This presentation will examine the relevance of recent work in cognitive science, psychological anthropology, and cultural psychiatry for thinking about context in contemplative science. Theories of embodiment and enactment provide ways to elaborate an ecosocial view of mind that integrates neurobiology and sociocultural contexts. In this view, mental phenomena are produced by looping effects within …
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Meditation Practice: Cultivating Love and Compassion
Sharon Salzberg and Roshi Joan Halifax will lead a guided practice on kindness and compassion. This practice session will be directed toward cultivating prosocial mental qualities.
Sustainable Compassion Training—Extending Care Mode of Practice
In this session, we connect with the experience of receiving love and being seen in our deep worth beyond limiting thoughts of ourselves. Then we let that experience evoke our capacity to extend love similarly to others around us, to see them in their deep worth beyond limiting thoughts of them. We thereby extend loving …
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Master Lectures: Minding Mindfulness: Issues, Models, and Findings in the Scientific Study of Meditation
This talk will describe attentional, emotional and physiological processes modified over the course of three months of full-time training in, and practice of, meditative quiescence (Shamatha) and beneficial aspirations for self and others (loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity). This multidisciplinary longitudinal, randomized wait-list controlled study is known as The Shamatha Project. Scientific measures …
Moving Together From Colorblindness to ColorInsight: Contemplative Inquiry, Research and Practice in the Work of Transformative Justice
Professor Magee explores intersecting issues of race, racism and U.S. law using mindfulness- and compassion-based practices. Discussing her work across inter-related sub-fields — transformative education, law practice and community-based work for justice — she highlights ways of enhancing collaborations across categories of real and perceived difference using contemplative techniques for teaching, learning and working together …
Can lovingkindness meditation support tolerant political behavior? A study into the impact of meditation on political behavior
Political tolerance, i.e., the willingness to put up with opposing behavior of others, is the oxygen of liberal democracy. It is expected to facilitate fair, peaceful political processes. Unfortunately, tolerance is a core democratic value that is hard to learn. Political scientists have inquired since long the best practices to foster tolerance within political communities. …
Mindfulness as a novel intervention for improving romantic relationships
Romantic relationship quality declines over time for most couples. In addition, most first marriages end in divorce, and divorce rates have doubled during the past few decades among people over 35. Identifying interventions that improve compassionate love, empathy, and prosocial behavior between romantic partners is thus a critical goal. Our overarching aim is to experimentally …
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SHAPE JOY: A program to nurture empathic happiness in children through contemplative parenting practices
Young children seem to be wired to notice and enjoy the happy experiences of others, but this tendency to experience “empathic happiness” seems to fade in later childhood when it is replaced by self-doubt, envy, and worry. This process of losing the natural inclination for empathic happiness is exacerbated for some children who become dysregulated …
Measuring mental states during lovingkindness meditation using individualized brain patterns: A community-engaged investigation (updated*)
* January 2021 update: New title: Characterizing how lovingkindness meditation is practiced in a diverse meditation community committed to social justice New Principal Investigator: Ariana Thompson-Lastad Lovingkindness meditation consists of mental exercises to cultivate caring feelings towards oneself and others. Research suggests that lovingkindness meditation improves social connection and helping behavior, and may aid …
Using a contemplative conflict resolution intervention to promote teachers’ and youth’s beneficial engagement in controversial discussions and intergroup encounters
Enabling respectful discussion between rival social viewpoints is currently one of humanity’s most important challenges. Powerful socio-psychological barriers, including negative intergroup perceptions, emotions, beliefs and biases, are known to play a crucial role in fueling social conflicts, by increasing intolerance and blame toward the outgroup. A mindfulness-based compassionate conflict engagement intervention, which combines mindfulness, empathy, …
