Using our personal strengths can enhance our mindfulness but mindfulness can also help us better use our strengths in life, work or sport. In the mPEAK program, participants become aware of how and when they are using their strengths and the results that they’re getting so that they can understand how to use them to the best effect.
Researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine who have been working with Olympic BMX cyclists to improve their athletic prowess have documented areas of the brain that appear to respond to mindfulness training.
Imagine a flowering plant. A baking cake. A rising stock price. A healing wound. Time passing can be a beautiful thing.
The Meditative Experience
“Performance Enhancement” is a popular goal in my line of work that is typically associated with the supplement industry or return on investment (ROI) business strategies. Images are conjured up of competitive athletes in bright lycra crossing finish lines, a lone climber summiting a mountain with ice picks or people in suits shaking hands on big business deals.
by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. republished from The Huffington Post, Dec. 30, 2013
In these fast and furious days of digital overload, we parents often worry about our teenagers' interactions with one another on social media. Who hasn't seen a teenager deeply absorbed with a smartphone or breaking off a face-to-face conversation to take a picture for their friends on Snapchat? With heads down and screens lit up, watching our teens plug in can feel confusing, disappointing and even like rejection to us.
by Molly Petrilla republished from Smart Planet, Dec.7, 2013
You shouldn’t kick yourself when you’re down . . .
. . . but sometimes it’s hard not to. Even if we’re compassionate toward others, we can still be our own worst critics. Mindfulness meditation really works. And self-compassion is one of its key benefits.
Kristin Neff, PhD, from the University of Texas, Austin, and Christopher Germer, PhD, from Harvard Medical School, wanted to find out whether self-compassion could be developed through training.
Mindfulness has been shown in numerous studies to effectively attenuate pain, but a new study about to be published suggested that the way in which this reduction happens is much different than other, more typical coping mechanisms. These findings go to the heart of the difference between pain and suffering, by elucidating the different patterns of brain activation associated with each and showing how suffering is reduced throughout the practice of mindfulness, even when the sensation of pain is present.
The journal Pain has scheduled an article for publication in a future issue: "A non-elaborative mental stance and decoupling of executive and pain-related cortices predicts low pain sensitivity in Zen meditators." The authors are Joshua A. Grant, Jerome Courtemanche, and Pierre Rainville.
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