In a new study, participants who paid attention to their physical and mental feelings showed small but meaningful reductions in anxiety, depression and pain. By Rachael Rettner, LiveScience Tue, Jan 07 2014 at 9:20 AM       Meditation programs may help reduce anxiety, depression and pain in some patients, but may not lead to a boost in positive feelings or overall health, according to a new review study.   The review analyzed information from 47 previously published studies with a total of 3,515 participants. Each study included a group that participated in meditation (usually for a few weeks or months), as well as a control group…

    Perfectionism, Procrastination, and Distress           Learn to outwit the devil on your shoulder and get things done, with advice from procrastination expert Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D.     A study that examines traits that predict psychological distress Published on October 28, 2012 by Timothy A. Pychyl, Ph.D. in Don't Delay   0 inShare   Excessive concerns about making mistakes, pernicious self-doubt, harsh self-criticism, impossibly high standards or expectations for performance, a strong and chronic tendency to evaluate one’s performance as not measuring up to levels expected by oneself or others – these are features of maladaptive perfectionism that predict psychological distress. In a longitudinal study…

    Have you given some thought to making any New Year’s resolutions this year? The tradition of setting goals for the New Year goes back about 4,000 years to the Babylonians when once a year people made promises to the gods in hopes of receiving good fortune in return. by Tricia Drevets December 27, 2013     January 1 became the first day of the year in 46 B.C. when Julius Caesar developed a new calendar, switching from a lunar one to a solar one. He named the first month of the Julian calendar after the two-faced god Janus. Janus could look back on the past year and look forward…

  Posted: 09/11/2013 8:14 am       I've always been interested in the wisdom of our elders and often do a practice with students and clients when they've seemed to veer off the path of what truly matters in their lives. I ask them to project themselves forward many years from now looking back onto this very moment right now, what do they wish they would've done? Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent many years working in palliative care caring for those who were dying. She eventually published a book called the The Top Five Regrets of the Dying Regrets can be seen as something that's good…

    Brain scans of meditating people show different patterns of activity depending on the practitioner's level of experience and meditation type. By Wynne Parry, LiveScience Mon, Feb 11 2013 at 12:50 PM   Photo: mrhayata/Flickr NEW YORK — Throughout life, even shortly before death, the brain can remodel itself, responding to a person's experiences. This phenomenon, known as neuroplasticity, offers a powerful tool to improve well-being, experts say.   "We now have evidence that engaging in pure mental training can induce changes not just in the function of the brain, but in the brain's structure itself," Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told an audience at…

The biggest struggle in life is the struggle to know, embrace, and accept ourselves, with all of our faults and imperfections. Love and appreciate yourself – you're all you have By Melanie A. Greenberg, Ph.D. Created Oct 1 2012 – 5:54pm Many of us were raised  by parents who were themselves victims – who were not taught to see their own worth, or who were not really seen by their own parents. Our grandparents generation faced massive trauma and upheaval due to the Second World War and the Great Depression. The focus was on survival and minimizing the damage, rather than on love, appreciation and intimacy. Individuals and families today…

By Robert Puff, Ph.D. Created Aug 9 2012 – 2:33pm The scientific and medical communities are continually providing evidence that shows the health benefits of meditation. But how many doctors are actually referring their patients to forms of alternative medicine, such as meditation? A May 2011 joint study by the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Harvard Medical School shed light on this matter. Researchers gathered information from about 23,000 U.S. households. From the beginning, they expected that a very, very small percentage of doctors were actually referring their patients to participate in MBT’s such as meditation. But what they actually discovered was that 6.3 million Americans, or…

Specific types of “mindfulness practices” including Zen meditation have research-proven benefits for patients with certain physical and mental health problems, according to a report in the July Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. “An extensive review of therapies that include meditation as a key component—referred to as mindfulness-based practices—shows convincing evidence that such interventions are effective in the treatment of psychiatric symptoms and pain, when used in combination with more conventional therapies,” according to Dr William R. Marchand of the George E. Wahlen Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

A Glimpse Into the Post-Mindful Era A couple decades ago, if you told people you were going to a yoga class, you may have looked into a face of confusion or judgment where the other person was thinking you were part of some new age movement. Now in the most conservative town, men and women throw on their respective yoga gear and step into pose.

October 19, 2011       How Mindfulness Rewires the Brain  Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.Psychologist, author of ‘The Now Effect’ and co-author, ‘A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook’ The burgeoning field of mindfulness, neuroscience and psychotherapy just never gets old to me. I am on a panel with Ron Siegel, PsyD, author of “The Mindfulness Solution,” and Ruth Buczynski, Ph.D., president of the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) talking about a recent series that explored the question, can mindfulness really rewire the brain?