Research Shows Long-Term Love is Alive and Well!

Can love persist over the long-run? A new study reveals that YES it can! In a nationally representative sample, the largest percentage of people in a relationship reported still being "intensely in love." What are their secrets? Read more in my article in Scientific American Mind.

Self-Compassion Outweighs Self-Esteem for Resilience & Empowerment

Do you ever find that you are hard on yourself? Recent research suggests that self-criticism can have deleterious effects whereas self-compassion is key to resilience and empowerment.


For a more detailed account, see my recent article in Spirituality & Health or on the Self-Compassion website. http://www.self-compassion.org/SH_Self-Compassion.pdf

Yoga & Meditation for Veterans Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan

Dr. Richard Davidson and I recently completed a study on the impact of yogic breathing (Sudarshan Kriya Yoga) for returning veterans. Award-winning documentary film-maker Phie Ambo documents our research in a film entitled Free the Mind. We are currently writing up the results for publication.

For a preview featuring some of the results and testimonials from the veterans, see: http://pwht.org/video.html

For the film's official website, see http://danishdocumentary.com/site/freethemind/ and for previews see the official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FreeTheMind

A talk on Women, Compassion, & Service

Here is a recent talk I gave at a Women's Conference on Compassion, Well-Being & Service

PLAY!! It's good for you:)

It's ironic that animals continue to play throughout their adult lives, yet we rational humans often don’t. Submerged in the responsibilities of life, the seriousness of world affairs, and the demands of work, we often forget to play at all. Yet both research and the wise tell us that play is important for our mental and physical well-being. Click here to read the article in June 2011's S & H magazine.

Service, it Does You SO good!

 

Ever wonder why you feel so good when you do something for someone else. Or why you feel uplifted when you witness someone helping another person? There's now lots of research to tell you why.

See my article from S & H Magazine Nov - Dec 2010

How Shifting the Body Can Change the Mind

In difficult or stressful times, it's nearly impossible to will ourselves into a state of relaxation or happiness. If the mind itself is in a state of turmoil, how can it be the means by which we achieve peace? New research developed in the field of "embodied cognition," suggests that the body has a tremendous influence on the mind. Different physical postures and movements can have a feedback effect, changing how we feel.

See my article in S & H magazine Sept-Oct 2010.

Yogic Breathing

Most of us take our breath for granted without realizing that it is an amazing tool for peace of mind and well-being.

For more details, see my article S & H magazine March 2010.

Stress, Happiness & Wrinkles

Our physical health and the quality of our lives are profoundly impacted by the state of our mind and emotions. Our thoughts and emotions can impact brain, endocrine, and immune system function. Whereas negative emotions, such as anger and stress, have been linked to physical problems such as cardiovascular disease (Suarez, 2004), positive emotions such as feeling happy and connected to others, are linked to many health benefits including better immune function and a longer life span (Berkman & Syme, 1979; Cacioppo, Hawkley, Crawford, et al. 2002; Pressman, Cohen, Miller, al.2005).

Acute stress is a life-saver, that's its purpose, it's probably the reason you’re alive today! We’re equipped with a stress response to get our body pumped to run out of the way of a speeding car or to avoid becoming lunch for a hungry lion. Acute stress mobilizes energy and sharpens our attention to act immediately in the face of danger.

In his book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Dr. Sapolsky, stress specialist at Stanford University, explains the difference between animals and humans is that animals only feel stressed for the very short (and necessary) amount of time before returning to a normal state (homeostasis) when danger disappears.

For humans, stress can be constant and chronic and it leads to immense wear-and-tear. When it is chronic, stress actually weakens our ability to focus, concentrate, and remember things; it impacts our immune system and makes us more vulnerable to getting sick, as shown by the work of Dr. Sheldon Cohen. It compromises our ability to regulate our emotions (just think how easy it is to fly off the handle or burst into tears when we’re stressed); it makes us self-centered (Eysenck, 1997) and less capable of connecting with others which is something we fundamentally need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Chronic stress can result in lowered resistance to disease, exhaustion, depression, cardiovascular disease, and harmful coping behaviors, such as excessive consumption of food, drugs, and alcohol. You may yourself have experienced a time when intense stress lead you to some of these behaviors.

