Emotions

Improve Control of Emotions with Meditation Practice

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Improve Control of Emotions with Meditation Practice

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“meditation may result in enduring, beneficial changes in brain function, especially in the area of emotional processing.” – Gaëlle Desbordes

 

Mindfulness practice has been shown to produce improved emotion regulation. Practitioners demonstrate the ability to fully sense and experience emotions, but respond to them in more appropriate and adaptive ways. In other words, mindful people are better able to experience yet control emotions. This is a very important consequence of mindfulness. Humans are very emotional creatures and these emotions can be very pleasant, providing the spice of life. But, when they get extreme they can produce misery and even mental illness. The ability of mindfulness training to improve emotion regulation is thought to be the basis for a wide variety of benefits that mindfulness provides to mental health and the treatment of mental illness especially depression and anxiety disorders.

 

The immediate state of mindfulness has been shown to produce positive consequences but the development of long-term (trait) mindfulness has enduring benefits. It appears to do so, by producing relatively permanent changes to the nervous system, increasing the activity, size, and connectivity of some structures while decreasing it for others in a process known as neuroplasticity. So, mindfulness practice appears to affect emotion regulation by producing neuroplastic changes to the structures of the nervous system that underlie emotion.

 

One way to investigate the changes in the brain’s processing of emotions is to measure the nervous systems electrical responses to emotional stimuli, known as event related potentials (ERP). In today’s Research News article “Deconstructing the Emotion Regulatory Properties of Mindfulness: An Electrophysiological Investigation.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1383896588300930/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5013076/

Lin and colleagues investigate the effects of short-term mindfulness vs. long-term mindfulness practice on the electrical response to the nervous system to emotional stimuli (ERP) called the late positive potential (LPP). It is recorded from the Parietal Lobe of the cortex and is a positive voltage occurring 300–800 milliseconds after the presentation of emotionally evocative stimuli and lasts for several seconds. The LPP is greater with more emotionally evocative stimuli. So, the LPP can index the magnitude of individual’s emotional responding. Lin and colleagues randomly assigned female college students who had not previously meditated to either receive a 20-minute guided meditation or a lecture on learning a second language. They were further randomly subdivided to view pictures either mindfully or “naturally.” There were three kinds of pictures presented, emotionally negative high arousing, negative low arousing, or neutral. Participants were also measured for trait mindfulness.

 

They found that the late positive potential (LPP) was sensitive to the stimuli with greater positive LPP to the emotionally negative high arousing than the negative low arousing, or neutral stimuli. The brief meditation and trait mindfulness, but not the mindfulness instruction, reduced the magnitude of the response to the emotionally negative high arousing stimuli. They also found that the higher the level of trait mindfulness in the participants the greater the reduction in the response to the emotionally negative high arousing stimuli. These results suggest that mindfulness can reduce neural responses to emotional stimuli and that the greatest responses occur to people high in trait mindfulness. This further suggests that the more the practice, the greater the mindfulness, and the greater the reduction in emotional responding.

 

These findings help us to better understand the processes that result in mindfulness training’s ability to improve emotion regulation. Long-term mindfulness, trait mindfulness, has the most powerful effects while simple one-time meditation practices can produce effects, albeit smaller. All of this suggests that the brain adapts to mindfulness training by altering its responsiveness to emotional stimuli and events making the individual better at regulating their emotions, with the greater the mindfulness produced the greater the improvement.

 

So, improve control of emotions with meditation practice.

 

“As with all emotion, the practice of meditation can stabilize us enough in the midst of fear to help us see more clearly—to distinguish a false threat from a real threat that needs to be acted upon. The type of fear meditation can have the most effect on is the fear (and fears) that we continually generate in our own minds, the product of our rich imagination and our desire to control everything, rather than be tossed around in the risky and stormy world.” – Mindful Staff

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Lin, Y., