between the amount of meditation practice and its outcomes. Despite the heterogeneity in...
This review summarizes all studies that compare the effect of a MBSR program to a control group intervention, in which the participants had been randomly allocated to be in either the MBSR group or a control group. The review summarizes the results in two categories. First, where the effect of the MBSR program was compared to an inactive group (either a wait list group or one receiving ordinary...
These two studies tested the prediction that the group practice of a procedure for the development of consciousness, the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program, by a sufficiently large group of individuals would be sufficient to reduce collective stress in the larger population, reflected in two stress-related health indicators, infant mortality rate and drug-related fatality rate....