Doing anything with the mind of meditation

Maybe you've seen some of the dozens of stories about coloring as the new meditation. People who know I meditate send them to me and ask what I think  -- which is that coloring is not actually meditation, but it can be done meditatively.

That's true for lots of activities that people tell you are their form of meditation -- running, knitting, yoga, music. None of them are meditation, but all of them -- and pretty much anything else -- can be done meditatively. I'm reminded of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche's book "Running with Mind of Meditation." I haven't read it -- I maybe could run across the street to save my life but that's about it -- but I so appreciate the title. It's not "Running as Meditation" but "Running with the Mind of Meditation."

What is the mind of meditation? The mind that knows where it's attention is, what's in the field of attention, what the context is. The mind that can choose where to focus attention and hold it there without being carried off into reveries or commentary or plans. The mind that can rest and be at ease with the content that arises rather than being churned up or defeated by it.

We practice that in sitting meditation. But the real benefit is being able to bring that into our lives. Practicing it in physical activities can help us do that.

In the second week of Sharon Salzberg's Real Happiness 28-day meditation challenge, she introduces several activities that can be done with the mind of meditation: Walking, eating, doing dishes.

Talking about washing dishes, she says: It tends to be an activity we do several times a day, one that we usually do while thinking through something rather than paying full attention. And it is rarely an activity we enjoy much, but might in fact find more nuanced and interesting as we pay attention.

There are lots of things we do on automatic pilot -- Thich Nhat Hanh talks about using brushing your teeth as an opportunity for meditation -- that could be used as opportunities to improve our focus, to be present with sensations, to appreciate our bodies and our circumstances. Instead of grumbling about the endless pile of dishes, we can appreciate the warmth of the water, the wonder of indoor plumbing, all of the people over time and space whose efforts brought us the food that made the dishes dirty and created the dishes themselves. Instead of feeling put upon, we can feel connected.

Sharon describes this larger focus as mindfulness, "a relational quality that frees our attention from the grip of old habits."

By being in the moment, with our hands in the hot water or holding a crayon and filling in the spaces between the lines, we see more clearly the thought filters we put over experiences: I hate housework, I'm no good at coloring, I can't knit. And once we see those, we can choose to look through them, as is our habit, or let them go and stay with things as they are.

Learning to step back

When someone pushes my buttons my instinct is to push back. That may feel right in the moment, but it doesn't lead to good outcomes -- it leads to yelling and posturing and anger and, well, nothing beneficial.

One of the benefits of meditation is that it helps me find the space between the push and the push back, to let the energy dissipate instead of escalating it.

A new study shows I'm not alone.

In a working paper published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research this month, researchers found that teaching Chicago high-schoolers meditation techniques designed to help them find that gap significantly lowered crime and dropout rates for participants and boosted school attendance.

According to an article on Quartz,

The study analyzed the effects of a Chicago-based program by the organization Youth Guidance called Becoming a Man (BAM). The researchers invited 1,473 Chicago teens, chosen at random from 18 public schools, to participate in BAM programming and compared them to a control group of similar students who were not invited.

The goal of the program, explains coauthor Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago and the director of its Crime Lab, was to encourage less violent behavior by slowing their automatic response.

We develop automatic responses, or habitual reactions, to save time. The Quartz article notes that  while American teenagers from privileged backgrounds learn to automatically comply with authority figures, handing over their smartphone to a mugger, or quieting down when a teacher says so, low-income teenagers may learn that submitting to authorities only invites more aggression. 

Much of the training focused on learning to work with anger by using breathing exercises and meditation techniques, such as exhaling while counting slowly to four.  A year after the program, those who participated in the BAM program were 44 percent less likely to commit violent crimes, and performed significantly better on an academic performance index that combines academic measurements including GPA, attendance rates, and dropout rates, the study found.

Learning to find the space between the stimulus and the reaction lets us decide whether the habitual response is the best one in a given situation.  It doesn't have to be a long pause, but it can be the pause that refreshes and resets the situation rather than the one that sends it tumbling into chaos.

Mindulness at Work

Insurance companies aren't known for taking risks on unproven methods. So when Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini -- who had personal experience with the healing benefits of yoga and meditation -- wanted to spread the practices to Aetna's employees, he looked for data. As David Gelles describes in the New York Times' article, "At Aetna, A CEO's Management by Mantra," Aetna did its own research.

More than 13,000 Aetna employees -- just over a quarter of the company's 50,000 employees -- have taken the free yoga and meditation classes, and Aetna offers those programs to businesses that contract with it for health insurance.

Those who have taken part report, on average, a 28 percent reduction in their stress levels, a 20 percent improvement in sleep quality, and a 19 percent reduction in pain. (The study relied on self-reporting, but also checked heart rate and cortisol levels, which backed up the self-reports.) They also become more effective on the job, gaining an average of 62 minutes per week of productivity each, which Aetna estimates is worth $3,000 per employee per year. Additionally, Aetna's heath care costs fell after it introduced meditation and yoga classes in 2012.

Aetna's not alone in offering meditation classes -- Google, General Mills, and Coca-Cola also have programs. Janice Maturano, who developed General Mills' programs, now consults with other companies as demand for such programs has increased.

Should meditation become a standard part of the workday? Given the importance of motivation or intention to progress in meditation, what happens if meditators don't have a choice about being there? Will it reduce stress if people are stressed about having to go? Will mindfulness techniques, which encourage people to connect with and accept things as they are, discourage creative thinking or encourage people to accept unfair or abusive treatment?

In The Harvard Business Review, psychiatrist David Brendel questions whether the rush to mindfulness is being done, well, mindlessly. Brendel says some of his clients use mindfulness to avoid critical thinking about difficult situations. "I’ve worked with clients who, instead of rationally thinking through a career challenge or ethical dilemma, prefer to disconnect from their challenges and retreat into a meditative mindset. The issue here is that some problems require more thinking, not less."

It's also a problem, he says, when companies force mindfulness sessions on employees.

As Brendel writes:

Mindfulness practices should be used to enhance our rational and ethical thinking processes, not limit or displace them. ... At its very core, mindfulness culture will be a huge step forward for Western cultures if it stays focused on creating opportunities for individuals to discover their own personalized strategies for taming anxieties, managing stress, optimizing work performance, and reaching genuine happiness and fulfillment.

Anderson Cooper explains it all

Anderson Cooper: I don't feel I'm very present in each moment. I feel like every moment I'm either thinking about something that's coming down the road, or something that's been in the past.

Jon Kabat-Zinn: So ultimately all this preparing is for what? For the next moment, like the last moment, like, and then we're dead (laugh) so in a certain way...

Anderson Cooper did a segment on mindfulness for "60 Minutes." If you're curious about what it is and how it works, he (and Kabat-Zinn, credited with popularizing mindfulness meditation in the West) explain it.

You can read the script or watch the video here

Also check out the "extra" on how mindfulness has changed his life.

It can change yours too.

Mindful City: Winooski, Vermont

When you go on a retreat, there's always a talk near the end about transitioning back to "the real world." You've been in a place where people are mindful and intentional, less stressed by the details of daily life. You're about to re-enter the rat race, and you're not up to speed.

But what if life could be more like retreat? What if people in ordinary life were mindful -- present and attentive and grounded in the situation ... how would life be different?

Winooski, Vermont, is out to find out.

The Vermont Community Foundation has awarded a grant to the Center for Mindful Learning to teach mindfulness to core institutions in the city, Vermont's public radio reports.

Mindful City Project Consultant Lindsay Foreman said community support is the key to the project. “Mindfulness gives us the skills and motivation to care for ourselves, each other and the planet." she said. "It is not easy to do, so we need a community to support us."

The Center for Mindful Learning will work with the Winooski Police Department, the Winooski School District, and Centerpoint Adolescent Treatment Services to implement the citywide mindfulness initiative. Mindfulness training -- does that mean meditation? -- will also be available to parents, community members, and businesses.

The initiative came about after CML did a yearlong mindfulness training program at one elementary school in Winooski.The Modern Mindfulness program uses an online curriculum that guides teachers and students in a five-minute daily mindfulness practice, CML says. One third-grade teacher told CML the program has been "life-changing for my students and myself.” 

The middle and high schools wanted to follow suit, and the idea came up to extend the program citywide.

The effort started in October. You can follow its program on CML's blog.


Image shows a poster at JFK ELementary School in Winooski, Vermont

How much meditation is enough?

A bevy of research studies have found measurable results from meditation: reduced blood pressure, changes in brain activity and heart rate. It's undeniable that working with your mind has physical effects.

But how much meditation does it take to see results?

Researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University have found that 25 minutes of meditation for three consecutive days alleviates psychological stress.

"More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits," said lead author J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

For the study, 66 people age 18-30 years old participated in a three-day experiment. Some participants went through a three-day mindfulness meditation training program where they were given breathing exercises to help them monitor their breath and pay attention to their present moment experiences. A second group completed a matched three-day cognitive training program in which they were asked to critically analyze poetry in an effort to enhance problem-solving skills.

