Moving towards a Mindful Society

Jon Kabat Zinn recently gave an interesting and thought-provoking interview to the Buddhist Magazine Shambhala Sun about developing mindfulness in the whole of sosiety. In it he talks about the benefits of developing greater awareness, for ourselves and for society as a whole:

Genuine awareness can modulate our thinking, so that we become less driven by unexamined motivations to put ourselves first, to control things to assuage our fear, to always proffer our brilliant answer. We can create an enormous amount of harm, for example, by not listening to other people who might have different views and insights. Fortunately, we have more of an opportunity these days to balance the cultivation of thinking with the cultivation of awareness. Anyone can restore some degree of balance between thinking and awareness right in this present moment, which is the only moment that any of us ever has anyway. The potential outcomes from purposefully learning to inhabit awareness and bring thought into greater balance are extremely positive and healthy for ourselves and the world at large.

The full interview is well worth the read. You can access it directly by clicking on the title to this post or by finding it here:

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?Itemid=0&id=3493&option=com_content&task=view

More on the effects of mindfulness

Apparently, even a few days of meditation can have a marked effect on the mind and on how we deal with pain. Research conducted at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, published in The Journal of Pain in November 2009 found that a single hour of meditation spread out over a three day period can produce an analgesic effect on pain.

Simply stated, the profound improvements that we found after just four days of meditation training are really surprising, psychologist Fadel Zeidan said in releasing the study. It goes to show that the mind is, in fact, easily changeable and highly influenced, especially by meditation.

These findings support earlier research studies that found differences in pain awareness and other mental activities among long-time practitioners of mindfulness meditation techniques.

Richard Davidson on how the brain can change

An excerpt from Dr. Richard Davidson's keynote address on contemplative neuroscience at the Center for Mindfulness 7th Annual International Conference, March 2009

Healthy Minds

I have already written about the work of Richard Davidson Ph.D on the effects of meditation on the shape and function of the brain. He is now the Director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is learning that the brain can be trained and shaped to be more positive and resilient.

On May 16th, the Dalai Lama will inaugurate there the Centre for Investigating Healthy Minds, which has as its focus contempklative neuroscience - "the study of healthy qualities of mind". It aims to study how meditation practices can play a role in changing the mind in a positive manner.

Learning to understand how positive qualities such as attention, concentration, clarity, cooperation and kindness can affect the brain will allow scientists to develop interventions to nurture these capacities in children and adults so that they can be more attentive, focused, loving, forgiving and compassionate.

Check out their website: http://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/index.html

More effects of MBSR

The MBSR Programme and Mindfulness practice seems to promote a “left-shift” in the brain. This means that there is increased activity in the left frontal activity of the brain after MBSR training. This change in function seems to reflect the development of an “approach state,” in which we move towards, rather than away from, a difficult external event or difficult internal thoughts and emotions. The development of this approach mentality, or an openenss to be aware of difficult emotions, seems to be related to emotional strength and resilience.

A second effect which is being noticed is an improvement in immune function. Not only is general resilience developed, but the body’s ability to fight infection is improved. I have already written about the studies which have seen this in HIV cases.

Thirdly, the MBSR Programme is related to participants expressing a greater internal sense of stability and clarity. This is certainly my experience in the Programees we have run here in Geneva. However, it has been studied in a pilot study at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center by Daniel Siegal. He found that adults and adolescents with attentional problems achieved more executive function improvements sustaining attention, diminishing distractibility) than are accomplished with justmedications for this condition. This research links in with the work done by Alan Wallace, Richie Davidson and Amiji Jha who have also found significant improvements in attentional regulation in those who have had mindfulness meditation training, such as enhanced focus.

Wider applications of mindfulness

The preventative effect of mindfulness training for individuals who face extreme stress, such as firemen, soldiers and trauma surgeons, has been examined in a recent study by cognitive neuroscientist Amishi Jha of Penn University and Elizabeth A. Stanley of Georgetown University.

They provided mindfulness training to U.S. Marines before deployment to Iraq in a training program called Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT™), which aimed to cultivate greater psychological resilience or "mental armor" by bolstering mindfulness. The study found that the more time participants spent doing daily mindfulness exercises, the better their mood and working memory - the cognitive term for complex thought, problem solving and cognitive control of emotions.

