Mind&Life Institute
@mindandlifeorg
Building a scientific understanding of the mind to reduce suffering and promote well-being.
Hadley, MA
Joined April 2009
Monday, September 29, 2014
The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
"We can intentionally shape the direction of plasticity changes in our brain"
–Dr. Richard Davidson
This academic group studies the human mind, consciousness and qualities, such as, the cultivation of compassion and other qualities that have profound positive effects on our equanimity (mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation) and our ability to focus. This may be helpful for people suffering from ADHD or what psychiatrist, Dr. Edward M.Hallowell calls Attention Deficit Traits (ADT), (a modern problem caused by multitasking and cognitive overload) and many other aspects of the mind.
Led by world-renowned neuroscientist Dr. Richard J. Davidson, the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, UW-Madison, conducts rigorous scientific research on healthy qualities of mind such as kindness, compassion, altruism, forgiveness, mindfulness and well-being.
Change your Mind. Change the World.
The work of the Center is rooted in the breakthrough insights of neuroplasticity - the discovery that our brains change throughout our lives in response to experience, suggesting that positive changes can be nurtured through mental training.
Join us on the journey of discovery.
The potential for this groundbreaking research is limitless, but advancing it depends on support from people like you. We encourage you to join our e-mail list and consider making a tax-deductible gift. Together we can help reduce suffering and increase happiness throughout the world.
Source: http://investigatinghealthyminds.org/
Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain
Google Tech Talk
September 23, 2009
ABSTRACT
Presented by Richard J. Davidson
In this talk, Richard J. Davidson will explore recent scientific research on the neuroscience of positive human qualities and how they can be cultivated through contemplative practice. Distinctions among different forms of contemplative practices will be introduced and they will be shown to have different neural and behavioral consequences, as well as important consequences for physical health in both long-term and novice practitioners. New research also shows that meditation-based interventions delivered online can produce behavioral and neural changes. Collectively, this body of research indicates that we can cultivate adaptive neural changes and strengthen positive human qualities through systematic mental practice.
September 23, 2009
ABSTRACT
Presented by Richard J. Davidson
In this talk, Richard J. Davidson will explore recent scientific research on the neuroscience of positive human qualities and how they can be cultivated through contemplative practice. Distinctions among different forms of contemplative practices will be introduced and they will be shown to have different neural and behavioral consequences, as well as important consequences for physical health in both long-term and novice practitioners. New research also shows that meditation-based interventions delivered online can produce behavioral and neural changes. Collectively, this body of research indicates that we can cultivate adaptive neural changes and strengthen positive human qualities through systematic mental practice.
Link: http://youtu.be/7tRdDqXgsJ0
Compassion
"A human being is part of a whole, called by us, the Universe, a part limited in time
and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein
and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein
Jeffrey Greeson (@mindfulnesslab) | Twitter
Jeffrey Greeson
@mindfulnesslab
Assistant Professor of #Psychiatry@Penn. Follow me if you share an interest in the health benefits of#mindfulness!
Philadelphia, PA
Joined October 2011
Jeffrey Greeson (@mindfulnesslab) | Twitter:
'via Blog this'
SusanKaiserGreenland (@sKAISERg) | Twitter
SusanKaiserGreenland
@sKAISERg
Author of The Mindful Child and former corporate attorney, Susan developed the Inner Kids program for children, teens and their families and teaches worldwide.
Los Angeles
SusanKaiserGreenland (@sKAISERg) | Twitter:
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Sunday, September 28, 2014
UCLA MARC (@uclamarc) | Twitter
UCLA MARC
@uclamarc
Our mission is to foster mindful awareness across the lifespan through education and research to promote well-being and a more compassionate society.
Los Angeles
UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center
Joined March 2009
Feeling distracted at work? Here are some tips to enjoy more focus and mindfulness in your workplace... http://fb.me/1wmHXFEws
UCLA MARC (@uclamarc) | Twitter:
Link: https://twitter.com/uclamarc
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Diana Winston (@dianawinston) | Twitter
Diana Winston
@dianawinston
Diana Winston is a mindfulness teacher at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center, an author, and a mindful mom.
Los Angeles
Mindfulness and me in the LA Times this weekend http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-alternative-therapy-ucla-20120929,0,664637.story …
Talks from our Mindfulness in Education retreat at Spirit Rock: http://www.dharmaseed.org/retreats/1665/
An interesting description of my work bringing mindfulness into the culture: http://tinyurl.com/knxpoff
The Wild, Wild West of Mindfulness
in
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post-college spiritual journey was something of an anachronism. After she graduated from Brown in the late 1980s, Winston traveled to Southeast Asia, where she spent several years working with Theravada Buddhist teachers and learning classical meditation techniques in Thailand and Burma.
The broad outline of Winston’s story mirrors the familiar narrative arc of numerous Western spiritual seekers—from to —who have embarked on Dharma pilgrimages to gain insight and pursue enlightenment. But what makes Winston’s journey unusual compared to the experiences of earlier generations is the fact that she returned home to find that many of those who had traveled to Asia in the 1960s and 70s had already begun to cultivate distinctively American forms of Buddhist practice.
