Intensive Mindfulness Training and the Reduction of Psychological Distress: A Preliminary Study

There is increasing evidence for the utility of mindfulness training as a clinical intervention. Most of this research has examined secular-based mindfulness instruction. The current study examined the effects of a 10-day Buddhist mindfulness meditation course on the psychological symptoms of 53 participants. A repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated reductions in overall psychological distress from the pre-course baseline to a 3-month follow-up. Correlation analyses indicated that the reported reduction in psychological distress was not influenced by social desirability bias and that the effect was not dependent on daily meditation between course completion and follow-up. Issues regarding modality of mindfulness training (secular versus Buddhist) are discussed.     

Making the Most of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: Participant Feedback Reveals Strengths and Challenges

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) offers comprehensive instruction to clients in three forms of meditation: the body scan, sitting meditation, and gentle hatha yoga. Clinical experience suggests that participants may express a preference for one mode of practice over others. However, little research has addressed this question or explored participants’ experience of nonspecific factors such as group discussion and teacher personality. In this paper, we aimed to shed light on these open questions in two ways. First, we present quantitative and qualitative post-test data from a nonclinical sample of 181 participants who completed course evaluation forms at the end of an 8-week MBSR program. Second, we share clinical insights and lessons learned over several years teaching MBSR in a community-based program. On evaluation forms, participants reported meaningful improvements in well-being following MBSR and evaluated the nonspecific elements of the course as highly useful. Although they rated all three forms of meditation as beneficial, there was a preference for the body scan and sitting meditation over yoga, and for audio-guided over self-guided practice. Qualitative feedback reflected themes related to learning different forms of meditation, developing an independent practice, meditating with a group, adding additional sessions, and appreciation for the course. Survey findings, taken together with existing research and clinical impressions, support recommendations to address participant preconceptions about the different forms of meditation, encourage meditation practice without audio guides, pay attention to the level of individual participation, discuss how to carve out time to meditate, and promote participants’ development of an ongoing meditation practice. We illustrate these points with case examples and clinical vignettes.     

不同冥想类型对创造性思维的影响及作用机制

冥想与创造性的关系正逐渐被关注,澄清冥想练习对创造性思维的影响效果和作用机制对个体创新潜能的培养与提升具有重要意义。不同冥想类型对创造性思维的影响具有特异性,专注冥想主要通过注意聚焦和提升自上而下的执行控制能力来对聚合思维产生积极影响;正念冥想引起的离焦的注意状态,以及对认知灵活性和积极情绪的促进,有助于发散思维。未来应加强不同冥想类型与创造性思维的整合研究,探讨冥想影响创造性思维的脑机制,以及冥想与其他干预训练对创造性思维的不同作用机制等。     

Measuring mindfulness—the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI)

Mindfulness, a concept originally derived from Buddhist psychology, is essential for some well-known clinical interventions. Therefore an instrument for measuring mindfulness is useful. We report here on two studies constructing and validating the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) including a short form. A preliminary questionnaire was constructed through expert interviews and extensive literature analysis and tested in 115 subjects attending mindfulness meditation retreats. This psychometrically sound 30-item scale with an internal consistency of Cronbach alpha = .93 was able to significantly demonstrate the increase in mindfulness after the retreat and to discriminate between experienced and novice meditators. In a second study we broadened the scope of the concept to 86 subjects without meditation experience, 117 subjects with clinical problems, and 54 participants from retreats. Reducing the scale to a short form with 14 items resulted in a semantically robust and psychometrically stable (alpha = .86) form. Correlation with other relevant constructs (self-awareness, dissociation, global severity index, meditation experience in years) was significant in the medium to low range of correlations and lends construct validity to the scale. Principal Component Analysis suggests one common factor. This short scale is sensitive to change and can be used also with subjects without previous meditation experience.     

