CONTEXT: Asana, pranayama, and meditation are three main techniques of yoga practiced in India over thousands of years to attain functional harmony between the body and mind. Recent studies on long-term yogic practices have shown improvements in cardiovascular functions. AIM: The present study was conducted to ascertain if a short-term practice of pranayama and meditation had improvements in...
The Buddhist construct of mindfulness is a central element of mindfulness-based interventions and derives from an age-old systematic phenomenological program to investigate subjective experience. Recent enthusiasm for "mindfulness" in psychology has resulted in proliferation of self-report inventories that purport to measure mindful awareness as a trait. This paper addresses a number of...
Past research has shown that mindfulness meditation is useful for the attenuation of psychological and physical suffering in clinical populations. In structured mindfulness-based interventions, patients engage in meditation exercises to refine their attentional skills and to learn to purposefully relate to the present moment experience in a non-judgemental manner. Following the development of...
A recent study of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire reported high levels of differential item functioning (DIF) for 18 of its 39 items in meditating and nonmeditating samples that were not demographically matched. In particular, meditators were more likely to endorse positively worded items whereas nonmeditators were more likely to deny negatively worded (reverse-scored) items. The...
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) has shown effectiveness for a variety of mental health conditions. However, it is not known for whom the intervention is most effective. In a randomized controlled trial (N = 30), we explored whether individuals with higher levels of pretreatment trait mindfulness would benefit more from MBSR intervention. Results demonstrated that relative to a control...
This paper reviews the conceptual foundation of mindfulness-based eating awareness training (MB-EAT). It provides an overview of key therapeutic components as well as a brief review of current research. MB-EAT is a group intervention that was developed for treatment of binge eating disorder (BED) and related issues. BED is marked by emotional, behavioral and physiological disregulation in...
The Buddhist practice of cultivating mindfulness has been increasingly influencing psychotherapeutic work. However, in Sri Lanka, the documentation on the use of such practice in psychotherapy is scarce. This paper aims to discuss the influence of Buddhist mindfulness practice on psychotherapy; present a case of mixed anxiety-depressive disorder where mindfulness practice and behaviour therapy...
In the current article, the authors examine the potential role of mind-body interventions for preventing or reducing health disparities in a specific group-African American women. The authors first discuss how health disparities affect this group, including empirical evidence regarding the influence of biopsychosocial processes (e.g., psychological stress and social context) on disparate health...
BACKGROUND: It is recommended that Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) instructors should undertake MBCT themselves before teaching others. AIM: To investigate the impact of MBCT (modified for stress not depression) on trainee clinical psychologists. METHOD: Twenty trainees completed questionnaires pre- and post-MBCT. RESULTS: There was a significant decrease in rumination, and increases...