One of the benefits seen resulting from mindfulness practice is being better attuned to what your body is “telling” you.

(See my other blog post, Nine Ways That a Meditating Brain Creates Better Relationships.)

Here’s a great article from Scientific American about the gut, emotions, and accessing more of what you already know.

The emerging and surprising view of how the enteric nervous system in our bellies goes far beyond just processing the food we eat
By Adam Hadhazy

As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of “butterflies” in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our “second brain”.

A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.

Although its influence is far-reaching, the second brain is not the seat of any conscious thoughts or decision-making.

“The second brain doesn’t help with the great thought processes…religion, philosophy and poetry is left to the brain in the head,” says Michael Gershon, chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology and author of the 1998 book The Second Brain (HarperCollins).

Technically known as the enteric nervous system, the second brain consists of sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, or alimentary canal, which measures about nine meters end to end from the esophagus to the anus. The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system, Gershon says.

This multitude of neurons in the enteric nervous system enables us to “feel” the inner world of our gut and its contents. Much of this neural firepower comes to bear in the elaborate daily grind of digestion. Breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and expelling of waste requires chemical processing, mechanical mixing and rhythmic muscle contractions that move everything on down the line.

Click HERE to read the rest of this article at ScientificAmerican.com

Here’s how the website describes this gift to anyone interested in the brain: “The G2C Brain is an interactive 3-D model of the brain. It consists of 29 structures that can be rotated in three-dimensional space. Each structure contains key information on brain disorders, brain damage, case studies, and links to modern neuroscience research.”

Be sure to check out some of the spots I talk about here on ReWire Your Brain, like the amygdala, the brainstem, and the medial prefrontal cortex (to see that one, click on “Frontal Cortex” from the drop-down menu that says “Whole Brain.” Make sure you’ve hit “center” to see the brain straight on.

See those two little blue points? That’s the area that is so vital to linking five major parts of your brain — and the better integrated those parts are, the better your brain — and your relationships — will work.

Think it’s too small to make a difference? Remember that 5,000 neural synapses fit in the width of a human hair.

Now that’s dense!

Click on the screenshot below to visit http://www.g2conline.org/2022 and play with the 3-D Brain model.

A short but sweet blog post by my friend, Elisha Goldstein, PhD.

There is no question about it, the interest in Mindfulness-Based Interventions to work with people experiencing a variety of “disorders” and also in healthy individuals is growing at a rapid pace. There has been research with psychological issues such as stress, anxiety, depression, bipolar, addiction, eating disorders, ADHD, OCD, Parenting and others. There has also been plenty of research with medical diagnoses such as Chronic Pain, HIV/AIDS, Cancer, Sleep disorders, heart disease, epilepsy and others.

The most well-known of these are Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT),Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and a growing interest in Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) for addictive relapse.

In her book  The Art and Science of Mindfulness: Integrating Mindfulness into Psychology and the Helping Professions, Shauna Shapiro shows a variety of research with mindfulness-based interventions and says,

As it stands, there is solid evidence that mindfulness-based treatments can be successfully applied to the treatment of symptoms of anxiety and depression, whether MBSR, MBCT or ACT is applied. Mixed-modality intensive treatments like DBT that incorporate mindfulness training are also useful for treating more complex personality disorders, which often include substance abuse and self-harming behaviors.

Yet, it’s amazing that there has been this must positive research in only 30 years, most of it coming in the last 10 years. This is an exciting time in the field of mindfulness as a modality for medical and psychological distress.

The research is clearly pointing out that mindfulness as an approach has been and can continue to be translated into the mainstream and is indeed helpful as an intervention.

Continue reading this article HERE.

]]> http://rewireyourbrainforlove.com/found-article-mindfulness-a-favored-approach-in-psychology-and-medicine/feed/ 1 http://rewireyourbrainforlove.com/brains-for-valentines-day-anyone/ http://rewireyourbrainforlove.com/brains-for-valentines-day-anyone/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:36:14 +0000 Marsha Lucas, PhD http://rewireyourbrainforlove.com/?p=577

Since I’m all about how important the brain is in how healthy relationships happen (or don’t), I thought it might be a good to pass along a (tongue-in-cheek) resource for Valentine’s Day gifts.

