Month: August 2015

Age Healthily – Sleep better with Meditation

psyjdc 1 Comment

Aging brings a myriad of physical and mental changes including altered amounts and patterns of sleep. Older people have the same sleep needs as when they were younger but they have more difficulty falling and staying asleep and do not sleep as deeply. In addition, aging individuals wake more often during sleep, tend to go to sleep and wake earlier than when they were younger. There is also an increase in sleep disorders, including insomnia and 44% of the elderly report at least occasional problems with insomnia.

Sleep problems are more than just an irritant. Sleep deprivation is associated with decreased alertness and a consequent reduction in performance of even simple tasks, increased difficulties with memory and problem solving, decreases quality of life, increase likelihood of accidental injury including automobile accidents, and increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. It also places stress on relationships, affecting the sleep of the older individuals sleep partner.

Hence, it is clear that getting a good night’s sleep is important for everyone. But for the elderly it’s more difficult to get it. So, anything that could assist older people to sleep better would help the individual to age healthier with a better quality of life. Mindfulness has been found to be associated with healthy aging (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/age-healthily-mindfulness/).

Mindfulness can also be helpful with sleep problems. Indeed, meditation has been shown to be effective for the treatment of insomnia in adults (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/mindfulness-is-a-snooze/). But, the elderly are different and it is not known if meditation might also help them to sleep better.

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment among Older Adults with Sleep Disturbances: A Randomized Clinical Trial”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1080339028656689/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4407465/

Black and colleagues demonstrate that meditation can improve sleep quality in people over 55 years of age. They found that meditation increased the quality of sleep and the degree of improvement was related to the degree of increase in mindfulness produced. Meditation also resulted in less insomnia, fatigue, anxiety, and depression and less interference in daily living produced by fatigue. These findings are very exciting and suggest that meditation may be an effective intervention to improve sleep in the elderly.

Sleep problems are associated with a high level of physiological arousal. Meditation has been shown to reduce the hormonal and neural systems that underlie arousal and reduces responses to stress (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/destress-with-mindfulness/). This could be one mechanism by which meditation improves sleep. Also sleep disturbance is often associated with psychological issues such as anxiety, depression, worry and rumination. Meditation is also known to reduce these processes. Indeed, Black and colleagues demonstrated reductions in depression with meditation in older individuals (see also http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/dealing-with-major-depression-when-drugs-fail/) and mindfulness is known to reduce anxiety (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/the-mindfulness-cure-for-social-anxiety/) and worry (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/stop-worrying/)  This may be another potential mechanism by which mindfulness improves sleep.

Regardless of the mechanism, it is clear that meditation improves sleep in older individuals. Since meditation is relatively safe and easy to perform and has become more and more common and acceptable in modern western cultures, it would seem to be an ideal solution to the sleep problems of the elderly.

So, meditate and sleep better as you age.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

The Purpose of Life

psyjdc Leave a comment

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We tend to make everything overly complicated. We do this repeatedly in our existence and particularly in our search for meaning in life, for our purpose in living. Rather than see its elegant simplicity we intellectualize it and attempt to construct some form of theoretical understanding in reference to what we’ve been taught and what we’ve learned from experience. In other words we use our intellects to make up a purpose. It is no wonder that we feel uncertain and confused about our purpose.

So we look to scriptures, the writings of great thinkers, or the productions of great artists to reveal to us the meaning and purpose of our lives. For some that seems to bring comfort. But, they are comforted only because they don’t invest significant time and energy in processing the logic of the solutions. They simply defer to someone else’s ideas. With a little reflection though, the purported purpose is realized to be unsatisfactory.

How sad, that our minds convince us that our purpose has to be difficult to discern. Our purpose in existing should be simple and patently obvious to all. Only our intellects would need to look for something obscure and complex. Simply put, thinking prevents us from seeing. So, let’s look without thinking. Let’s simply look around us.

The purpose of life should be revealed in the present moment, not in our hazily remembered and reconstructed past and not in our imagined and projected future, but right now. The only time that we can have a purpose is right now. So why not look for it there.