Stress may even impact how we look and the length of our life! People spend hundreds of dollars a year investing in products to improve the tone of their skin and muscles. Attending to stress levels may be as important if not more so. Stress increases the aging process as shown by work by the 2009 Nobel Prize Winner in Biology Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn whose work has show how stress impacts “telomere” length – biomarkers of cellular aging.

Stress gets in the way of being happy, healthy, and maybe even pretty! This is a time and age when being stressed may appear normal but it does not have to be that way. So prioritize a new year's resolution that involves making plenty of time for stress-relieving activities into your busy schedule. Activities such as yoga, breathing exercises, meditation, physical exercise, and time spent connecting with others have all been shown to reduce stress and improve well-being. A combination of them all may be best.

Another reason to beat stress? Positive emotions not only feel great, they help broaden your intellectual, social, physical and psychological resources – helping you think creatively and flexibly, connect with other people easily, feel resilient and optimistic, and gain coordination and physical health. For more info on this great research, read about the work of Dr. Barbara Fredrickson.

There may have been a lot to the 80's song by Bobby McFerrin...Don't worry, be happy!

From Warrior Pros to Warrior Pose...

[To watch my ABC News interview on meditation-based practices for veterans with PTSD click here.]

Once thought of as a new age phenomenon in popular US culture, yoga and meditation are rapidly finding their way into the conservative arena of the military:

On the one hand yoga-based interventions are being used to train better soldiers. The army is seriously looking into practices such as yoga, yogic breathing, and meditation to increase the skills of active-duty soldiers. It is funding psychologists at top universities, such as Amishi Jha, to research the effects of meditation on soldier’s attention and cognitive skills. A recent article by Amishi Jha suggests that certain types of meditation, such as mindfulness, can indeed increase attention and focus. Her program also aims at helping soldiers develop mindfulness so that they can better regulate their emotions during stressful situations. A sentence from her abstract in an upcoming article in Military Review summarize her intention to help cultivate mental capacities for decision-making: "Successful counterinsurgency depends not on overwhelming military force to kill every insurgent but rather on individual counterinsurgents’ mental capacities to make decisions that further overarching political objectives." A new positive-psychology "mind-training" program is going to be taught to 1.1 million soldiers in the hopes of increasing their emotional resilience, a New York Times article reports. Other similar programs, such as the Samurai Mind-Training program, are helping soldiers increase their performance on the shooting range.There are obvious ethical problems if mind-training skills are taught without an ethical backdrop. Traditionally, all meditation practices were taught within an ethical framework. Training the mind to have sharper shooting skills without providing ethical guidelines is worrisome. However, if these practices help soldiers to regulate their emotions and thereby save lives (e.g. by not shooting at innocent civilians simply because they are in a state of panic), then such practices may be useful.

On the other hand, yoga-based interventions are being used to heal returning veterans. The average age of soldiers returning from war is 25 and yet they have been through unimaginably traumatic experiences. Veterans return with problems ranging from sleep problems to PTSD, uncontrollable rage, and traumatic flashbacks. These circumstances often lead them to personal problems such as divorce and family break-ups leading to increased isolation and depression. Suicides are on the rise both amongst active-duty soldiers and returning veterans. The suicide rate amongst veterans has hit a three-decade high, reported the LA Times. For this reason, a rapidly increasing number of yoga- and meditation-based programs are also being tested with veterans who have just returned from the battlefield and suffer from trauma. Examples of such programs are iRest (a yoga nidra program created by Richard Miller) and Project Welcome Home Troops ( a Sudarshan Kriya - based breathing program offered by the International Association for Human Values). Though military men and women are used to a very "masculine" environment that may make them wary of anything that seems "girly," the programs are taught skillfully and many veterans report finding great relief from these practices.

Below are links to two articles on my research using meditation-based practices for veterans returning from Iraq & Afghanistan: 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/93829999.html

University of Wisconsin-Madison Foundation

http://www.supportuw.org/stories/feature/change-your-mind/http://www.supportuw.org/stories/feature/change-your-mind/