冥想使人变得平和——人们对正、负性情绪图片的情绪反应可因冥想训练而降低

虽然前人已有不少研究发现冥想具有减少个体焦虑、缓解抑郁水平等功能,并且也已经揭示了冥想促进情绪调节能力的认知神经科学机理,但对于冥想会怎样调制人们对于外部施加的正、负性情绪刺激(图片)的情绪反应尚不清楚,冥想究竟会使人们对外部施加的情绪刺激的敏感性增强还是减弱?如果冥想能够调节和缓解人们的情绪反应的话,那么,这种调节作用是“双向的”(即对正性或负性情绪刺激能产生具有不同效价方向的调节作用)还是“单向的”(即对正性或负性情绪刺激产生具有相同效价方向的调节作用)?为了检验和回答上述问题,本研究以无冥想(或相关)经验的大学生为被试,通过随机实验组、控制组前后测的实验设计,考察了冥想训练能否影响被试对于正、负性情绪图片的情绪唤起.62名大学生被试被随机分配到实验组和控制组(每组31人),实验组参与连续5天、每天20 min的冥想练习,控制组在此期间的控制任务为通常的闭眼休息.结果显示:冥想组在练习过程中的脑α波指数显著升高;与控制组相比,冥想组被试对消极图片的效价评定值显著改善,这表明冥想降低了被试对负性情绪图片的情绪反应,研究还发现了冥想降低被试对正性情绪图片的积极评价倾向,从而证明对外部施加的正、负性情绪刺激而言,冥想训练的调制作用是使人们的情绪反应趋于平和.     

从端粒和端粒酶探析冥想对压力的缓解作用

冥想是一种维持自我注意的身心调节技术,是缓解因压力所致的抑郁、焦虑等消极情绪的有效方法。端粒是维持染色体稳定和完整的DNA片段,大量有关冥想对端粒及端粒酶活性影响的研究阐明,通常情况下压力人群经过冥想训练能提高端粒长度并增加端粒酶活性,这种改变与压力缓解密切相关。这一积极效果主要得益于皮质醇和炎症等生物因素及心理和环境等非生物因素。未来可以通过对比不同冥想练习的效果、增加追踪研究、多学科联合及扩大样本等找到最有利于提高端粒长度和端粒酶活性的冥想方式。     

Differences in visual sensitivity among mindfulness meditators and non-meditators

Tachistoscopic presentation of light flashes was used to test for differences in visual sensitivity among 3 groups of practitioners of Buddhist mindfulness meditation and non-meditator-controls. Meditation practitioners were able to detect light flashes of shorter duration than the non-meditators. There were no differences among the meditator groups. There were no differences among the groups in ability to discriminate between closely spaced successive light flashes. The lower detection threshold for single light flashes for the meditators may reflect an enduring increase in sensitivity, perhaps the long-term effects of the practice of mindfulness meditation on certain perceptual habit patterns. The lack of significant differences in the discrimination of successive light flashes probably reflects the resistance of other perceptual habit patterns to modification. The results support the statements found in Buddhist texts on meditation concerning the changes in perception encountered during the practice of mindfulness.     

The Evocation of Death Anxiety on a Meditation Retreat

This paper begins an examination of the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and Buddhist psychology and the practice of meditation. It describes in a series of episodes the ordeal of one patient during a Buddhist meditation retreat. She is asked during the course of the teachings to confront her own inevitable death, and in so doing finds herself simultaneously enduring the agony of a psychic death or collapse originating in earlier trauma. The narrative and subsequent discussion, using the language of psychoanalysis, aim to capture the conflictual yet generative aspects of the interplay between these two invaluable disciplines.     

Group work in general practice

In this article, consideration is given to a problem often experienced in relation to courses offering psychodynamic understanding to front-line workers with troubled clients – the complexity for the student in taking the learning ‘home’ in a productive manner and the potential isolation of the student in, or alienation from, their workplace. A model of course delivery is described in which an active three-way partnership between student, course and workplace is fostered which enhances the students' learning, enables the workplace to benefit more fully from the course and enhances the effectiveness of the course in improving service to the ultimate client – the service user.     

Meditation and self-control

This paper seeks to analyse an under-discussed kind of self-control, namely the control of thoughts and sensations. I distinguish first-order control from second-order control and argue that their central forms are intentional concentration and intentional mindfulness respectively. These correspond to two forms of meditation, concentration meditation and mindfulness meditation, which have been regarded as central both in the traditions in which the practices arose and in the scientific literature on meditation. I analyse them in terms of their characteristic intentions, distinguish them from concentration and mindfulness in general, and examine the relations between them. Concentration involves keeping the mind focused on a single object, while mindfulness requires noticing whatever mental states occupy the focus of one’s consciousness. In the course of the investigation I examine the role of phenomenology and volition in the activity of meditating, and how they change as meditative capacities develop.     

Limitations to the capacity to love

This paper is a meditation on the potential and problems of establishing and maintaining loving and passionate relationships, drawn from a lifetime of struggling with these issues in the course of doing analysis. It describes interferences with the capacity for mature sexual love as reflecting various psychopathological conditions. These limitations include a variety of psychological restrictions determined most frequently by masochistic, narcissistic and paranoid personality features. Clinical case material illustrates both mature and disturbed capability for love relations.     

Meditation,mindfulness and cognitive flexibility

This study investigated the link between meditation, self-reported mindfulness and cognitive flexibility as well as other attentional functions. It compared a group of meditators experienced in mindfulness meditation with a meditation-naïve control group on measures of Stroop interference and the “d2-concentration and endurance test”. Overall the results suggest that attentional performance and cognitive flexibility are positively related to meditation practice and levels of mindfulness. Meditators performed significantly better than non-meditators on all measures of attention. Furthermore, self-reported mindfulness was higher in meditators than non-meditators and correlations with all attention measures were of moderate to high strength. This pattern of results suggests that mindfulness is intimately linked to improvements of attentional functions and cognitive flexibility. The relevance of these findings for mental balance and well-being are discussed.     

Children’s spirituality and the practice of meditation in Irish primary schools

Abstract

This paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the child’s experience of meditation in Irish primary schools and its impact on children’s spirituality. Using a phenomenological, hermeneutic, mystagogical methodology, it describes how children experience the practice of meditation, the benefits they consider they gain from it and the nature of its impact, if any, on their spirituality. Seventy children, aged 7 to 11, were interviewed. The study is original in that the interview protocol contained novel processes designed to elicit from children their experience, if any, of the transcendent in meditation and in its depth of analysis of the spiritual fruits of the practice. The study concludes that meditation does have the capacity to nourish the innate spirituality of the child. It offers a heuristic model outlining the key elements of the child’s experience of meditation, stresses the importance of personal spiritual experience and supports the introduction of meditation in primary schools.     

A randomized controlled pilot trial of classroom-based mindfulness meditation compared to an active control condition in sixth-grade children

The current study is a pilot trial to examine the effects of a nonelective, classroom-based, teacher-implemented, mindfulness meditation intervention on standard clinical measures of mental health and affect in middle school children. A total of 101 healthy sixth-grade students (55 boys, 46 girls) were randomized to either an Asian history course with daily mindfulness meditation practice (intervention group) or an African history course with a matched experiential activity (active control group). Self-reported measures included the Youth Self Report (YSR), a modified Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Measure –Revised. Both groups decreased significantly on clinical syndrome subscales and affect but did not differ in the extent of their improvements. Meditators were significantly less likely to develop suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm than controls. These results suggest that mindfulness training may yield both unique and non-specific benefits that are shared by other novel activities.     

Prenatal meditation influences infant behaviors

Meditation is important in facilitating health. Pregnancy health has been shown to have significant consequences for infant behaviors. In view of limited studies on meditation and infant temperament, this study aims to explore the effects of prenatal meditation on these aspects. The conceptual framework was based on the postulation of positive relationships between prenatal meditation and infant health. A randomized control quantitative study was carried out at Obstetric Unit, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong. 64 pregnant Chinese women were recruited for intervention and 59 were for control. Outcome measures were cord blood cortisol, infant salivary cortisol, and Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire. Cord blood cortisol level of babies was higher in the intervention group (p < 0.01) indicates positive health status of the newborns verifies that prenatal meditation can influence fetal health. Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire showed that the infants of intervention group have better temperament (p < 0.05) at fifth month reflects the importance of prenatal meditation in relation to child health. Present study concludes the positive effects of prenatal meditation on infant behaviors and recommends that pregnancy care providers should provide prenatal meditation to pregnant women.     

An investigation of brain processes supporting meditation

Meditation is an ancient spiritual practice, which aims to still the fluctuations of the mind. We investigated meditation with fMRI in order to identify and characterise both the “neural switch” mechanism used in the voluntary shift from normal consciousness to meditation and the “threshold regulation mechanism” sustaining the meditative state. Thirty-one individuals with 1.5–25 years experience in meditation were scanned using a blocked on–off design with 45 s alternating epochs during the onset of respectively meditation and normal relaxation. Additionally, 21 subjects were scanned during 14.5 min of sustained meditation. The data were analysed with SPM and ICA. During the onset of meditation, activations were found bilaterally in the putamen and the supplementary motor cortex, while deactivations were found predominately in the right hemisphere, the precuneus, the posterior cingulum and the parieto–temporal area. During sustained meditation, SPM analysis revealed activation in the head of nucleus caudatus. Extensive deactivations were observed in white matter in the right hemisphere, i.e. mainly in the posterior occipito–parieto–temporal area and in the frontal lobes. ICA identified 38 components including known baseline-resting state components, one of which not only overlaps with the activated area revealed in the SPM analysis but extends further into frontal, temporal, parietal and limbic areas, and might presumably constitute a combination of frontoparietal and cinguloopercular task control systems. The identified component processes display varying degrees of correlation. We hypothesise that a proper characterisation of brain processes during meditation will require an operational definition of brain dynamics matching a stable state of mind.     

Theta activity and meditative states: spectral changes during concentrative meditation

Brain oscillatory activity is associated with different cognitive processes and plays a critical role in meditation. In this study, we investigated the temporal dynamics of oscillatory changes during Sahaj Samadhi meditation (a concentrative form of meditation that is part of Sudarshan Kriya yoga). EEG was recorded during Sudarshan Kriya yoga meditation for meditators and relaxation for controls. Spectral and coherence analysis was performed for the whole duration as well as specific blocks extracted from the initial, middle, and end portions of Sahaj Samadhi meditation or relaxation. The generation of distinct meditative states of consciousness was marked by distinct changes in spectral powers especially enhanced theta band activity during deep meditation in the frontal areas. Meditators also exhibited increased theta coherence compared to controls. The emergence of the slow frequency waves in the attention-related frontal regions provides strong support to the existing claims of frontal theta in producing meditative states along with trait effects in attentional processing. Interestingly, increased frontal theta activity was accompanied reduced activity (deactivation) in parietal–occipital areas signifying reduction in processing associated with self, space and, time.     

Influence of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and catechol O-methyl transferase polymorphisms on effects of meditation on plasma catecholamines and stress

Meditation may show differential effects on stress and plasma catecholamines based on genetic polymorphisms in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and catechol O-methyl transferase (COMT). Eighty adults (40 men, 40 women; mean age 26 years) who practiced meditation regularly and 57 healthy control adults (35 men, 22 women; mean age 26 years) participated. Plasma catecholamines (norepinephrine (NE), epinephrine (E), and dopamine (DA)) concentrations were measured, and a modified form of the Stress Response Inventory was administered. The results were analyzed using two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with control and meditation subjects, gene polymorphism as factors, and meditation duration as the covariate. Two-way ANCOVA showed a significant interaction between control and meditation subjects, and BDNF Val66Met polymorphism on DA/NE+DA/E (p = 0.042) and NE/E+NE/DA (p = 0.046) ratios. A significant interaction was found for control and meditation subjects with COMT Val158Met polymorphism and plasma NE concentrations (p = 0.009). Post hoc ANCOVA in the meditation group, adjusted for meditation duration, showed significantly higher plasma NE concentrations for COMT Met carriers than COMT Val/Val subjects (p = 0.025). Significant differences of stress levels were found between the control and meditation subjects in BDNF Val/Met (p < 0.001) and BDNF Met/Met (p = 0.003), whereas stress levels in the BDNF Val/Val genotype did not differ between the control and meditation groups. This is the first evidence that meditation produces different effects on plasma catecholamines according to BDNF or COMT polymorphisms.     

An investigation into the effects of meditation with children in a Catholic primary school

This article reports on some findings of a small research project that examined the role of meditation in enhancing the relational lives of children, in particular, their relationship with God. It begins by discussing the literature on relevant research studies that investigate different aspects of meditation. The research method in the project was a case study that involved one Catholic primary school in the Melbourne Archdiocese. Different data collecting strategies were utilised, and this article presents and discusses the analysis and findings from one data source – the analysis and interpretation of a drawing activity which was designed to follow one of the weekly meditation exercises that had been observed by the researchers. Finally, the implications of the findings for education and, in particular, religious education are presented.