In other words, hybrid versions of the “exotic” spiritual practices that Winston traveled abroad to learn were already beginning to flourish in her own back yard.
She continued her studies at the in Massachusetts and near San Francisco. The vipassana techniques she learned from teachers like Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield were developed specifically to allow lay practitioners to develop meditative skills that had historically been taught only in monastic settings. As she came into her own as a teacher, Winston began to believe that the benefits of mindfulness meditation could be made available to an even wider audience if the practices were completely secularized—that is, if Buddhist ritual and iconography were completely removed from the settings in which mindfulness was taught.
“These practices are transformational,” Winston said, “but people have allergies toward religion. I thought they could be taught without the religious accessories.”
Winston’s idea was in some ways an extension of the “medicalized” forms of meditative practice that developed in the 1980s. Winston got the chance to put her own theories into practice in 2004, when she became involved in designing a study on ADHD and mindfulness at UCLA’s (MARC). Over the past decade, MARC has grown into a secular version of the expressly Buddhist monastic settings and training centers where Winston learned the techniques that she now teaches to people who may have no interest in Buddhism. As director of mindfulness education, Winston oversees retreats, courses on mindfulness practices, a teacher-training program and a weekly guided-meditation session that attracts upwards of 200 people to UCLA’s Hammer Museum.
And the only Buddha statue anywhere in sight stands in her cozy office across the street from the UCLA medical school.
Though MARC’s meditation programming can seem like a pretty staid affair, it’s part of what Winston calls “the wild, wild West of mindfulness.” Decoupled from the ancient teaching lineages and monastic cultures that have traditionally preserved and transmitted meditation practices, mindfulness has become a booming and decidedly unregulated spiritual industry in the U.S.
“Anybody with even minimal training and practice thinks they can be a teacher!” Winston said.
Winston said that senior instructors at MARC, Spirit Rock and other established meditation centers have begun to discuss the formation of a certification board to approve training programs and license teachers. It will be fascinating to see how those involved in this effort to “routinize” mindfulness meditation define practices that, in the American context, are becoming increasingly secular.
Which raises another compelling question: Might these “religion-neutral” practices be absorbed into the culture of non-Buddhist movements—post-denominational Christian churches, for example—that are equally eager to attract adherents from the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd? The desire for self-improvement and a preference for somatic experience over doctrine and dogma are two of the hallmarks of the “Nones,” and some evangelicals are still sorting through whether yoga is compatible with their beliefs. Board-certified, secularized mindfulness practice is arguably a no-brainer by comparison.
Future generations of American seekers may choose to retrace Winston’s steps through Southeast Asia in a latter-day search for authenticity. In the near term, innovations like the practices that Winston has helped to develop at MARC mean that the fruits of her journey as a young adult are available much closer to home.
"Diana Winston @dianawinston
Diana Winston is a mindfulness teacher at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center, an author, and a mindful mom. Los Angeles fullypresentthebook.com"
Winston (@dianawinston) | Twitter:
https://twitter.com/dianawinston
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Brain Imaging Illuminates Neuro Basis of Meditation: http://abcn.ws/vU9mUk
Friday, September 26, 2014
The Neurology of Mindfulness
SCIENCE
The shortest explanation of the neuroscience of mindfulness ever!
We westerners need the stamp of science if we’re going to try anything new and I think it’s useful to know what doing meditation every day actually does to our brain.
There are plenty of website articles, videos and research findings about the neuroscience of meditation but they can be very long and overwhelming at times, especially to the non-scientist. My intention for this page is to give you a very basic summary of the neuroscience behind mindfulness so you don’t have to spend hours reading and scratching your head. New research is coming out all of the time so this page will probably be added to.
Neuroscience
It turns out that our brain is a river and not a rock. Research has shown that 70% of the synaptic connections in our brain change each day. What we think and do influences this change. This means that we can potentially expand our range of cognitive and emotional capabilities through training. Neuroscientists call this brain malleability neuroplasticity.
Research
I have chosen Richard Davidson, who directs the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, for this summary as he really is the pioneer for research in this field. Davidson’s studies have shown that people with more left-sided activation tend to be more emotionally positive and people with more right-sided activation have more negative emotions.
Davidson’s key research involved wiring up the heads of hundreds of Buddhist monks with 256 sensors, assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). The participant’s brain waves were monitored for activity between neutral and meditation states. Non meditating volunteers were also used as a control.
From this study Davidson discovered that the meditation practice increased left-sided prefrontal activation linked with happiness and positive emotions. He also observed that this shift towards increased left-sided activation was associated with significant reductions in anxiety, further cementing the link between mind and body connection.
Davidson concluded from the research that meditation not only changes the workings of the brain in the short term, but also possibly produces permanent changes. Other studies have shown significant changes in the brains of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course participants after just eight weeks.
Final thoughts
Meditation practice dates back over 5000 years and only now are we really starting to understand how it affects our brain. However, as interesting and exciting as the new findings are they don’t compare to actually practicing meditation and experiencing it all for yourself……so get meditating! Otherwise it’s like you’re reading a menu in a restaurant but never tasting the food.
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