If we look carefully at what we’re experiencing right now in the present moment without thinking or reference to the past or future, we will experience an incredible panoply of sensations that arise and fall away, arise and fall away, arise and fall away. If we try to grasp ahold of any of them we fail and become unhappy. But, if we simply sit back and let whatever comes come and whatever goes go, we experience the beauty of the ever changing present. We can come to enjoy the pleasure and wonder of the richness of every moment. We can see it for the miracle that it actually is.

This quickly leads to the patently obvious conclusion that the purpose of life is simply to experience it. Nothing more! If we truly stop trying to make it complicated and simply focusing on experiencing what is there right in front of us, a revelation begins to dawn on us that our purpose is not to come up with an intellectual answer to produce meaning but simply to experience the meaning that is revealed in every single moment.

How wonderfully obvious and simple!

It’s not rocket science. It’s simply seeing the wonder of existence and allowing it to play out for us.

So, experience life in all its glory and fulfill your purpose.

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”  ― Eleanor Roosevelt

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” -Dalai Lama

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Live More Effectively with Breast Cancer with Mindfulness

psyjdc 1 Comment

About 1 in 8 women in the U.S. develop invasive breast cancer over their lifetimes and about 40,000 women die annually from breast cancer. It is encouraging however that the death rates have been decreasing for decades from improved detection and treatment of breast cancer. Five-year survival rates are now at around 95%. Nonetheless, more women in the U.S. die from breast cancer than from any other cancer, besides lung cancer.

The improved survival rates mean that more women are now living with cancer. This can be difficult as breast cancer survivors can have to deal with the consequences of chemotherapy, and often experience increased fatigue, pain, and bone loss, reduced fertility, difficulty with weight maintenance, damage the lymphatic system, heightened fear of reoccurrence, and an alteration of their body image. With the loss of a breast or breasts, scars, hair shedding, complexion changes and weight gain or loss many young women feel ashamed or afraid that others will reject or feel sorry for them.

There is a need then to find ways to help women adjust and adapt to life with breast cancer. Mindfulness training has been shown to help in dealing with the psychological issues associated with having cancer (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/tackle-cancer-with-mindfulness/ ). In today’s Research News article “The effect of group mindfulness – based stress reduction program and conscious yoga on the fatigue severity and global and specific life quality in women with breast cancer.”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1079361118754480/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4431452/

Rahmani & Talepasand employed Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) to help women who live with breast cancer. They found that MBSR produced robust and clinically significant improvements in the patients’ quality of life including role, cognitive, emotion, and social quality of life. It even reduced pain and fatigue in these women.

These are encouraging results that MBSR can be of great assistance for women coping with breast cancer. It has been previously shown that MBSR reduces fears of recurrence and symptoms of anxiety and depression in breast cancer survivors. These reductions alone could be responsible for improved quality of life. But, MBSR does so much more. It also reduces perceived stress and arousal in the sympathetic nervous system. Reduction in stress, allowing the patient to relax, by itself can also improve quality of life.

MBSR is also known to improve present moment awareness. By focusing on the present moment rather than catastrophizing about the future of the cancer, MBSR can help the patient to focus on living with the cancer in the moment making them better able to cope. MBSR also improves emotion regulation. This allow the women to more effectively process and respond to how their feeling about their situation. So, rather than being paralyzed by fear, anxiety, and depression, they can allow themselves to feel these emotions and still respond effectively to the needs of the moment.

MBSR is also known to reduce pain (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/mindfulness-the-pain-killer/). In part, MBSR works by interrupting the rumination and fear of pain that amplifies the perceived pain. This can go a long way in improving quality of life with cancer.

Finally, there is evidence that MBSR can increase the activity of the enzyme telomerase that is responsible for long-term cellular health. This can directly affect the progress of the cancer.

So, practice mindfulness and live more effectively with cancer.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Kick the Drug Habit with Mindfulness

psyjdc 2 Comments

Substance abuse is a major health and social problem. There are estimated 22.2 million people in the U.S. with substance dependence. It is estimated that worldwide there are nearly ¼ million deaths yearly as a result of illicit drug use which includes unintentional overdoses, suicides, HIV and AIDS, and trauma. In the U.S. about 17 million people abuse alcohol. Drunk driving fatalities accounted for over 10,000 death annually and including all causes alcohol abuse accounts for around 90,000 deaths each year, making it the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States.