After the training, participants were asked to complete stressful speech and math tasks in front of stern-faced evaluators. Each individual reported their stress levels and provided saliva samples for measurement of cortisol, commonly referred to as the stress hormone.

The participants who received the meditation training perceived less stress related to the speech and math tasks, but showed greater cortisol reactivity.

 "When you initially learn mindfulness mediation practices, you have to cognitively work at it — especially during a stressful task," Creswell said. "And, these active cognitive efforts may result in the task feeling less stressful, but they may also have physiological costs with higher cortisol production."

Researchers are looking at the possibility that mindfulness can become more automatic and easy to use with long-term meditation training, which may result in reduced cortisol reactivity.

“More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits,” lead author J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences said in a press release. - See more at: http://www.elevatedexistence.com/blog/2014/07/10/25-minutes-of-mindfulness-meditation-alleviates-psychological-stress-study-shows/#sthash.EaLVAwjz.dpuf

“More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits,” lead author J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences said in a press release. - See more at: http://www.elevatedexistence.com/blog/2014/07/10/25-minutes-of-mindfulness-meditation-alleviates-psychological-stress-study-shows/#sthash.EaLVAwjz.dpuf

New research from Carnegie Mellon University is the first to show that brief mindfulness meditation practice — 25 minutes for three consecutive days — alleviates psychological stress. Published in the journal “Psychoneuroendocrinology,” the study investigates how mindfulness meditation affects people’s ability to be resilient under stress.
“More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits,” lead author J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences said in a press release.
- See more at: http://www.elevatedexistence.com/blog/2014/07/10/25-minutes-of-mindfulness-meditation-alleviates-psychological-stress-study-shows/#sthash.EaLVAwjz.dpuf

New research from Carnegie Mellon University is the first to show that brief mindfulness meditation practice — 25 minutes for three consecutive days — alleviates psychological stress. Published in the journal “Psychoneuroendocrinology,” the study investigates how mindfulness meditation affects people’s ability to be resilient under stress. - See more at: http://www.elevatedexistence.com/blog/2014/07/10/25-minutes-of-mindfulness-meditation-alleviates-psychological-stress-study-shows/#sthash.EaLVAwjz.dpuf

New research from Carnegie Mellon University is the first to show that brief mindfulness meditation practice — 25 minutes for three consecutive days — alleviates psychological stress. Published in the journal “Psychoneuroendocrinology,” the study investigates how mindfulness meditation affects people’s ability to be resilient under stress. - See more at: http://www.elevatedexistence.com/blog/2014/07/10/25-minutes-of-mindfulness-meditation-alleviates-psychological-stress-study-shows/#sthash.EaLVAwjz.dpuf

Resting your PCC

Researchers at Brown University used meditators' reports of what they experience in mindfulness meditation to discover subtle effects. The purpose, according to the researchers, is to better identity which techniques may work best with particular psychological issues.

For example, while focusing on the breath is a widely used technique, researchers found differences between meditators who focused on the breath in the belly and those who focused on the breath at their nostrils -- both traditional techniques used in different schools.

"We found that when students focused on the breath in the belly their descriptions of experience focused on attention to specific somatic areas and body sensations," the researchers wrote in their conference abstract. "When students described practice experiences related to a focus on the nose during meditation, they tended to describe a quality of mind, specifically how their attention 'felt' when they sensed it."

Catherine Kerr, assistant professor (research) of family medicine and director of translational neuroscience in Brown's Contemplative Studies Initiative and one of the researchers, said researchers would expect to find that the belly-focused group would have more "ongoing, resting-state functional connectivity ... across different parts of a large brain region called the insula that encodes visceral, somatic sensations and also provides a readout of the emotional aspects of so-called 'gut feelings'."

Which would mean less emotional reactivity.


That seems to be the finding of a team of researchers led by Kathleen Garrison at Yale University, which included Kerr other Brown researchers, which worked with experienced meditators to correlate the mental states they described during mindfulness with simultaneous activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), part of the limbic area of the brain that's been linked to pain and episodic memory.

When meditators reported feelings of "effortless doing" and "undistracted awareness" during their meditation, their PCC showed little activity, they found, but when meditators reported feeling distracted and having to work at mindfulness, their PCC was significantly more active. When they were given the chance to observe their brain scans as they took place, some meditators were able to control activity in the PCC.

"You can observe both of these phenomena together and discover how they are co-determining one another," researcher Juan Santoyo said. "Within 10 one-minute session they were able to develop certain strategies to evoke a certain experience and use it to drive the signal."

That's not surprising. Experienced meditators know that noticing distraction, letting it go, and returning to the focus can stop a train of thought that's picking up speed. The scans just provide a more-subtle clue to when that's starting to happen.

Can Thich Nhat Hanh win the mindful competition?

In the world of corporate mindfulness, Google -- which is so ubiquitous that its name is synonymous with "search online" -- has an equally impressive teacher: Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Thay, as he is known by followers, has sold more than 2 million books in the U.S. and is deeply admired and respected.

He recently spoke to The Guardian about his message to Google and other tech companies.

It doesn't matter, he said, if companies begin promoting mindfulness to make their workers more effective of increase profits. If they are practicing "true" mindfulness, it will fundamentally change their perspective, opening the door to greater compassion.

"If you know how to practice mindfulness you can generate peace and joy right here, right now. And you'll appreciate that and it will change you.

In the beginning, you believe that if you cannot become number one, you cannot be happy, but if you practice mindfulness you will readily release that kind of idea. We need not fear that mindfulness might become only a means and not an end because in mindfulness the means and the end are the same thing. There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way."

Thay's optimism that mindfulness will transform business people rather than corporations transforming mindfulness isn't universally shared. David Loy and Ron Purser write that   "McMindfulness," the watered-down, stress-relieving version taught in some companies, is not what the Buddha intended.

According to the Pali Canon (the earliest recorded teachings of the Buddha), even a person committing a premeditated and heinous crime can be exercising mindfulness, albeit wrong mindfulness. Clearly, the mindful attention and single-minded concentration of a terrorist, sniper assassin, or white-collar criminal is not the same quality of mindfulness that the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist adepts have developed. Right Mindfulness is guided by intentions and motivations based on self-restraint, wholesome mental states, and ethical behaviors -- goals that include but supersede stress reduction and improvements in concentration.

Their essay was published on The Huffington Post, whose founder, Ariana Huffington, a meditator herself, wrote there about using yoga and meditation to reduce work stress. "I do want to talk about maximizing profits and beating expectations -- by emphasizing the notion that what's good for us as individuals is also good for corporate America's bottom line."

Huffington pointed to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, who practices yoga and meditation. Bertolini was paid $30 million in 2013. How can you be mindful of $30 million? Aetna is headquartered in Hartford, Conn. If you head a few miles east, you'll come to Bolton, a town whose entire budget is less than $20 million.

Thay told the Guardian that if executives are in the practice for selfish reasons, then they are experiencing a mere pale shadow of mindfulness.

"If you consider mindfulness as a means of having a lot of money, then you have not touched its true purpose," he says. "It may look like the practise of mindfulness but inside there's no peace, no joy, no happiness produced. It's just an imitation. If you don't feel the energy of brotherhood, of sisterhood, radiating from your work, that is not mindfulness."

As he puts it: "If you're happy, you cannot be a victim of your happiness. But if you're successful, you can be a victim of your success.

... What is the use of having more money if you suffer more? They also should understand that if they have a good aspiration, they become happier because helping society to change gives life a meaning."

But how is suffering understood in these corporate environments? Or happiness? Do these meditators get the idea that happiness cannot be found in impermanent, material things but only from within?

Here's Huffington: There's nothing touchy-feely about increased profits. This is a tough economy, and it's going to be that way for a long time. Stress-reduction and mindfulness don't just make us happier and healthier, they're a proven competitive advantage for any business that wants one.

Mindful competition. So much for releasing the idea of being No. 1.

Mindfulness helps prevent relapses

Learning mindfulness meditation reduced the risk that people in substance-abuse treatment programs would relapse, a study by researchers at the University of Washington says. Mindfulness may work better than group meetings or education because it helps people understand what's happening when they have cravings, researchers said.

The study looked at 286 recovering addicts who were divided among three groups: a program that involved group discussions, one that taught relapse prevention strategies (such as avoiding triggers), and one that included mindfulness meditation. Researchers note that 40 to 60 percent of those in recovery relapse.

After six months, participants in the strategy group and the meditation group had a reduced risk of using drugs or heavy drinking compared to the talk-only group, the study said. After a year, those in the meditation program had used substances on fewer days and had a reduced risk of relapse, compared to both other groups. This suggests meditation may have a more lasting effect, researchers said.

Study researcher Sarah Bowen, an assistant professor at the University of Washington's department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences , and her colleagues designed "mindfulness-based relapse prevention," which she described as a "training in awareness."

In this program, each session is about two hours, with 30 minutes of guided meditation followed by discussions about what people experienced during meditation and how it relates to addiction or relapse, Bowen said. The meditation sessions are intended to bring heightened attention to things that patients usually ignore, such as how it feels to eat a bite of food, or other bodily sensations, as well as thoughts and feelings.

The mindfulness program may work to prevent relapse in part because it makes people more aware of what happens when they have cravings.

"If you're not aware of what's going on, you don't have a choice, you just react," Bowen said.

Livescience.com quotes Dr. Scott Krakower, assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., who was not involved in the study, who says people with addiction often have difficulty regulating emotion, resulting in states like depression, anxiety, or self-harm. People may turn to drugs or alcohol to cope with those feelings.

Mindfulness meditiation helps teach people to "tolerate feelings of emotional distress, so when they feel like they're going to use [drugs], they don’t," Krakowe said.
 

You are not your craving -- and neither is the chocolate

A new study by Canadian researchers says that mindfulness can reduce chocolate cravings.

Lead study author Julien Lacaille, a psychologist at McGill University in Quebec, told Reuters that practicing mindfulness meditation, which emphasizes identifying and distancing oneself from certain thoughts -- without judging them -- weakened chocolate cravings among people with a self-declared sweet tooth.

It's an interesting study for reasons that go beyond simply decreasing food cravings. The researchers worked with almost 200 subjects -- who admitted they were prone to strong cravings for chocolate and wanted to diminish them -- to determine which aspect of mindfulness had the greatest effect. 

Participants were divided into five groups, four of which received training in mindfulness meditation techniques and were told to practice specific ones when they craved chocolate over a two-week period. Those in the fifth group were told to distract themselves when craving arose.


The researchers focused on three distinct aspects of mindfulness meditation: Awareness (simply noticing one's thoughts); acceptance (not passing judgment on one's thoughts), and disidentification (seeing thoughts as separate from oneself.) Participants were assessed before and after the study to determine how effectively they practiced the techniques.

After two weeks, participants were given a piece of chocolate to unwrap and touch for one minute; after it was taken away, they rated their craving. Those trained in disidentification reported less-intense cravings, the study found. Further analysis showed that the specific craving for chocolate, as well as the general state of craving, was reduced for who learned to see cravings as thoughts.

While that's an interesting breakdown of skills, it doesn't suggest to me that you should train only in recognizing thoughts. Awareness and acceptance are keys to being able to do that skillfully. Without first seeing that the thought exists, you can't recognize it as a thought. If you don't accept it but try to push it away or deny it, you're still attached.

Several Buddhist teachers, including Tara Brach and Sharon Salzberg, teach a process with the acronym RAIN -- Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Non-attachment (which equates to disidentification).

The extra step -- Investigate -- refers to giving yourself a chance to explore the thought: Is it habitual? When does it arise? How does it feel in the body? What does chocolate represent -- an indulgence, a reward, a hug?

It's also important to note that there's nothing wrong with the chocolate -- it's our attachment to it that may benefit from modification. As long as you know that the chocolate won't bring lasting happiness -- and enough of it over time may lead to added pounds -- go ahead and enjoy it in the moment.

Meditation May Ease Mild Anxiety and Depression

A new study by Johns Hopkins University finds the 30 minutes of mindfulness meditation a day may relieve mild anxiety and depression -- as effectively as medication.

The study looked at the degree to which self-reported symptoms or various conditions, such as insomnia and fibromyalgia, changed in people who began to practice mindfulness meditation, described as a form of Buddhist self-awareness designed to focus precise attention on the moment at hand. They say it shows promise in alleviating some pain symptoms as well as stress.

"A lot of people use meditation, but it's not a practice considered part of mainstream medical therapy for anything," says Madhav Goyal, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead author of the paper in JAMA Internal Medicine. "But in our study, meditation appeared to provide as much relief from some anxiety and depression symptoms as what other studies have found from antidepressants."

Goyal noted that mindfulness meditation is not just sitting down and doing nothing. "Meditation is an active training of the mind to increase awareness, and different meditation programs approach this in different ways," he said.

Mindfulness meditation -- emphasizes acceptance of feelings and thoughts without judgment, along with relaxation of body and mind -- showed the most promise, he said..

More study is needed, he added.  And individuals are different -- the study looked at those with mild anxiety and depression; some people with symptoms may need more than meditation, like therapy or medication.

But in the meantime, meditation won't hurt.

The Joy of Missing Out comes from being present

Are you thinking about making a resolution to live more mindfully in 2014? You're in good -- and trendy -- company, according to global advertising and marketing company JWT, which named "Mindful Living" among its Top 10 trends for 2014. 

Ann Mack, the company's director of trend spotting, points to the Slow Food Movement, the rise of digital detox camps where you go to disconnect from social media, and meditation programs in major companies like Google and General Mills.

The mind-calming, mind-blowing concept goes like this, according to Mack: “You’re enjoying what you’re doing in the here and now and not on social media broadcasting or seeing what everybody else is doing.”

The trend-spotter offers a name for it: Joy of Missing Out, or JOMO (for which she gives credit to tech blogger Anil Dash). It follows 2013's Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO, which bred anxiety among Instagram users who envied the meals, vacations, and life events posted by people they follow on the photo-sharing app.

Of course, there are less snappy names for it. Mindfulness, taught by the Buddha and countless secular psychologists and therapists, is a kind, non-judgmental awareness of what's happening in the present moment. By keeping our attention on what's happening now we can avoid the stress that rises from ruminating on the past or worry about the future.

Right now I'm breathing and aware, which means I can choose how to respond to what's happening in my life. Meditation is a great way of developing that awareness and of finding some peace amid the chaos of thoughts in our minds.

Rather than focusing on what's missing, you notice what's present. And you relax with it instead of measuring it against some standard. Joy arises when you can simply be present.

So maybe the resolution for 2014 is just to be there for it, not looking ahead or back.




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Prescription: Mindfulness (for the physician)

Would you rather be seen by a doctor who paid attention to you, who listened to what you said during your appointment, or one who was distracted, whose mind was somewhere else, who heard the first few sentences and then made assumptions?

It's not really a question, is it?

Researchers, who've found previously that pharmacists, nurses, and physicians trained in mindfulness make fewer mistakes and experience less stress, now say they also make patients feel better -- at least about their office visits.

The New York Times reports on the findings.

“We clinicians are not always fully present for patients because our minds are always working,” said Dr. Mary Catherine Beach, lead author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. “But when we don’t listen,” failing to let patients say what they need to say or ask what they need to ask, “we end up giving explanations that are too long and complicated and responses that they don’t need or want.”

Researchers found that patients were more satisfied and more open with the more mindful clinicians, the Times reports. More mindful clinicians "tended to be more upbeat during patient interactions, more focused on the conversation and more likely to make attempts to strengthen the relationship or ferret out details of the patient’s feelings," the Times says.

Mindful doctors remained efficient, getting as much done medically for their patients as their least mindful colleagues, even though they spent more time in conversation with patients.

Less mindful clinicians, on the other hand, more frequently missed opportunities to be empathic and, in the most extreme cases, failed to pay attention at all, responding, for example, to a patient’s description of waking up in the middle of the night crying in pain with a question about a flu shot.

And speaking of flu shots, get one. But keep in mind a study from 2012 that found that meditation can help fight colds and flu. The study, which followed volunteers through a winter cold season, from September through May, found that meditators missed 76 percent fewer days of work than nonmeditators. And the average duration of colds and respiratory infections was lower among meditators -- five days, compared to eight.

Mindfulness improves students' attention

A short training course in mindfulness improves children’s ability to ignore distractions and concentrate better, a study presented this month to the British Psychological Society says.

Study author Dominic Crehan said: “The ability to pay attention in class is crucial for success at school. Mindfulness appears to have an effect after only a short training course, which the children thoroughly enjoyed! Through their training, the children actually learn to watch their minds working and learn to control their attention. These findings could be particularly important for helping children with attention difficulties such as ADHD. Further research on the effects of mindfulness on children’s attention is very much needed.”

The researchers worked with 30 children (girls and boys aged 10 to 11 years old), who took part  in a mindfulness course as part of their school curriculum in two groups. They measured the children’s levels of mindfulness using a questionnaire and assessed their attention skills using a specially-designed computer game. They made these measurements on three occasions, at three-month intervals, so that they could measure changes in attention skills over time as a result of the mindfulness course.

The results indicated that an improvement in the children’s ability to focus and deal with distractions was associated with the mindfulness course.

Meditation is my meditation

Maybe you've heard people say that they don't need to do sitting meditation because they do other things that have meditative qualities. "My yoga is my meditation," they say, or running or music or knitting or any repetitive activity.

Those are all activities that can be done mindfully, or meditatively. But they're not meditation. And while studies have documented the beneficial effects of meditation, that hasn't been done for other types of mindful activity.

Sakyong Mipham, Vitalitymagazine.com

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the head of the Shambhala organization, wrote a book called "Running with the Mind of Meditation" which makes the difference clear. "Running is a training of the body, and meditation is a training of the mind." he writes.

Both are important aspects of our human lives, he says. "When we relate to our mind and body and allow them to harmonize, we feel more alive and strong."

If we train only the body and ignore the mind, the body is getting in shape while the mind is being neglected. We are not relating with mental stress and worry. Conversely, if we focus only on the mind, then the body is neglected, and we feel the ill effects of our stagnant physical demeanor. 

shambhalatimes.org

The Sakyong lays out ways to run meditatively: with mindfulness, with appreciation, by working with challenges, knowing our intention, and feeling the benefit of the activity. But that doesn't make running meditation -- it makes it an activity that you can do while using techniques you've honed in meditation -- sitting still, focusing your concentration, locating your awareness, learning to untangle your mind from thoughts and emotions, recognizing habitual patterns.

Meditation is not just about sitting on a cushion, but it is about learning skills that you can bring to other parts of your life. The goal is to develop a meditative view that pervades your life, allowing you to be less reactive, less stressed, and more present. But it helps to learn that outside of the cauldron of your daily life and familiarize with the feeling of what it's like to be in balance so that you can bring that into the world.

This Huffington Post article suggests that you can meditate without meditating. Its view of meditation is limited, though, to mindfulness, the practice of knowing what is happening in the moment. To develop mindfulness, though, you need to know your mind -- to become friends with it -- and to learn how to recognize where your attention is and where it tends to go so that you can bring it back.

To be mindful for moments during the day is a good thing, no question. But it won't bring you the "razor-sharp focus, enviable level of productivity and bountiful amounts of creative juice" celebrity meditators cite.

How long was that?

Often after I lead a meditation session, students will ask me how long we sat. It's nearly always 24 minutes, which one of my teachers says is the amount of time it takes for the mind to settle down (and who am I to question her?). But their experience of it is different each time. Sometimes 24 minutes seems like hours; other times they say it feels like five.

Time flies when you're having fun.

A new study finds that meditation alters time perception.

Research has increasingly focused on the benefits of meditation in everyday life and performance. Mindfulness in particular improves attention, working memory capacity, and reading comprehension. Given its emphasis on moment-to-moment awareness, we hypothesised that mindfulness meditation would alter time perception.

In the experiment, participants carried out a task to determine their standards of "short" and "long." They then listened to an audiobook or meditation focused on breath in the body. Then they did the task again.

The control group showed no change after the listening task. However, meditation led to a relative overestimation of durations. Within an internal clock framework, a change in attentional resources can produce longer perceived durations. This meditative effect has wider implications for the use of mindfulness as an everyday practice and a basis for clinical treatment.

My own experience of meditation and time is that when I'm present in the moment, the passage of time seems irrelevant. This moment lasts for the fullness of this moment, then another.moment takes it place. 

Why not meditate?

Most of my posts extoll the virtues of meditation. Maybe I'm taking the wrong approach.

Beth Teitel writes in The Boston Globe that "the studies showing the benefits of mindfulness and meditation are so relentless that I need to retreat to a monastery just to get away from the news. Nothing’s more stressful than hearing about the advantages of something you’re not doing."

So if you've heard about the famous meditators -- from Congressional representatives to athletes to celebrities -- and you're still not moved to start practicing, you're not alone. But you're starting to have less company. In 2007, according to the National Institutes of Health, 9.4 percent of American adults had meditated with the last 12 months, up from 7.6 percent in 2002. I'd guess the 9.4 percent will go up when the 2012 numbers are in.

Meditation has all kinds of benefits -- ones that you'll notice, more subtle ones that researchers have found in MRIs, ones that the Buddha promised. But you have to do.

The Globe article offers the following tips on starting a practice from Barry Boyce, editor of Mindful magazine.

1. Go online to get a clearer picture of just what mindfulness meditation is, anyway. Mind the Moment at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care offers a series of short, fun, and accessible videos. A YouTube video called “What Is Mindfulness?” with Jon Kabat-Zinn is also a great place to start.
2. Learn how to do mindfulness practice online: A great resource is www.mindful.org — in particular the section called “Mindfulness: The Basics.”
3. Read a short book such as “Mindfulness for Beginners,” by Kabat-Zinn, or “A Mindful Nation” by congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), an avid meditator.**I really like Real Happiness by Sharon Salzberg, which gives a progressive guide to starting a practice. The website lets you download the first chapter and offers audio for guided meditation.
4. Find a local group and try it with a live instructor. Come to Samadhi -- every week there's a mix of beginners and more experienced meditators, instruction, and time for questions. Everyone's experience is different every time, so however it is, that's just how it is that night. 

The good thing about feeling bad

Meditation is about making friends with our whole being and learning to accept what we're tempted to reject, suppress, or avoid because it feels uncomfortable. I know, from personal experience, that's a beneficial thing. Now there's scientific evidence.

Scientific American reports here:

Anger and sadness are an important part of life, and new research shows that experiencing and accepting such emotions are vital to our mental health. Attempting to suppress thoughts can backfire and even diminish our sense of contentment. “Acknowledging the complexity of life may be an especially fruitful path to psychological well-being,” says psychologist Jonathan M. Adler of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

A positive mental attitude does have benefits. Back before MRIs and brain studies, the Buddha listed the benefits of practicing metta meditation to turn the mind toward thoughts of loving-kindness. Anecdotal evidence -- and now scientific research -- confirm this.

But Pollyana is not the model for mental health. Ignoring or surpressing thoughts we consider bad or negative doesn't make them go away -- researchers found that people who tried to suppress a negative thought before sleep went on to dream about it. t also can lead to substance abuse as a way to avoid them.

“Taking the good and the bad together may detoxify the bad experiences, allowing you to make meaning out of them in a way that supports psychological well-being,” the researchers found.

That is, of course, counter to our culture's emphasis on happiness, on making everything all good/all the time.

The key is to acknowledge the feelings, sit with the discomfort, and learn that -- like happiness -- it comes and goes. That's what we train in doing in meditation. (The article cites a 2012 study that found that a therapy that included mindfulness training helped individuals overcome anxiety disorders. It worked not by minimizing the number of negative feelings but by training patients to accept those feelings.)

Can mindfulness reduce prescription errors?

A British study suggests that mindfulness could help pharmacists avoid making costly and dangerous medication errors.

In over 60 percent of cases, medication errors are associated with one or more

contributory, individual factors including staff being forgetful, stressed, tired or engaged in multiple tasks simultaneously, often alongside being distracted or interrupted. Routinised hospital practice can lead professionals to work in a state of mindlessness, where it is easy to be unaware of how both body and mind are functioning. ...

There is expanding evidence on the effectiveness of mindfulness in the treatment of many mental and physical health problems in the general population, as well as its role in enhancing decision making, empathy, and reducing burnout or fatigue in medical staff. Considering the benefits of mindfulness, the authors suggest that health-care professionals should be encouraged to develop their practice of mindfulness.

School drops mindfulness training

Photo by the Akron Beacon Journal

I've written several posts about mindfulness meditation being used in schools to help students improve their focus and ease stress.

One described a study in the journal Psychological Science that found that students who had mindfulness training did better on the English portion of the GRE (graduate school entrance exams) than those who didn't have it. Another was about schools in the United Kingdom that are teaching mindfulness meditation to help students deal with stress, like test anxiety.

Now there's a story about a school in Ohio that's dropping its mindfulness instruction due to parents' objections.

The Plain district piloted mindfulness at Warstler in 2011 and was so pleased with the results it started the practice in its other elementary schools in 2012 and planned to expand it to the district’s other schools this year. Mindfulness involves using techniques like “belly breaths” and “mindful movements” to improve students’ focus and help them better cope with their emotions.

Some parents complained about the Buddhist roots of the practices -- the day started with a Tibetan bell being rung -- and others objected to taking time away from academic subjects.

“They were taking valuable time away from education to put students in a room of darkness to lay on their backs. I just didn’t see it happening,” one parent said.

The school's principal had praised the program in December, crediting it with helping to boost the school’s performance index on the state report cards, a measure that had been stagnant for several years in the ’90s before jumping to 105.9. “I can’t imaging running a school without it,” she said at the time, the Akron Beacon-Journal reported.

photo by the Akron Beacon-Journal via Ohio.com

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, author of "A Mindful Nation" and a meditator, had visited the school and was pleased the school had adopted mindfulness.

“It is a shame that a program that successfully taught children how to discipline their minds and control their emotions is being taken out of the school,” he said in a written statement. “This approach is being used by the United States Marine Corps, and corporations like Google, Target, and General Mills. It is also recommended for wellness by respected institutions like the Cleveland Clinic.”

Ryan said getting children to “focus in a world of distraction” is one of the biggest challenges parents face. “This program is exactly what children need today,” he said. “I hope the school district will reconsider.”