The study also seems to point towards the fact that sufficient Mindfulness practice may protect against high-stress challenges that require a tremendous amount of cognitive control, self-awareness, situational awareness and emotional regulation.

Our findings suggest that, just as daily physical exercise leads to physical fitness, engaging in mindfulness exercises on a regular basis may improve mind-fitness," Jha said.

"Working memory is an important feature of mind-fitness. Not only does it safeguard against distraction and emotional reactivity, but it also provides a mental workspace to ensure quick-and-considered decisions and action plans. Building mind-fitness with mindfulness training may help anyone who must maintain peak performance in the face of extremely stressful circumstances, from first responders, relief workers and trauma surgeons, to professional and Olympic athletes."


www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/179294.php

Types of insecurity in relationships

In our early years we lay down a pattern for later relationships. We construct our inner psyche out of the materials that are at our disposal in those first experiences. If some of those experiences are less than optimal, and the person's early life is lacking in adequate consistent responses, the person's relating style in later years can reflect that. From my work I am always interested to see how adults have taken into their own inner selves characteristics of their caregivers - which may have been exaggerated or inadequate - and then defend these defective structures as their own self.

For example, a parent can use the child for its own emotional needs by holding on to the child to compensate for lacks in the relationship with the partner. This can produce in the child - and later in the adult - a reduced capacity for real relationships. We might see this as a need to contol in relationships, in an attempt to gain back the security of that first closeness. On the other hand, a parent who is inconsistent in their affection can give rise to an insecurity in the child who draws conlusions about future relationships based on what they see in the parent.

Dan Siegel, in his book The Developing Brain writes about the desired "attunement" between the caregiver and child, which allows the child to “feel felt.” This attuned state shapes the young brain. It builds neuronal patterns that underpin the child’s resilience and grounds the ability to connect in meaningful relationships later in life.

However, all is not lost. What science is discovering recently is that the brain can be re-shaped later in life. So, even if we grew up with an insecure attachment pattern, we can grow in our security later in life, reducing our need for control or withdrawal. In other words, we can retrain the brain, which shapes our emotional security or felt sense in relationships. One way to do this is through sitting meditation which seems to work on the same part of the brain that is shaped in those early months. We rest in silence and that calms gradually the anxious messages remembered deep in our unconscious.

A mindfulness and Tai Chi project in a Boston school

There are not too many studies which look at the effect of mindfulness on young children in a school setting. Therefore it is interesting to read about a Boston School which designed a clinical project that used Tai Chi and mindfulness-based stress reduction as an educational program.

The 5-week successfully showed that sustained interest in this material in young boys and girls is possible, even though it may have been presumed beforehand that children would find the requisite capacity for sustained concentration, precision, mechanical exactness, and the essential slow execution of movements in Tai Chi find less interesting once the novelty wore off. However, statements made by the boys and girls in the process suggested that they experienced well-being, calmness, relaxation, improved sleep, less reactivity, increased self-care, self-awareness, and a sense of interconnection or interdependence with nature.

As a result of their work, the reserarchers state that Tai Chi and mindfulness-based stress reduction may be transformational tools that can be used in educational programs appropriate for school–aged children.

Wall, Robert, "Tai Chi and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in a Boston Public Middle School" Journal of Pediatric Health Care Volume 19, Number 4, July/August 2005

Mindfulness meditation and alcoholism

A new report suggests that mindfulness meditation may be a useful tool that helps alcoholics in their fight against addiction.

Dr. Aleksandra Zgierska, assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, led a 16-week pilot clinical trial with 19 participants recruited from addiction treatment clinics. He initially met with some scepticism as to the possibility of people in recovery from recent addiction being able to meditate

“When we started the project, it was met with some concern,” she says. “Some people said ‘You’re going to have alcoholics meditate?’ That’s why we did the pilot study—to show that it could be possible and helpful for them. We thought meditation could teach people new skills to cope with life challenges and create an emotional and intellectual “platform” to tackle not just drinking by itself, but also other problems that may increase relapse risk.”

The trial showed that meditation was possible and could be a useful supplemetary tool for people alongside conventional treatments. Because of the trial results she is now conducting a larger study.