Obviously there is a need to find effective methods to prevent and treat substance abuse. There are a number of programs that are successful at stopping the drug abuse, including the classic 12-step program emblematic of Alcoholics Anonymous. Unfortunately the majority of drug and/or alcohol abusers relapse and return to substance abuse. Hence, it is important to find an effective method to prevent these relapses.

In today’s Research News article “Relative Efficacy of Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention, Standard Relapse Prevention, and Treatment as Usual for Substance Use Disorders: A Randomized Clinical Trial”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1078832758807316/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489711/

Bowen and colleagues examine the ability of a 12-step program, a Relapse Prevention (RP) program, and Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) in preventing relapse over a one-year period.

The Relapse Prevention (RP) program attempts to prevent relapse by helping the abuser to identify situations that tend to precipitate relapse and teach cognitive (thinking) and behavioral skills to navigate through these situations. Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) employs some components of relapse prevention and adds mindfulness based components to increase awareness and behavioral flexibility in daily life.

They found at three month follow-up that all three programs were effective in preventing relapse. But at 6 months both the RP and MBRP programs were superior to the 12-step program in preventing relapse. The participants in these programs had significantly higher abstinence from drug use and refraining from heavy drinking. The superiority of the Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) program was evidenced at the one-year follow-up, reporting 31% fewer drug use days and a significantly higher probability of refraining from heavy drinking. So, all programs were effective over the short term, but over the long-term the mindfulness based program worked the best.

How can mindfulness help an addict to refrain from indulging over the long-term? Mindfulness training stresses present moment awareness of both internal and external stimuli. It puts the individual in better touch with their own feeling and thoughts in real time. The cognitive therapy components of the program help the individual properly interpret what their feeling and to change the way they think about themselves and others. This improves the addict’s ability to recognize and tolerate the discomfort associated with craving, interpret it correctly, not see it as a personal failure, and effectively employ an alternative technique to deal with craving.

In addition mindfulness is known to improve emotion regulation. The individual becomes better at recognizing and responding effectively to their own emotions. Thus the addict can better recognize emotions, particularly negative  ones, and feel them thoroughly but respond to not with drugs or alcohol, but with responses more appropriate for the current situation.

Regardless of the mechanism the fact that mindfulness training can extend the effectiveness of relapse prevention is very significant. The longer the addict remains drug or alcohol free, the greater the likelihood of developing more adaptive behaviors which can, in turn, spawn the kind of success experiences that can help to maintain the drug free existence.

So, practice mindfulness and kick the habit.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Control Inflammation with Mind-Body Practices

psyjdc Leave a comment

When the body is confronted with damage, invasion of foreign material, or an unwanted virus it immediately sends out an alarm and recruits all of the body’s resources to fight off the potential damage. This is called the inflammatory response. It can be elicited by a myriad of different stimuli including a bug bite, a splinter, a virus infection, a bruise, or a broken bone. The inflammatory response dispatches cells and chemicals to the site to isolate and  repair the damage. This is a key part of the body’s defense system, an indispensable protective response of self-defense.

To some extent the inflammatory response is an overreaction. The body triggers all of the resources and processes to defend itself until it can identify the precise problem and the targeted solution. This overreaction recruits mechanisms that are not needed and can actually be damaging. Paradoxically, the inflammatory response may produce tissue damage while it is engaged in healing and repair. But, the body’s logic is to get to the problem immediately with everything it has to insure survival first and deal with the consequences later. This is called acute inflammation and is short-lived, lasting only a few days.

If the inflammation continues for a longer period of time, it is termed as chronic inflammation and can last for weeks, months, or beyond. It is when inflammation is chronic that it becomes a major health problem. It can damage the tissues of the body producing or exacerbating disease. Inflammation may play a role in such diverse disorders as Alzheimer disease, meningitis, atherosclerosis, cystic fibrosis, asthma, cirrhosis of the liver, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), diabetes, osteoporosis, and even psoriasis.

Obviously, there is a need to have balance in the inflammatory response such that it deals with emergencies but stays restrained when no emergency is present. In today’s Research News article “Mind–body therapies and control of inflammatory biology: A descriptive review.”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1078350088855583/?type=1&theater

Bower and Irwin review the literature on the effectiveness of mind-body therapies such as Tai Chi, yoga, and meditation on restraining chronic inflammation. They concluded that mind-body therapies worked to help balance the inflammatory response at the gene level. They decreased the expression of inflammation-related genes and reduced pro-inflammatory signaling.

