Wellness of the Mind:

Self-Compassion Outweighs Self-Esteem for Resilience & Empowerment

2011-09-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

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

PLAY!! It's good for you:)

2011-06-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-11-15T08:03:00.001-08:00

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

2010-10-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-12-27T16:12:00.001-08:00

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...

2009-09-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

[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/

Regulation of Emotions through both Body & Mind

2009-09-15T19:56:00.001-07:00

Can physical practices such as yoga and breathing exercises really influence the state of our mind? Is there a "wisdom" in the body?

One might think that controlling the mind would just be a matter of exerting greater mental discipline. As human beings, we pride ourselves on our mental faculties. However, while research shows that it is possible to "reappraise" a situation, i.e. reassess it and adopt a better perspective that can down-regulate negative emotions (Gross, 1998 ), experience shows us that this is also sometimes very challenging to do. One only needs to experience being anxious before a deadline and have someone helpfully suggest “don’t be so stressed out” to observe this phenomenon. This is similar to the futile exercise of trying to will oneself to sleep the night before a big event. Daniel Wegner at Harvard University has in fact shown in several studies that the intention to control the mind is often coupled with another mental process that looks for the failure of that intention and that can, under stress or mental overload, actually trigger the unwanted thought (Wegner, 1994). This phenomenon is called ironic processes and highlights the wisdom behind "what you resist with the mind...persists."

A large body of recent research, however, has shown that, often unbeknownst to our mind, the body exerts a great amount of influence on our thoughts and feelings. Bringing a smile to one's face, even if it is fake, can induce the positive physiological benefits of a smile and make you feel better, this is called the Facial Feedback Hypothesis. Moreover, just observing other people and even words and situations can influence how you feel. The mere sight of another person smiling can activate your facial "smile muscles" and make you feel more happy (Dimberg & Petterson, 2000; Dimberg, Thunberg & Elmehed, 2000; Niedenthal, 2007; Levenson, Carstensen, Friesen & Ekman, 1991). Even reading the printed word "smile" or "frown" activates the corresponding facial muscles (Foroni & Semin, 2009). By either seeing someone smile or reading the word "smile," our "zygomatic" facial muscle, which is responsible for elevating the sides of our lips into a smile, gets activated. Having read the word "smile" so many times in these last two sentences may have exerted this influence on you already. (In fact, our body actually seems prewired to recognize smiles above and beyond any other facial expression. An article published in Psychological Science this month describes an experimental procedure in which participants had to recognize facial expressions, they were quicker to recognize prosocial facial expressions such as happiness than any other facial expression of emotion - see Kenny et al., 2009).

In an analogous way, the breath, by directly influencing our nervous system, can impact the way we feel. Researchers in Belgium have shown that there is a direct link between breath and emotion (Phillippot, Chappele, Blairy, 2002). The researchers invited participants to watch films that evoked different emotions. As the participants experienced these different emotions e.g. anger, sadness, happiness, the researchers observed that each emotion was associated with a different breathing pattern and depth. In a separate study, a different set of participants were instructed to breathe according to the respiration patterns observed to have been linked to the different emotions. When the researchers then asked the participants how they felt, the participants reported feeling the emotions that corresponded to the breathing patterns. These findings suggest that the breath may be a powerful vehicle with which to influence the emotions that we feel and the state of our mind. There may be wisdom to age-old adages such as "take a deep breath."

Body-based approaches to regulating one's emotions are common. Just think of how often people turn to junk food, alcohol, smoking or recreational drugs when they feel blue (e.g. Heather & Baumeister, 1991; Mohr et al., 2008). More healthful forms of body-based emotion regulation strategies include physical exercise (Thayer, 1987). In particular, the regular practice of yoga, yogic breathing exercises ("pranayama"), and meditation, by regularly training the body to come back to a state of calmness, may enhance one's ability to regain one's composure more quickly in times of stress and emotion. Coupling a physical approach to regulating one's emotions, such as with breathing, with a more intellectual approach, such as with reappraisal, may optimize our ability to deal with the upheavals of life with greater composure and wisdom. A recent article in the Harvard Medical School's Health Publication summarizes research on how yogic breathing exercises including pranayama taught in yoga classes and exercises such as the Sudarshan Kriya taught in the Art of Living and International Association for Human Values workshops can help with anxiety, depression, and trauma.

Meditation & Social Connection

2009-06-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

During my graduate career, I was fortunate to receive a Francisco Varela Research Grant from the Mind and Life Research Institute for research on meditation. Our research demonstrated that a certain form of Buddhist meditation, Loving-Kindness Meditation, can increase one's feeling of well-being as well as connection with and positive regard toward others (Hutcherson, Seppala & Gross, 2008). We measured social connection both through self-report measures as well as "implicit" measures so as to control for potential bias due to demand characteristics.

We were very happy with these results because a sense of belongingness and connection to others is a fundamental human need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Maslow, 1943) associated with important mental and physical health benefits. Perceived social connectedness, for example, predicts psychological well-being, improved recovery from disease, and a longer lifespan. Conversely, those who are not socially connected are more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, antisocial behavior, and even suicide (Berkman & Syme, 1979; Cacioppo, Hawkley, Crawford, et al. 2002; Pressman, Cohen, Miller, al.2005). In addition, a lack of social connectedness is correlated with health risks similar to those associated with cigarette smoking, blood pressure, and obesity (House, Landis & Umberson, 1988; Orth-Gomer & Johnson, 1987).

A weakness of our study is that we measured the effects of a single, short dose of meditation administered to undergraduate students. Althought our results were significant, we cannot make general claims about the effects of this meditation on social connectedness over the long run. However, if even such a short administration of meditation leads to significant changes in social connectedness, one might hypothesize that continued practice over longer periods, as meditation is usually done, might lead to long-lasting effects reflected in neuronal changes in the brain, as shown by Sara Lazar. Ongoing research in North American as well as European neuroscience labs is asking exactly this question: can meditation lead to the behavioral consequences of social connectedness i.e. empathy, compassion and even prosocial behavior? Antoine Lutz recently showed that monks who have been practicing meditation for thousands of hours (this is one objective way in which researchers determine whether someone is a meditation "expert") showed altered brain circuitry, in particular enhanced empathetic responding (Lutz, Brefczynksi-Lewis, Johnstone & Davidson, 2008).

Behavioral research findings that show that meditation actually leads to prosocial or compassionate behavior would demonstrate more clearly the effects of meditation on social connectedness. Current popular icons of meditation such as His Holinesses the Dalai Lama, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and Thich Nhat Hahn are known for their compassion. These exemplars suggest that meditation may indeed lead to a more prosocial orientation towards others. However, until research proves this hypothesis, we cannot assume causation as these compassionate individuals may have been drawn to meditation because of their pre-existing prosocial traits. Research investigating the effects of meditation on prosocial behavioral are ongoing and their results will shed further light on these hypotheses.

Introduction: Research & Meditation

2009-05-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

In 2003, I was a recent college graduate living in the whirlwind intensity of Manhattan and, unsatisfied with other forms of stress-relief that I saw others around me using (alcohol, coffee, recreational drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, etc), I began a practice of yoga, breathing, and meditation thanks to the Art of Living Foundation. Amazed by the results and fascinated by the new developments in meditation research that were beginning to take place at high-end research institutions, I applied to do a Ph.D in Psychology at Stanford. I had heard of work by Richard Davidson, had experienced the benefits of meditation myself, and was keen to find out more about the benefits thereof through scientific research.

5 years later, I have just completed my Ph.D. orals at Stanford and am looking forward to joining Richard Davidson's lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a postdoctoral research scientist. I will be doing research on both meditation in academic settings as well as with adults. I will also be doing systematic research on the effects of yogic breathing exercises on well-being. This blog is dedicated to those who, like myself, appreciate rigorous and systematic investigations of the mind and wish to stay updated on the latest developments in yoga, breathing and meditation research.