Her work was supported by Michael Waupoose, program manager for Gateway Recovery, an addiction treatment center, who suggests that meditation may assist in those moments of increased anxiety which would normally trigger the urge to drink:

“Mindfulness meditation would teach that person how to be present in that situation, how to be conscious of what’s happening to their body, and how to deal with it without reacting to it automatically. It teaches people how to be conscious of their feelings or thoughts without having to follow them all the way through.”

More mindfulness research

Some people have wondered whether the effects of the MBSR programme could be due to other factors, such as the presence of the group, people simply taking time to reflect on their lives, or whether just listening to relaxing music would have the same effect. However research at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands found support for the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation. They looked at 40 women and 20 men who were experiencing distress, separated out different factors, and found evidence for the effects of mindfulness as an individual stress reliever in its own right, independent of other stress reduction factors in the intervention. This gives research backing to what many people have found - the practices of mindfulness are effective against the stresses which modern life can throw at us.

Nyklíček I, Kuijpers KF. "Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Intervention on Psychological Well-being and Quality of Life: Is Increased Mindfulness Indeed the Mechanism?" Annals of behavioral medicine, June 2008.

Mindfulness and ADD

We all can suffer from a lack of ability to focus or pay attention, especially when we are stressed. However, for some people, such as children and adolescents with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), focusing is a much greater problem. Symptoms for the disorder include impulsiveness, hyperactivity and poor concentration. The number of cases of ADD has increased significantly in recent times, which may partly be due to the way modern society has developed: Our current way of living puts a very high demand on attention while, as we have noted in a recent blog entry, encouraging a significant amount of distraction and multi-tasking.

There are concerns with some of the medications used to treat ADD so alternatives to medication are highly sought after. A very interesting study of mindfulness meditation as a treatment for adults and adolescents with ADD was published in the Journal of Attention Disorders (Zylowka, et al.,2008). The study took typical mindfulness training and adapted it to make it more user friendly for people with ADD. They called this eight week programme 'Mindful Awareness Practices for ADHD’, or MAPS. They found improvement in self-reports of ADD symptoms. In-attention and hyperactivity improved significantly – as measured before the class, at the conclusion, and 3 months after the training was completed. Indeed, they found that there was actually even more improvement at the post 3 month mark than right after the training itself. As Dr Zylowka noted "We always think that our brain makes our mind, but it may work the other way. You can have an impact on your biology"

Mindfulness meditation has three basic steps. These are, firstly, bringing attention to an “attentional anchor” such as breathing. Then noticing when distraction occurs and letting go of the distraction and, finally, refocusing back to the “attentional anchor”. As such it can be seen as a form of “attention training” programme, and as such, examining the impact of such training on ADD becomes a very interesting question to pursue.


"Mindfulness meditation training in adults and adolescents with ADHD". Journal of Attention Disorders, 11, 737-746.

Meditation and Insomnia

Meditation may be an effective behavioral intervention in the treatment of insomnia, according to research presented in June 2009. Results indicate that patients saw improvements in subjective sleep quality and sleep diary parameters while practicing meditation.

The study divided participants with chronic primary insomnia into two groups. Primary insomnia is sleeplessness that cannot be attributed to an existing medial, psychiatric or environmental cause. One group practiced yoga and meditation while the other group, the control group, didn’t. At the end of the two-month-long trial, the patients who practiced yoga/meditation experienced improved sleep quality and sleep time. Sleep latency, total sleep time, total wake time, wake after sleep onset, sleep efficiency, sleep quality and depression all improved in the patients who used meditation. "Results of the study show that teaching deep relaxation techniques during the daytime can help improve sleep at night," said Ramadevi Gourineni, MD, director of the insomnia program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Evanston, Ill.

Ramadevi Gourineni, et al. "Effects of Meditation on Sleep in Individuals with Chronic Insomnia" American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Abstract ID: 0874.

Develop positive skills

Remembering the positive side of everyday happenings can be a struggle for people suffering from clinical depression. But by developing skills to tune into the positive, depressed people can strengthen their mental health, a 2009 Ohio State University study shows. By staying mindful of the positive elements of daily events, and even documenting each days happiest moments in a journal, you may lower your stress levels. “Positive emotions build resilience to stress, in addition to having an undoing effect on depression” says Alan Keck, Psychologist at the Centre for Positive Psychology.