Mind-body techniques are known to have beneficial effects on health (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/why-is-mindfulness-so-beneficial/).  Bower and Irwin’s results suggest one of the mechanisms by which they produce these benefits, by helping to balance the inflammatory response, making it a useful defense against inflection while restraining its potentially damaging effects.

So, engage in mind-body practices, control damaging inflammation, and improve health.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Eat Mindfully for Obesity

psyjdc 10 Comments

 

Obesity has become an epidemic in the industrialized world. In the U.S. the incidence of obesity, defined as a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or above has more than doubled over the last 35 years to currently around 35% of the population. Although the incidence rates have appeared to stabilize, the fact that over a third of the population is considered obese is very troubling.

It is troubling because of the health consequences of obesity. Obesity has been found to shorten life expectancy by eight years and extreme obesity by 14 years. This is because obesity is associated with cardiovascular problems such as coronary heart disease and hypertension, stroke, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and others. Obviously there is a need for effective treatments to prevent or treat obesity. But, despite copious research and a myriad of dietary and exercise programs, there still is no safe and effective treatment.

Mindfulness is known to be associated with lower risk for obesity (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/eat-mindfully-and-have-a-healthier-weight/). This suggests that mindfulness training may be an effective treatment for overeating and obesity. In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Obesity-Related Eating Behaviors: A Literature Review”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1077863002237625/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4046117/

O’Reilly and colleagues reviewed the published research on mindfulness interventions for obesity related eating behaviors. They concluded that the research demonstrates that mindfulness based interventions are effective for reducing the incidence of some obesity related behaviors that lead to overeating; binge eating, emotional eating, and external eating.

Binge eating disorder involves regularly eating far more food than most people would in a similar time period under similar circumstances and feeling that eating is out of control. It’s the most common eating disorder and is estimated to affect 2.8 million U.S. adults of which 70% are obese. The reviewed research indicates that mindfulness based interventions had large, clinically significant effects.

Emotional eating involves the consumption of food in response to emotions and external eating involves eating in response to the stimuli that are associated with food such as the sight, smell, and taste of food. Both of these eating patterns are associated with overweight and both are effectively reduced with mindfulness based interventions.

One way that mindfulness appears to have its effects on eating results from mindfulness improving emotion regulation. It has been well demonstrated that mindfulness improves the individual’s ability to regulate their emotions, reducing their intensity and responding more effectively and appropriately to them. So, the individual feels the emotion mindfully and then responds not by eating but by responding in a way more appropriate to the actual emotion.

Mindfulness also appears to affect eating by making the individual more sensitive to their internal state of hunger and satiety. By improving present moment awareness, mindfulness helps the individual be more in touch with the sensations from their body. This makes them more sensitive to their state of hunger and satiety, responding to these appropriate stimuli for eating and stopping eating. This then reduces mindless eating to emotions and food cues.

These findings are important and suggest that mindfulness based interventions may be useful in the treatment and prevention of obesity.

So, be mindful and control your eating.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Alter Your Thinking with Meditation for Mental Health

psyjdc Leave a comment

 

Meditation has been shown to have significant promise as a treatment for a variety of mental illnesses, including depression (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/dealing-with-major-depression-when-drugs-fail/), obsessive compulsive disorder (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/mindfully-improve-psychological-wellbeing/), and worrying (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/stop-worrying/). It is known that one mechanism by which meditation works is by improving emotion regulation, making the individual better able to control and deal with emotions. Meditation also produces cognitive (thought) changes that appear to assist in improving mental challenges.

In today’s Research News article “Common Factors of Meditation, Focusing, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Longitudinal Relation of Self-Report Measures to Worry, Depressive, and Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Among Nonclinical Students.”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1077150092308916/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4432024/

Sugiura and colleagues investigate how these cognitive effects of meditation might work to improve the symptoms of worry, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. They studied five psychological states affected by meditation, refraining from catastrophic thinking, logical objectivity, self-observation, acceptance, and detached coping.