The folks at Red Reef Publications have many fine products, including high-quality teaching models of the brain — but they also don’t take life too seriously.

Here’s a sampling of the amusing wares on their Brain Novelty and Gifts webpage:

Totally Cheap Rubber Brain

“Here it is–by popular demand during the worst depression known to modern man…The totally cheap rubber brain.  Ok, first of all, let’s get this straight–this is not a rubber brain that you use to teach.  What this is is a rubber brain you take with you when you do your weekly bubblebath on Saturday nights.  Second, this product should be viewed as a Kandelian replacement for your Devil Duck (for those of you almost entirely missing the Decade of the Brain).  We’ll leave the other applications to your imagination.  So, we want to be perfectly clear on this–No emails from dim-rod customers who expect a brain of this price and quality to to be more than it is.  So, if you are down with the quality thing, back the stinkin truck up on these babies.  They are a bit smaller than a real human brain, and a bit on the red-ish side (imagine a color-blind embalmer).”

Hope I made someone’s Valentine’s Day a little brighter!

Frans de Waal’s work with primates fascinates me. In this clip, he talks with Carl Zimmer of Discover Magazine about how empathy is not something we “decide” to be — that we are able to empathize with the feelings of others because of an involuntary physiologic response. (I have always had a tinge of regret that I finished my PhD at Emory just when Frans de Waal joined the psychology faculty.)

The ability to perceive another’s emotional state — that’s just the first part. A more evolved empathy also involves being able to take the other’s perspective, to try to understand where their feelings are coming from, without getting confused about what is yours, and what is the other’s (like a mother trying to understand her baby’s distress so she can respond in a way which helps, without “taking on” the baby’s upset.)

I’ll add a reminder from me, your friendly meditation pusher:  A greater capacity for this kind of empathic connection is one of the benefits seen in people who regularly practice mindfulness meditation, and is one of the cornerstones of healthy relationships. Being able to perceive the feelings of another, and to try to understand where those feelings are coming from, is a vital ability. Again, it’s important to able to do this empathic perspective-taking without getting confused about who the feelings belong to — that is, without losing your awareness of your separate self, and, for example, that your partner’s distress is not your own.

From Mas Ichise, MD and Bob Innis, MD, PhD at National Institutes of Mental Health comes some primate research on attachment, the brain, and later emotional and behavioral problems: Neuroimaging of the effects on the brain of maternal deprivation.

Monkeys who suffered maternal deprivation (raise by their peers, instead) were shown to have a deficit in serotonin transporters in the brain. Serotonin is one of the neurotransmitters connected with depression and other emotional issues in humans (and why drugs that increase the availability for serotonin in the brain, like Prozac, are used to try to address depression.)

This work supports, even more than the evidence we already have, that early attachment is key for wiring the brain to be able to have optimal mental health and well-being in later life.
Read the article HERE.

The Brain as explained by John Cleese

In my work as a psychologist, I see a lot of very bright, insightful people who still struggle with relationships, and when I suggest that they start practicing mindfulness meditation, they want to know why and how sitting and meditating can help their love lives. They may know that they “should” meditate because it’s good for them, but how is it going to make things better between them and their [fill in the blank: Wife/Husband/Boyfriend/Girlfriend/Partner...]?

Here are three of the many reasons I give to them, with some examples we can all relate to.

1. Mindfulness meditation turns down the volume on stress. One of the most widely known benefits of meditation is reduced stress. “Stress” in this case doesn’t mean that meditating will reduce the number of urgent e-mails in your inbox, but rather the reaction that your brain and your body have to what’s going on inside you and around you. What I see in myself, and in the people with whom I work, is that the response to stressors is less intense, takes less time to recover from, and doesn’t tend to linger on the sidelines. “Well, sure,” you might say, “anybody can be relaxed right after meditating.” What seems to happen, though, is that the effect of meditation on decreasing the stress response extends well beyond the meditation session itself, for more and more of the day as people develop a consistent practice.