He goes on to say that we should consciously build up our positive resilience by really focusing when we are having an experience that we find especially pleasant. This may simply be a good cup of coffee, a special brunch, a visit to friends, a nice meal. To magnify the results, he says, pay attention to what you see, hear, and feel, both physically and emotionally, and smile. Then consciously tell yourself to “remember this” experience for which you feel grateful. Doing this helps the mind store the positive effects of the moment for future use.

Mindfulness and attachment

There are interesting possible links between the practice of meditation and the healing of attachment patterns which are at the basis of all our relationships. Our early relationships with our primary caregivers laid down a pattern or paradigm which can be activated in later relationships. This paradigm can be very deeply ingrained in our unconscious and in the neural patterns of the brain. Luckily, like all neural patterns they can be changed, even if this takes a lot of time. One possible effect of meditation is that it allows the healing of excessive needs in relation to others by developing a greater contentment and balance with ourselves. This seems to be supported by the following quotation from Daniel Siegel on the brain and how it functions. Although it comes from a neurological point of view it seems to me to agree with the more Buddhist view of the mind's natural wakefulness which I referred to in the previous post.

Each of us needs periods in which our minds can focus inwardly. Solitude is an essential experience for the mind to organize its own processes and create an internal state of resonance. In such a state, the self is able to alter its constraints by directly reducing the input from interactions with others. As the mind goes through alternating phases of needing connection and needing solitude, the states of mind are cyclically influenced by combinations of external and internal processes. We can propose that such a shifting of focus allows the mind to achieve a balanced self-organizational flow in the states of mind across time. Respecting the need for solitude allows the mind to “heal” itself – which in essence can be seen as releasing the natural self-organizational tendencies of the mind to create a balanced flow of states. Solitude permits the self to reflect on engrained patterns and intentionally alter reflexive responses to external events that have been maintaining the dyadic dysfunction.

Daniel J. Siegal, The Developing Mind p., 235

The effect of mindfulness on the Brain

From Dan Siegal, the author of The Mindful Brain:

Studies show that the ways we intentionally shape our internal focus of attention in mindfulness practice induces a state of brain activation during the practice. With repetition, an intentionally created state can become an enduring trait of the individual as reflected in long-term changes in brain function and structure. This is a fundamental property of neuroplasticity—how the brain changes in response to experience. Here, the experience is the focus of attention in a particular manner.

First, a “left-shift” has been noted in which the left frontal activity of the brain is enhanced following MBSR training. This electrical change in brain function is thought to reflect the cultivation of an “approach state,” in which we move toward, rather than away from, a challenging external situation or internal mental function such as a thought, feeling, or memory. Naturally, such an approach state can be seen as the neural basis for resilience.

Second, the degree of this left-shift is proportional to the improvement seen in immune function. Our mind not only finds resilience, but our body’s ability to fight infection is improved. At the University of California, Los Angeles, David Cresswell and his colleagues have found that MBSR improves immune function even in those with HIV.

More applications of Mindfulness

The Mind Body Awareness Project is another example of the way Mindfulness meditation is being adapted to work with different populations and in different settings. It was set up in the year 2000 to work with at-risk and incarcerated youth. It was founded in the belief that these young people have the potential to take control of their actions and fully transform their lives. It focuses on empowering them with the tools and competencies to overcome trauma, transform negative behaviors, and find real freedom from the inside. It was recently described as a “new national model for the rehabilitation of incarcerated youth".


The slogan of the MBA Project "We are literally one breath away from making better decisions" is based on the key role that breath awareness has in Mindfulness meditation and emotional intelligence exercises. Their programme aims to help helping teenagers to develop empathy, gain impulse control, and equip them with the tools they need to live meaningful lives. It tries to response to common issues seen in disaffected teenagers today - lack of contentment, meaning and motivation - which can lead to destructive behaviours and a disinterested "whatever" attitude.

This ‘whatever’ attitude has another side. It is the statement ‘whatever’ that can express their ambivalence towards everything they don’t like. ‘Whatever’ is how today’s youth express their extreme apathy towards teachers (and other adults) that cannot relate to them, and classrooms and institution that do not engage their interests. Breaking through this ‘whatever’ is the educator’s biggest challenge.

Mindfulness in Schools

There is an article in today's Times about the first school in England to teach mindfulness to pupils as a regular part of the curriculum. The Course has been designed in conjunction with Mark Williams, director of the Mindfulness Centre at Oxford, who collaborated with Jon Kabat Zinn on the book The Mindful way through Depression. The article summarizes the Course objectives as follows:

The course develops exercises to help to improve attention — rather than allowing the mind to be “hijacked” by emotional issues, regrets, worries about the past and future and other distractions. This can be done in a number of ways, such as by focusing on breathing, parts of the body or movement.

Mindfulness originated in Eastern meditation traditions such as Buddhism but is now an established secular discipline. A growing body of research supports wider use of the approach to address transient stress and deeper mental health problems, including recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence that it be offered on the NHS to patients suffering from depression.

The article is interesting. It can be found here : www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6984113.ece

Mindfulness and emotional well being

Some research has been done on the effects of meditation on the development of positive emotions, leading to a greater ability to function in everyday life. One urban study conducted by Roth and Robbins in 2004* and published in Psychosomatic Medicine, looked at the effect of the eight week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme on the development of positive emotions.

The results showed significant improvement in the participants’ emotional and social functioning, as well as their general health and vitality. Even though no impact on physical functioning was detected in this study, participants did report themselves more capable of working and performing their day-to-day activities. These improvements were reflected in an overall improvement in their health-related quality of life. It was noted that the ongoing effect of these benefits tended to increase with more frequent mindfulness practice, and were most pronounced in experienced mindfulness practitioners.

… with nothing to do, the mind is unable to prevent negative thoughts from elbowing their way to center stage worries about one’s love life, health, investments, family, and job are always hovering at the periphery of attention, waiting until there is nothing pressing that demands concentration. As soon as the mind is ready to relax, zap! the potential problems that were waiting in the wings take over.

Csikszentmihalyi, Flow


*“Mindfulness based stress reduction and health related quality of life: finding from a bilingual inner-city patient population”, Psychosomatic Medicine, 2004: 66(1):112-23

Mindfulness and Social Anxiety

Most people get nervous when asked to give a presentation or meet a new group of people. However, for those who suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder, also known as Social Phobia, the idea of addressing a crowd often triggers more than just jittery nerves. Headaches, sleep problems and persistent thoughts of failure or embarrassment are common. This anxiety may be provoked by a variety of social situations, not just public speaking, but also by challenges such as participating or presenting at meetings or talking with a group of people.

In a study at Stanford University, headed by psychology researcher Philippe Goldin, participants with Social Anxiety Disorder underwent the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Programme. Results of the study were published in the Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy in early 2009. Goldin focused on the negative thoughts which dominate the anticipated future for those suffering from anxiety: "The idea is that if a person has the psychological flexibility to shift freely from one mode of thinking to another mode, then that is a sign of health, It's when we get stuck in certain thinking patterns that our beliefs become maladaptive.". The study found that mindfulness meditation helped patients develop this flexibility.

On a day-to-day level, Goldin encourages patients battling Social Anxiety Disorder to take "meaningful pauses" throughout the day as a way to monitor and take charge of their fears and self-doubts. "It breaks the circuit," says one participant. "I always thought that anxiety had me in its grip, but I realized it's the other way around. I have it in my grip. It's a matter of learning to let it go."

Mindfulness and some anxiety problems

Mindfulness has been studied in the treatment of certain anxiety complaints, with some promising results. In meta-analyses carried out by Baer in 2003 and Bishop in 2002, it was found to reduce distress across a number of anxiety disorders, including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). This is perhaps not surprising because neurobehavioural research has found that the orbital frontal cortex in the brain is involved in people making emotional assessments and judgements about danger in their environment. This part of the brain can be overactive in people with obsessive compulsive disorder, with the increases in metabolism giving a heightened feeling that something is wrong. Because mindfulness trains a person to observe inner experiences with calm and without immediately responding to them, it can assist people to learn different behaviours in response to their anxious feelings. For people with OCD, this means that they can notice what is happening at a certain moment rather than automatically engaging in a ritual or compulsive behaviour.

These finding were supported by a small study conducted on a student population by Hanstede, Gidron, and Nyklicek, published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease in 2008, which found that mindfulness had a significant effect on OCD symptoms, letting go, and thought-action fusion.