They found that detached coping was associated with a decrease in both depressive and obsessive compulsive symptoms. Detached coping is a cognitive skill involving detachment and distancing from external events. This is cultivated by meditation in developing non-judgmental awareness of what is transpiring in the present moment. This allows the individual to simply observe what is happening around them without becoming identified with the events, which then are taken much less personally and thereby have a much smaller impact on depression and obsessions and compulsions.

Sugiura and colleagues also found that refraining from catastrophic thinking was associated with a decrease in worrying. Refraining from catastrophic thinking involves cognitive skills to analyze and reinterpret negative thoughts. This effect was meditated by negative beliefs about worrying, where refraining from catastrophic thinking is associated with fewer and less intense negative beliefs about worrying which in turn was associated with reduced worrying. Worrying about worrying is a problem in that it tends to intensify worrying. By reducing the negative beliefs about worrying meditation interrupts this process disabling the worrying about worrying. In this way meditation helps reduce worrying.

These findings indicate that, of the cognitive (thought) processes that are affected by meditation detached coping and refraining from catastrophic thinking are particularly important for relief of symptoms of troubling mental conditions. Both of these cognitive processes involve distancing the individual from the events and thoughts about the events that occur. This suggests that distancing attitudes are useful for long-term reduction of various psychological symptoms. It further emphasizes the importance of the non-judgmental observing that is cultivated by meditation.

So, meditate, improve non-judgmental observing, and improve mental health.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

 

Control Weight in Diabetes with Yoga

psyjdc 2 Comments

 

“The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work.” – David Suzuki

Type 2 diabetes is a common and increasingly prevalent illness that is largely preventable. Although this has been known as adult-onset diabetes it is increasingly being diagnosed in children. It is estimated that 30 million people in the United States have diabetes and the numbers are growing. One of the reasons for the increasing incidence of Type 2 Diabetes is its association with overweight and obesity which is becoming epidemic in the industrialized world.

Diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death in the United States. In addition, diabetes is heavily associated with other diseases such as cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, stroke, blindness, kidney disease, and circulatory problems leading to amputations. As a result, diabetes doubles the risk of death of any cause compared to individuals of the same age without diabetes.

A leading cause of Type II Diabetes is overweight and obesity and a sedentary life style. Hence, treatment and prevention of Type II Diabetes focuses on diet, exercise, and weight control. Yoga would appear to be an excellent potential treatment for Type II Diabetes as it is both an exercise and a help in weight control (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/heart-healthy-yoga/).

In today’s Research News article “Yoga: Managing overweight in mid-life T2DM”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1075845609106031/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4481745/

Tikhe and colleagues tested the effects of a 7-day integrated approach of yoga therapy (IAYT) on patients with Type II Diabetes. They found that the program resulted in a significant loss in weight and body mass index (BMI), resting metabolism, and body fat.

Yoga appears to be a potential safe and effective treatment for Type II Diebetes. In addition yoga is known to strengthen the immune system (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/healthy-balance-through-yoga/) making the individual less susceptible to infection, helping to ward of potential secondary consequences of diabetes. These are exciting results that need to be confirmed in a large controlled trial. Many treatments for disease are not well tolerated by the patient and compliance becomes a huge issue. But, yoga is generally enjoyed and compliance rates, when administered properly, can be very high. So, yoga would appear to have advantages over other treatments.

So, practice yoga and control weight.

“Diabetes is a great example whereby, giving the patient the tools, you can manage yourself very well.” – Clayton Christensen

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Prayer helps Cancer Patients

psyjdc Leave a comment

 

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Depression affects approximately 15% to 25% of cancer patients. This is not surprising as a diagnosis of cancer can cause a number of patients to become depressed. The problem is, though, that depression can affect the course of the disease, with mortality rates 25% to 39% higher in cancer patients who are also depressed. So it would appear that the two are linked such that cancer diagnosis can induce depression and depression can reduce the prognosis for recovery.

Many cancer patients pray to help cope with the disease, but it is not known if prayer is in any way affective in helping the patients with either depression or with dealing with cancer and its treatment. In today’s Research News article “Types of prayer and depressive symptoms among cancer patients: the mediating role of rumination and social support”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1074914312532494/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183194/

John Perez and colleagues investigated the relationship between different kinds of prayer and depression in cancer patients and find that certain types of prayer are associated with lower depression in these patients.