When you’re less stressed, your nervous system is less likely to overreact, less likely to be hypervigilant to potential “threats.” You’re less defensive, and better able to hear and respond to what’s actually going on. As Jon Kabat-Zinn says, mindfulness leads people to be better at approaching stressful events as a challenge, rather than a threat.

Under threat, we’re geared to quickly — and without much thinking — fight, flee, or freeze. With challenge, we see an increase in the brain’s ability to pull ideas together and come up with informed, balanced solutions.

So what does this do for improving relationships? Imagine that your brain is stressed out over deadlines at work. You’re already late for your date with your girlfriend. Your body, thanks to the brain’s messages that things are dangerous, is tight, prepared to fight, flee, or freeze, and in a magnificent feedback loop, your brain gets the body’s tightness as a message to keep on the lookout for trouble. You walk into the restaurant for your date, aware that you’re late, and you see a look of annoyance on her face — which your brain detects as an additional stressor-threat. Your girlfriend sees the body language of your stress even before you get to the table, and her fight/flight/flee response gets further ratcheted up. Add in the restaurant noise she’s been sitting with, the problems she had finding a parking spot to meet you close to your office, and the fact that you’re both hungry.

In the bad date scenario above, we’ve got an overabundance of stress hormones raging through both bodies, tight muscles ready to react — basically, two hungry people with hypervigilant “danger detectors” in their brains chomping at the bit to help them rapidly and decisively defend themselves. And neither one of them is able to readily access perceiving any of this as a challenge, rather than a threat. How well do you think the date is going to go?

Now imagine that at least one of them practices mindfulness meditation regularly. At the very least, if all we’re looking at is the benefit of overall decreased stress and an ability to recognize, let go of, and recover from stress more easily, we can see how much better the evening is going to be.

There’s so much more to mindfulness meditation than stress reduction, though. Let’s take a look at two other ways that mindfulness meditation gives your relationship a boost.

2. Mind the Gap. Research on the effects of mindfulness meditation on the brain is increasingly showing that there is a beefing up (in activation and even in size) of the middle prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The mPFC is an area which neuroscientists believeplays in important role in integrating our higher, “intellectual” brain areas (for example, your frontal cortex) with those down below in our more raw, “emotional” areas (like your amygdala).

Having a more formidable mPFC allows your brain to bridge the gap, as it were, between your “thinking” and your “feeling” areas. Your brain can better integrate what’s going on in your “emotional” brain areas and your “intellectual” brain areas.

Here’s an example of relationship argument, with emotions and intellect banging into one another instead of being integrated — as you read it, see how this plays out in each individual, as well as in the couple:

A wife comes home, somewhat exasperated after being out with a good friend, but one who can be self-involved at times. “She did it again!” she exclaims to her husband. “Jane managed to make the whole evening about her!” Afraid of losing a friend, and also tired, she begins to cry, bemoaning how hard it is to make friends, how alone she feels, and wondering what’s wrong with her that she can’t figure it out.

Her husband sees her distress and wants to scramble to respond, to help her “fix” the problem. So, he tells her, “First, you need to stop beating up on yourself. Jane’s the problem, not you. I don’t know why you stay friends with her, anyway; you’re always upset after seeing her. Just go out and make some new friends who treat you better. Weren’t you going to join that book club to meet new friends?”

She proceeds to lash out at her husband for being insensitive and overly intellectual, and accuses him of not caring. He’s hurt and angry that his attempt to help her solve the problem has gotten her angry at him – again – and he responds by yelling at her “Of course I care!” and that she’s too emotional and can’t think straight enough to remember that.

Here, the wife came in the door with a flailing amygdala, almost pure, raw emotion. The husband responded with a rational frontal cortex, trying to help while also trying to avoid or staunch the emotions.  The result is that they’ve completely missed each other.

Imagine if they could integrate the two: Being tuned in to the emotions, but not overwhelmed by them; searching for a calmer, rational response, without losing sight of the emotions. That integration and connection is what mindfulness meditation helps cultivate and grow, quite literally, in the brain — as well as between couples.

“Minding the gap” — shorthand for practicing mindfulness in order to bridge that gap between thinking and feeling — helps protect you from the dangers of having either your emotions or your intellect become a runaway horse, dragging your partner and your relationship in the dirt behind you.

3. “Getting” your partner better. As you practice mindfulness meditation, you’re practicing, over and over again, the act of noticing when your mind has wandered off. (By the way, if you think your brain is too busy for you to meditate — think again (pun intended) — and take a look at this video explaining how a busy brain can actually make for more effective mindfulness practice.)

Being more aware of when your mind isn’t “in the moment” lets you become more aware of what is going on in the moment. You get more attuned to what’s going on inside you, instead of being on “autopilot” or in distracted-reactive mode. You also become more aware that even if you’re feeling something in this moment, it’ll feel a little different if you just sit with it a bit. Your emotions aren’t bags of wet concrete sitting on your head (or in your heart); they’re more like weather patterns moving through.

Getting to be more aware of your internal state allows you to be more attuned to yourself and your experiences — allows you to have greater understanding and empathy for yourself. (If a baby is upset and crying, the caregiver needs to “tune in” and empathize in order to effectively understand what’s going on, and how best to respond — in effect, you’re doing this for yourself when you practice mindfulness.)

As you increase your ability to be more attuned and more empathic with yourself, your capacity to be attuned and empathic with your partner increases as well.

Let’s say that the couple in the example above were both in the process of learning mindfulness meditation. They’d been at it long enough that they knew to stop for a moment, even in the middle of their distress. In this case, it could go quite differently:

The wife stops, takes a breath, and silently checks in with herself: “Tired; mad at Jane for ignoring my feelings; mad at my husband for… hmm, ignoring my feelings; lonely.”  She looks at her husband, and reminds herself that they’re on the same team — they both want to feel more connected. She is able to “get” that he’s angry but wanting to help her.

Through her tears, she manages to say, “I’m feeling tired, and lonely, and I need room for my feelings, even if they don’t make sense. Having you hold me quietly would really help.”

Her calm helps him remember to take a breath and check in with himself:“Frustrated that I blew it; mad at my wife for pointing out that I blew it… but she’s letting me know how I can do it better right now, and right now she seems to be open to me.” He reaches out, awkwardly but with an awareness of loving her, and they both feel themselves begin to relax.

Mindfulness increases the degree to which you are open to your partner’s thoughts, emotions, and well-being — how well you “get” him or her — and the degree to which you are open to those very same things in yourself. By practicing mindfulness meditation regularly, you’re better able to be aware of thoughts and emotions in a way that allows you to be present, rather than reacting on “autopilot,” which can so often be impulsive, habitual, or destructive.

There are more ways that mindfulness meditation helps relationships, but maybe the best thing that I can do now, rather than “busying-up” your intellectual, rational frontal cortex any further, is to invite you to start your own mindfulness practice, and see for yourself.

Why meditation does NOT make you a self-involved, zoned-out bliss-ninny.

Here’s the polite version of a question I received recently about my support of mindfulness meditation as a practice for well-being in relationships:

Why are you encouraging people to zone out? Sitting around pretending they’re above it all, and avoiding real feelings? Who wants to be in a relationship with a self-involved bliss-ninny?

Wow.

There are an awful lot of misconceptions about mindfulness meditation. This one, about how people who meditate are just using it as a place to “hide out” by just getting zoned, escaping into some blissed-out, checked-out place, is why a lot of people mistakenly decide that meditation is useless, or worse.

There are some merits to asking the question, though, because it’s true that some people who meditate use it in ways which aren’t beneficial, sometimes making them pretty obnoxious to spend time with.

The place from which I look at the benefits of mindfulness meditation is in my work with people who want to create more meaningful lives, including better, healthier, more satisfying relationships. I’m a clinical psychologist who believes that being emotionally present and authentic is the cornerstone of emotional well-being. I’m also trained as a neuropsychologist, who knows that the better integrated a brain is, the better it works. It’s a bit like needing the left hand to know what the right one is doing in order to get anything done. (I don’t just use that phrase lightly – in cases of damage to the corpus callosum, the brain’s bridge between the right and left hemispheres, one hand quite literally doesn’t know what the other is doing, with one buttoning up the shirt and the other following behind, unbuttoning it.)

So from that stance, let’s take a look at the notion that mindfulness meditation leads to people becoming zoned-out, self-involved bliss-ninnies.

“Don’t people use meditation just to escape?”

Is it possible for people to hide out in meditation? Yes. People who “use” meditation to escape, just like using drugs or alcohol to escape, can closely resemble the “kindly, calm pod person” that Judith Warner wrote about in a New York Times blog post. The added “benefit” of using meditation as your drug of choice is that, unlike zoning out on alcohol or drugs (or TV, surfing the web, and so on), you can also adopt a “more enlightened than thou” stance that some meditators have been known to take, much to the annoyance of those around them.

Even Jack Kornfield, PhD, one of the pioneers and great teachers in the use of mindfulness meditation in the West (and also a psychologist), points out that “[m]editation and spiritual practice can easily be used to suppress and avoid feeling or to escape from difficult areas of our lives.” He goes on to say that “the sitting practice itself… often provide[s] a way to hide, a way to actually separate the mind from difficult areas of heart and body.”

Obviously, this isn’t the approach to mindfulness meditation which I advocate. This will become more clear as we go on.

“The people I know who meditate just ended up being more self-involved.”

This can happen, too. In one variation of this, sometimes people who meditate profess that their practice is making them “more present” when in fact they’re just more self-involved. Judith Warner again:

[P]eople who are embarked on this particular ‘journey of self-exploration,’ as [Mary] Pipher has called it, tend to want to talk, or write, about it. A lot. But what they don’t realize – because they’re so in the moment, caught in the wonder and fascination and totality of their self-experience – is that their stories are like dream sequences in movies, or college students’ journal entries, or the excited accounts your children bring you of absolutely hilarious moments in cartoons – you really do have to be the one who’s been there to tolerate it.
For the truth is, however admirable mindfulness may be, however much peace, grounding, stability and self-acceptance it can bring, as an experience to be shared, it’s stultifyingly boring.

What she’s describing (okay, complaining about) is not “real” mindfulness, though. Mindfulness isn’t about droning on and on about your own inner exploration, ignoring the feelings of others (or your own), or gushing your newfound love for all of humanity. Mindfulness is about developing a larger capacity in yourself for empathic, attuned, contingent connection.

That last sentence is vital: Mindfulness is about developing a larger capacity in yourself for empathic, attuned, contingent connection.

• empathic = being able to see things from another’s point of view, getting a sense of their intentions, and being able to imagine what something “means” to another person

• attuned = allowing our internal state to resonate with the inner world of another, to “get” someone else’s inner state, allowing us to feel connected

• contingent = responding to another in a way which is informed by what we sense in them, not just what we think or feel

(These definitions as presented here are largely influenced by Dan Siegel, whose latest book, Mindsight, I highly recommend.)

A thumbnail sketch of what this looks like: You talk to me, and I listen with an open heart and an open mind, tuned in to you while also being aware of my own internal state. And my response to you, if I’m being mindful, is contingent on what you’re saying and feeling and communicating – not just my own internal experience. When I talk, I’m speaking with mindful awareness of my internal state as well as being attuned to you, and I pay attention to shifts in myself and in you while I speak, to be able to remain connected, attuned and empathic.

That would be a far cry from being self-involved.

“Seems to me that people who meditate aren’t dealing with their real problems.”

It’s also true that many who meditate may need additional help. As Jack Kornfield put it in his essay, “Even The Best Meditators Have Old Wounds To Heal”:

There are many areas of growth (grief and other unfinished business, communication and maturing of relationships, sexuality and intimacy, career and work issues, certain fears and phobias, early wounds, and more) where good Western therapy is on the whole much quicker and more successful than meditation…. Meditation can help in these areas. But if, after sitting for a while, you discover that you still have work to do, find a good therapist or some other way to effectively address these issues.

Jack, in his honest wisdom, goes on to say that many American vipassana (mindfulness meditation) teachers who have gotten stuck in disconnection, fear, or other unconscious places, have sought out psychotherapy.

(As a brief aside, I would say that the same seeking of good psychotherapy should be true of anyone leading others in a quest to better understand themselves, or to heal emotionally. That includes psychotherapists. It’s my strong opinion that good psychotherapists have done (and continue to do) work in their own psychotherapy, and need to have the capacity for empathic, attuned, contingent communication.)

So, mindfulness meditation isn’t a one-size-fits-all cure for everything that ails you. It is, however, powerfully helpful, whether on its own, or in conjunction with psychotherapy.

I’ve had people come into my practice who have been meditating for years, who have found that they’ve resolved much but can’t seem to crack the core of the issue, and their meditation practice serves them well in the psychotherapeutic work.

I’ve also worked with people who have been in psychotherapy on and off for years with different therapists, benefitting from it but with the next level of growth seemingly out of reach. When we’ve added mindfulness meditation to the mix, they’ve begun to make some remarkable progress which they hadn’t been able to before.

“Can meditation really change people for the better?”

Nothing is a “build it and they will come” guarantee when it comes to personal change. A joke in psychotherapy is, “How many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one, but the lightbulb has to really want to change.”  That’s not just true of psychotherapy, but of any endeavor we take on to create better, healthier, more meaningful lives, and that would include meditation. (As George Carlin said, “Ya gotta wanna.”)

Mindfulness meditation is being shown in a growing mountain of well-done, peer-reviewed scientific research to make demonstrable changes in how your brain is wired — which in turn changes how you perceive the world, how you respond to it, and how you behave.

Meditation isn’t a magic wand that creates enlightenment, but it does have what can look like almost magical effects on connections in the brain — including synaptogenesis (the creation of new connections between neurons), and even neurogenesis (the creation of brand-new neurons in the brain– an ability which neuroscience has only accepted as a real phenomenon in the last 15 years or so).

What I see in people who practice regular mindfulness meditation is that they’re more integrated in how they relate to the world, including themselves. (This is more true of people who are practice developing their mindfulness at all times, not just when they’re formally meditating.)

They haven’t found a magic way to hit the “bliss” button – not if they’re being really truthful with themselves. They might experience bliss more often and more fully, but it’s likely that they’re also experiencing all of their emotions more often, and more fully. What they’ve found is a way to be more whole, more integrated, to not just listen to their rational intellectual side “versus” their non-rational, emotional side.

I see a lot of very bright, high-functioning people in my psychotherapy practice who are so far one-sided or the other — over-reliant on the rational, or hyper-attuned to the emotional — that they can’t get a handle on what their “real” problem is. Mindfulness meditation helps them see a more integrated picture, warts and all, and then they’re also better equipped to deal with it in an honest, authentic, insightful way.

Let’s take a look at how that applies to a relationship problem. If you use only your rational brain, and ignore your feelings and those of your significant other, it’s unlikely to go well (in fact, you’ll probably make things worse). On the other hand, if you lead solely with your emotions, you could similarly end up never solving the problem (and blowing things up). It’s much like the right-hand-buttoning, left-hand-unbuttoning dilemma.

But: If you are able to integrate both your intellect and your emotions — and be attuned to your significant other’s feelings and thoughts as well (in a real way, not the way that Judith Warner described) — you can be positively brilliant in dealing with the issue.

“Yeah, but is there any real change?”

Yes — “real” as in “measurable by scientific methods”. This is what the research in neuroscience is pointing to. Researchers have been looking at the structure and activity in the brains of those who practice regular mindfulness meditation, and they see changes and benefits.

Which of those findings excite me the most, as someone who works to help people create more meaningful lives and relationships?

How about this: Increased activity, connectivity — even size — in brain areas (most especially, an area called the middle prefrontal cortex) known to support the integration of the rational, problem-solving areas (e.g., the frontal cortex) and those known to be centers for emotions (e.g., the amygdala).

The brains of people who practice mindfulness meditation appear to be more integrated, and the clinical evidence supports these changes as well, such as the nine benefits of mindfulness meditation I discussed in a previous post.

If your brain is better integrated, you’re neither ignoring the facts nor discounting emotions. You’re better able to know what’s true for you, and to be better attuned to the person you’re with. You can evaluate more clearly what you’re feeling, rather than having knee-jerk reactions or jumping to conclusions. While it doesn’t mean you always do, you’re more likely to be able to stay present with whatever’s going on.

So, does that sound like a zoned-out, self-involved bliss-ninny?

A short, very readable piece by my favorite integrator, Dan Siegel, MD, on “The Science of the Mindful Brain.” Dan’s newest book, Mindsight, is now out, and at the very top of my reading list. His thinking about mindfulness, the brain, and living more fully are superb!

By Dan Siegel, MD.

All too often, the inner side of our human experience, the subjective texture of our interior world, remains far from the focus of the buzzing hive of activity in our everyday lives. We are usually pushed to be outward-peering human doings, far from the inner peace achievable by human beings living their innate potential. Mindfulness practices offer a way to focus on the inner journey and, as we shall see, also contribute to overall health and well-being.

My journey into the formal study of mindfulness began in an unexpected way. I had coauthored a book on parenting called Parenting from the Inside Out and several people asked how we would teach meditation to the participants attending workshops on the book. I was puzzled. Meditation? I had never meditated. The inquiring person would point to the word “mindfulness” in our book—a term that we chose to use for an important principle of parenting—and assume it implied “meditation.” For us, mindfulness meant the act of being intentional, awake, and conscientious in one’s actions as a parent. Unaware until then of mindfulness meditation, these questions motivated me to personally explore this ancient practice—and its more recent scientific findings.

Mindfulness Basics

Mindful awareness can be enhanced through various means, such as the traditional practices of mindfulness meditation, yoga, tai chi, qigong, and centering prayer. These practices create a state in which the individual experiences a widening of awareness that encompasses a sense of attention to one’s own intention, an immersion in the rich sensations of the body and the breath, and an awareness of the mind itself—an awareness of awareness. This self-observation comes with the capacity to experience the mind’s activities with objectivity. In this way, a thought or feeling becomes sensed as just that, a thought or feeling, rather than the totality of the person’s identity in the moment.

The three foundational elements of mindfulness—objectivity, openness, and observation—create a tripod that stabilizes the mind’s attentional lens. This enables the mind to become conscious of the mind itself and thus become liberated from the common ways in which it is imprisoned by its own preoccupations. This is why, through mindfulness practice, we can transform self-created suffering into personal liberation.

As we engage in mindful awareness practices, we have the potential to develop long-term personality traits from intentionally created mindful states. Research has suggested that these mindfulness traits include the capacity to suspend judgments, to act in awareness of our moment-to-moment experience, to achieve emotional equilibrium or equanimity, to describe our internal world with language, and to have a burgeoning sense of self-observation. (Baer et al. 2006).

Mindfulness and Well-Being

Studies of long-term practitioners of mindfulness meditation suggest that mindfulness practice leads to improvements in physiological, psychological, and interpersonal health. Specifically, it appears to lead to a number of changes in the brain that can explain this spectrum of health—from the functioning of the immune system to the ways we empathically relate to others. Why would the focus of our awareness result in such a broad range of health benefits?

To investigate this question, I went on an expedition into the mind to see how mindfulness promotes well-being, and I began to see a fascinating convergence in the domains of relationships, brain function, and mindfulness.

Click HERE to continue reading this articles at kripalu.org.