Is there an Inner Grumpy Cat?

January is the Interdependence Project's Responsible eConsumption Month, and I've been observing it by not turning on electronic devices during the first hour I'm awake. The experience has been as different as the days.

For most them, it's been pretty lovely. The day is quieter, obviously. It finds its own rhythm rather than having it dictated by my choice of music. I even get out of the house a few minutes earlier, a plus. Truth be told, I'd say it was a revelation -- rather than adding to the day, my habit of putting on music was covering up the quiet.

And then there was Wednesday. The previous two Wednesdays were holidays, and I got to sleep in. This past Wednesday was a workday, the third day in a row that I was up and out of the house before the sun was up.

I was cranky. I noted this as I was making coffee and getting breakfast ready. My thoughts were on a repeating loop of why-am-I-awake? and I-would-prefer-to-be-asleep, a constant drone of pervasive dissatisfaction. Then I was dissatisfied with my dissatisfaction. What would stop this?

Music, my habit mind said.

No, my thinking mind replied. You have made a commitment not to listen to music in the first hour of the day.

Fuck that, said habit mind. I'm CRANKY. Get me music, something poppy and mindless. Unleash the true funk soldier.

Caving to habit mind's intensity, I hit the on button on the CD player. The party got started.

I turned it off.

What is the practice here? one of my minds asked. If this was happening during meditation rather than breakfast, what would the practice be?

Note the aversion. Note the repetitive thoughts. Right now, it's like this. But is this a permanent state? Is there, in truth, a solid, permanent Grumpy Cat somewhere inside me? Look for it. Can it be found. No.


Oh good, coffee. There's my mug. There's my cereal and almond milk. A clean spoon in the drawer. Life is good.

On a regular day, I would have turned on music, maybe danced a few steps between the coffee maker and the table. I would have bypassed that moment of crankiness. But this way, I realized its insubstantiality, its impermanence. This way, I didn't skip over my bad mood or suppress it or talk myself out of it, I saw it, I accepted it as how things were in that moment, and I moved into the next moment.

And that was better than the best song ever.
IDP invites everyone to become more mindful of their use of cellphones, computers, televisions, and all electronic consumption starting in the New Year.   Join the month-long Responsible eConsumption practice.
Grumpy Cat photo from Grumpycats.com

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.

Mindfulness of body

The Buddha's first foundation of mindfulness is the body. Know when you're breathing in; know when you're breathing out. Know when you're sitting or standing or walking or resting. Locating awareness in the body is a way of connecting with the present moment and letting go of thoughts.

A new study indicates that those sensations also can give us clues about our mood. A team of Finnish researchers worked with 700 people in three countries to map where emotions are expressed in the body. They found remarkable similarities among people about where emotions manifest in their bodies.

Neuroscientist Antonio Dimasio, who was not involved in this study, told NPR he's "delighted" by the findings. He's been suggesting for years that each emotion activates a distinct set of body parts, and the mind's recognition of those patterns helps us consciously identify that emotion.

"People look at emotions as something in relation to other people," Damasio, who is a professor at the University of Southern California, says. "But emotions also have to do with how we deal with the environment — threats and opportunities."

The next foundations have to do with how we assign meaning or act on what we find in our bodies -- mindfulness of feeling tones (like it/hate it/don't see it) and thoughts. The body, though, is the first sensor.

The sensation maps were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You can even take the experiment here and color your own sensation maps. And remember those maps the next time you notice yourself clenching your jaw,

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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Mindful gene changes

The study compared a group of experienced meditation who took part in a day of intensive mindfulness meditation to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.

A new study has found specific molecular changes from a day of mindfulness meditation. Researchers believe it's the first study to find rapid alterations in gene expression from mindfulness meditation.

"Most interestingly, the changes were observed in genes that are the current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs," says Perla Kaliman, first author of the article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain, where the molecular analyses were conducted.

Read more here

Mindfulness and empathy

Even as mindfulness is becoming ubiquitous -- popular with businesses, physicians, and stressed-out average joes -- empathy is declining.

In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof cites the work of a Princeton University psychology professor, Susan Fiske, who found that when research subjects look at photos of the poor and homeless, brain imaging shows they often react as if they are seeing things, not people. Her analysis suggests that Americans sometimes react to poverty not with sympathy but with revulsion.

Instead of seeing the similarities -- there but for the grace of God go I -- we look for differences, for explanations to reassure ourselves that whatever led to other people being in difficult circumstances won't happen to us.

Mindfulness, though, should lead us in the other direction. Seeing how we want to be happy, to be safe, to live at peace and how many of our thoughts are about that and how we can secure it opens us up and lets us know how much others also want that.  Mindfulness -- kind, non-judgmental, present-moment awareness -- lets us see how we suffer. It's only a small step to see that others also want what we want and suffer when they don't have it. All we have to do, really, is to extend kind awareness to others.

And when we see the world through the lens of mindfulness, we also are more clear about how we can reduce suffering, our own and others'.

When mindfulness is equated with bare attention, it can easily lead to the misconception that the cultivation of mindfulness has nothing to do with ethics or with the cultivation of wholesome states of mind and the attenuation of unwholesome states. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

- B. Alan Wallace

We should be courteous to the poor as well as to the powerful. We should avoid attachment to relatives and animosity toward enemies, ridding ourselves of all partiality. But let us be especially respectful towards poor, humble people of no importance. Do not be partial! Love and compassion should be universal toward all beings.

Dilgo Kyentse Rinpoche

Study: Meditation may head off dementia

Medical studies in recent years have documented changes in the brains of those who meditate -- but it hasn't been clear what those changes might mean. A new pilot study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests that the brain changes associated with meditation and stress reduction may play an important role in slowing the progression of age-related cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

"We know that approximately 50 percent of people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment – the intermediate stage between the expected declines of normal aging and the more serious cognitive deterioration associated with dementia – may develop dementia within five years. And unfortunately, we know there are currently no FDA approved medications that can stop that progression," says first author Rebecca Erwin Wells, MD, MPH, who conducted her research as a fellow in Integrative Medicine at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School. "We also know that as people age, there's a high correlation between perceived stress and Alzheimer's disease, so we wanted to know if stress reduction through meditation might improve cognitive reserve."

The study used adults with mild cognitive impairment divided into a control group and a group that was trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, whose members meditate each day for the eight-week program and did a day-long retreat.

The study found improved functional connectivity in the part of t he brain responsible for memory in the meditators. It also found less atrophy of the hippocampus, which plays a role in dementia.

"MBSR is a relatively simple intervention, with very little downside that may provide real promise for these individuals who have very few treatment options," says Wells. She adds that future studies will need to be larger and evaluate cognitive outcomes as well. "If MBSR can help delay the symptoms of cognitive decline even a little bit, it can contribute to improved quality of life for many of these patients."