Sensory Awareness Mindfulness Training in Coaching: Accepting Life’s Challenges

Sensory Awareness Mindfulness Training is a new set of skills to help clients approach a better life/work equilibrium by balancing cognitive and emotional brain activities. This is achieved through regular connection with one’s senses and focusing non-judgementally on the ‘here and now’ experience of life. The exercises are neither difficult to teach nor to learn; it is, however, necessary for the practitioner and student to enter into a regular routine of implementation for change to occur. Mindfulness is, in a nutshell, a way of being, a new life-style. Research shows that mindfulness interventions have resulted in significant improvements in a range of conditions such as anxiety, depression, stress disorders, chronic pain, psoriasis and relapse prevention, to mention but a few. This article gives a brief overview of using mindfulness interventions in the arena of coaching. It also focuses and describes one small pilot project where Sensory Awareness Mindfulness Training is applied and evaluated.

Recognition memory and prefrontal cortex: dissociating recollection and familiarity processes using rTMS

Recognition memory can be supported by both the assessment of the familiarity of an item and by the recollection of the context in which an item was encountered. The neural substrates of these memory processes are controversial. To address these issues we applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of healthy subjects performing a remember/know task. rTMS disrupted familiarity judgments when applied before encoding of stimuli over both right and left DLPFC. rTMS disrupted recollection when applied before encoding of stimuli over the right DLPFC. These findings suggest that the DLPFC plays a critical role in recognition memory based on familiarity as well as recollection.     

Teaching Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) to students: The effects of MBCT on the levels of Mindfulness and Subjective Well-Being

This study aimed to address the gap in the literature considering empirical evidence in support of the assumption that Mindfulness is the mediating factor in the positive outcomes of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programmes, and to further examine the link between Mindfulness and Subjective Well Being. The research question was whether MBCT would increase participants’ levels of Mindfulness and Satisfaction with Life and decrease participants’ level of Negative Affect. A Repeated Measures (Test–Retest) within participants design was employed and fifteen Counselling students at the University of East London provided data anonymously at the beginning and end of MBCT programme by completing the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) (Walach, Buchheld, Buttenmuller, Kleinknecht, & Schmidt, 2006), Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985) and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988). The results indicated that by the end of the MBCT programme: participants’ level of Mindfulness significantly increased; Positive Affect remained unchanged; Negative Affect significantly decreased; a strong trend in the data indicated an increase in participants’ Satisfaction With Life but failed to reach a statistically significant level; Mindfulness and Negative Affect were significantly negatively correlated, while Mindfulness and Satisfaction With Life were not found to be associated. A longer practice time of Mindfulness during the programme was found to be significantly correlated with a higher level of Mindfulness at the end of the programme. The results were interpreted in support of the assumption that Mindfulness has an important role as a mediating factor in symptoms relief and positive outcomes following participation on Mindfulness programmes. The results also support of Brown and Ryan's (2003) conclusion regarding the role of Mindfulness in enhancing Well Being. A Positive Psychology framework was applied in interpreting the data and it was suggested that there was ground to believe that Mindfulness can be integrated well, as a concept and as a therapeutic intervention, into the field of Positive Psychology.     

Words in the brain's language: an experimental investigation

According to Pulvermüller (1999), words are represented in the brain by cell assemblies (Hebb, 1949) distributed over different areas, depending on semantic properties of the word. For example, a word with strong visual associations will be represented by a cell assembly involving neurons in the visual cortex, while a word suggesting action will selectively activate neurons in the motor areas. The present work aims to test the latter hypothesis by means of behavioural measures. Specifically it tests the prediction that there should be a selective influence (in terms either of interference or priming) of performed/observed movements on the performance (reaction times and accuracy) of lexical decision involving words with a strong action association. Similarly, a selective influence of visual images on lexical decision involving words with strong visual associations should be observed. Two experiments were carried out. Results provided partial support for the hypothesis.     

The effects of counterfactual defences on social judgements

Research on counterfactuals (‘If only…’) has seldom considered the effects of counterfactual communication, especially in a defensive context. In three studies, we investigated the effects of counterfactual defences employed by politicians. We assumed that self‐focused upward counterfactuals (‘If only I…, the outcome would have been better’) are a form of concession, other‐focused upward counterfactuals (‘If only they…, the outcome would have been better’) are a form of excuse, and self‐focused downward counterfactuals (‘If only I…, the outcome would have been worse’) are a form of justification. In Study 1, a counterfactual defence led to a more positive evaluation of the politician than a corresponding factual defence. Of the two types of defence, the counterfactual defence reduced the extent to which the politician was held responsible for the past event and was perceived as more convincing. In Study 2, counterfactual excuse and counterfactual justification were equally effective and led to a more positive evaluation of the politician than counterfactual concession. In Study 3, the higher effectiveness of counterfactual justification was independent from perceived ideological similarity with the politician, supporting the strength of this defence. These results show that counterfactual defences provide subtle communication strategies that effectively influence social judgements. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Group Activities to Promote Early Rehabilitation in an Acute Psychiatric Ward: A Relationship-Based Approach Focusing on Movies

Our Psychiatry Institute has a long-standing tradition of providing training in the importance of relational and emotional skills and helping relationships. Here we describe techniques that are routinely used on our psychiatric ward (Maggiore della Carità Hospital, Novara, Italy) to promote early rehabilitation of acute psychiatric inpatients. We focus on the Cinema group, which is typical of our approach to informal, therapeutic group activity. Targeting social and relational issues as adjunct to treatment as usual is useful in acute settings and can begin at an early stage of hospitalization. Our intervention is designed to improve patients’ coping strategies, relational and communication skills, and overall quality of life.     

Similarity of anthropometric measures for male ultra-triathletes and ultra-runners

Previous research concluded that Triple Iron ultra-triathletes were close to runners in anthropometry. We assessed similarities in anthropometry between 64 Triple Iron triathletes who competed over 11.4 km swimming, 540 km cycling, and 126 km running versus 95 100-km ultra-marathoners. Variables of anthropometry such as body mass, body height, length and circumferences of limbs, skin-folds and body fat, and training such as volume and speed were compared between ultra-triathletes and ultra-runners. The Triple Iron triathletes completed their race distance within 2811 min. (SD=379) and the 100-km ultra-marathoners within 691 min. (SD=117). Triathletes were younger, had higher body mass, shorter legs, higher circumference of upper arm and thigh, lower sum of skin-folds, and lower percent body fat compared to runners. Weekly training volume was higher for triathletes, and weekly hours in running and weekly kilometres in running were higher for runners. In the Triple Iron ultra-triathletes, the sum of eight skin-folds correlated to total race time. The circumference of upper arm, the sum of eight skin-folds, and percent body fat correlated with time in the running section .42, .47, and .43, respectively. In the 100-km ultra-marathoners, the sum of eight skin-folds, the skin-fold thickness of thigh, percent body fat, weekly running hours, and weekly running kilometres correlated with race time .55, .40, .56, -.50, and -.51, respectively. However, in the triathletes, none of these training variables was significantly correlated with race time. In the ultra-marathoners, the sum of eight skin-folds, the skin-fold thickness of thigh, percent body fat, weekly running kilometres, and speed in running during training were related to race time (correlations of .55, .40, -.28, and -.51, respectively). Overall, the ultra-triathletes were not similar to ultra-runners in their anthropometric measures and training variables.     

The analyst and analysand as citizens in the world

Beginning with Jung's reflections on individuation as a starting point, this article examines the analytic relationship in the context of our current reality. The latter exerts pressures of all sorts that do not favour individuation. Indeed, geopolitical commentators see present‐day society as marked globally by excessive self‐love that seeks to dominate, at the expense of the other. Given that such forms of dominance are now also very prevalent in the workplace, this article examines how to help the increasing number of individuals with highly successful professional careers who suffer from this pressure and who then seek analysis. ‘Progressive movement’, an indicator of and incentive to change, is examined by studying the narrative processes emerging from dream activity ‐ including dreaming with the hands in the sand tray ‐ in the co‐transference. The article highlights how ‘progressive movement’, founded on narrative Competence and on the reflective function, may generate experiences of ‘realistic hope’. The latter signals the start of an individuation process in the analytic couple and, simultaneously, the transformation of both the analyst and the analysand into good enough ‘citizens in the world’.     

Lexical information in sentence comprehension

An experiment was constructed testing predictions derived from the mental model theory. According to this theory, individual words in a sentence provide clues to the building of the mental model of the sentence and need to be interpreted in relation to general knowledge of situations similar to those described in the sentence. After reading a sentence, subjects had to produce, as quickly as possible, one aspect of the meaning of a target noun. The sentence either did or did not contain the target noun, and it primed either one aspect of its meaning or no specific aspect of it. The prediction was that the subjects would be faster and more uniform at producing the primed aspect of the target noun after a priming sentence than at producing any aspect of the noun after a non-priming sentence, and this difference would occur regardless of whether the target noun had occurred in the prior sentence. The results, which confirm the predictions, are discussed in relation to current theories of sentence comprehension.