They investigated eight different types of prayer—adoration, confession, reception, supplication, thanksgiving, prayer for one’s physical health, prayer for emotional strength, and prayer for others’ well-being. They found that more adoration prayer, reception prayer, thanksgiving prayer, and prayer for the well-being of others the lower the level of depression.

In looking deeper at the pattern of results they determined that prayers of thanksgiving acted by decreasing ruminative self-focused attention which in turn reduced depression. It would make sense that prayer that helped focus the patient on what they are thankful for in life would result in an increase in positive emotions and a decrease in the time spent ruminating about the cancer, leading to lower depression.

They also found that that prayer for the well-being of others was directly associated with lower depression and indirectly by being positively related to social support which is in turn associated with reduced depression. Praying for others directs attention away from the patient toward the problems of others. This can help provide a perspective on their problems with cancer and thereby reduce the depression. People who are thinking of the well-being of others tend to be better cared about and liked by others. The increase in the social support for them may follow. If someone cares about others, others care about them.

Reception and adoration prayer are both forms of contemplative prayer which is a form of meditation. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve the negative psychological issues that can go along with a cancer diagnosis http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/tackle-cancer-with-mindfulness/. So engaging in these forms of prayer may work through the same mechanism as meditation in improving the mood of cancer patients.

Hence it appears that the common response of cancer patients to pray is more than just an expression of religious faith. It has a positive impact on the patient’s psychological well-being which is known to improve the prognosis for recovery.

So, pray when cancer is diagnosed, reduce depression, and increase survival chances.

CMCS

 

What’s Right about Being Wrong

psyjdc Leave a comment

 

“To make mistakes or be wrong is human. To admit those mistakes shows you have the ability to learn, and are growing wiser.” ― Donald L. Hicks

As humans we fear being wrong. Making a mistake is seen as weakness, as a lack of understanding, as not paying sufficient attention to the task, as not trying hard enough, as a lack of ability, or possibly as lack of foresight. In other words we tend to see being wrong as a negative reflection on ourselves. As a result making a mistake lowers our self-esteem and reinforces the western disease of low self-worth.

The fear of being wrong can produce a paralysis where we would rather do nothing than risk making an error. It produces automatic, tried and true, decision making, minimizing risk.

It inhibits creativity as it is seen as too risky and likely to produce an error.

On the other side of the coin we try too hard to make sure that we are right. We tend to go along with the crowd to win their approval. We shift the blame for an error to others. We defend ourselves constantly and thereby fail to investigate carefully what occurred. All of this leads to poor but safe performance that preserves our self-esteem at the cost of being mediocre. “Our love of being right is best understood as our fear of being wrong” ― Kathryn Schulz

But “to err is human.” We all make mistakes. I like to say that if you’re not making mistakes then you’re not trying hard enough. If we’re not making mistakes then we are not learning anything new. Scientists know this well. Science advances when theories are shown to be wrong not when they’ve been supported. We learn nothing new when we interact with people and all of us act predictably. We only learn new things about our fellow humans when someone does something that we didn’t expect. Then we have to revise our thinking. We learn something new.

True creativity involves risk. It involves doing, seeing, or saying something that hasn’t been done, seen, or said before. Since, it’s never been tried, it is just as likely to be wrong as to be right. In some ways, making mistakes is a sign of creativity, of thinking “out of the box.” “To live a creative life we must first lose the fear of being wrong.” ― Joseph Chilton Pearce

Mistakes are much more informative than being correct. The latter only reinforces what you already know while the former gives us information to craft new understanding. In a sense there’s a lot right with being wrong. But first we must lose our fear of it.

One of the benefits of contemplative practice is that it allows us to view our activities with less fear and more understanding. It can help us laugh at ourselves. It can assist us in understanding that making a mistake doesn’t mean we’re not worth much. To the contrary it means we’re trying. It means were working at making things better. It means that we’re a contributor to our life and the lives of others. We should be proud when we fail and yell out “Eureka, I’ve learned.”

So, attack life with individuality, zest, and creativity and relish your mistakes as wonderful learning opportunities.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies