As an intellectual tradition that codeveloped with Tibetan Buddhism for over a thousand years, Tibetan medicine has cultivated clinically-focused knowledge around tracking individual differences related to cognitive-affective patterns and their contingent contexts that impact health and illness in body and mind across the life course. In particular, Tibetan medicine places specific attention on the role …
Continue reading “Examining Individual Differences in Contemplative Practice Response”
In our daily life, we encounter various people, objects, or environmental context that can evoke memories of unpleasant events. Some of us might be able to quickly move on from these memories, whereas others might get stuck repeatedly thinking about them. The tendency to repeatedly think about stressors is called rumination, which is closely linked …
Parallel streams of research show that adolescents’ social ecologies and contemplative practices both play roles in the development of trait mindfulness, but these lines of inquiry rarely intersect or enrich one another. This project draws from whole trait theory to propose and test a framework that bridges these two streams by offering a broad account …
Continue reading “A Whole Trait Theory Account of Mindfulness in Adolescence”
This study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of Tuned In! — A Mindfulness-Based Affirmative Program for LGBTQIA Youth (herein called Tuned In!) with sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY). This project will build upon the promising results from previous community-based research (a pilot feasibility study of the Tuned In! intervention) to test Tuned In! on …
Black Americans experience significantly more stress and anxiety than other racial groups but have fewer sources of support. Although mindfulness represents a promising intervention for decreasing stress and anxiety, there are significant barriers that prevent Black Americans from accessing extant mindfulness tools, including cost, time, and limited cultural relevance. Under the mentorship of Dr. Matthew …
Continue reading “Music-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Black Americans”
Our January conversation, “Mindfulness, Resilience, and Compassion for the New Year,” features Rhonda Magee and Jack Kornfield, with musicians Marti Nikko and DJ Drez. We look at how we can lay the foundations for a year of compassion and healing grounded in our shared humanity.
Robust learning requires substantial effort. Our recent studies, conducted in a sleep laboratory as well as in typical home environments, have showed that sleep contributes to learning. Indeed, sleep is important for solidifying memories of various types. By extension, in a contemplative practice when people strive to develop enduring prosocial qualities, such as compassion, kindness, …
Continue reading “Sleep’s role in realizing the prosocial benefits of contemplative practice”
Research has begun to show that the benefits of meditation practice can extend beyond the individual to influence the well-being of others. An important next step in the field is to look at how this happens. We will therefore examine how participation in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course impacts the amount of negative emotions, specifically, …
Buddhist and psychological models of awakening often propose that ethical sensitivities that encompass “peace, compassion, mindfulness and more justice” (Dalai Lama) can be fostered through mindfulness. The literature and our own previous work (Verhaeghen & Aikman, 2020) suggest that increased trait mindfulness is indeed associated with stronger endorsement of care and fairness/justice as moral values, …
We theorize that mindfulness and compassion training tailored to forcibly displaced refugees will have significant salutary pro-social effects. By means of a randomized (active) control design, we will test whether Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Refugees (MBTR-R) has restorative pro-social effects on traumatized Eritrean asylum seekers. Pro-social outcomes include (i) Trust, (ii) Compassion, (iii) Pro-social inter-personal …
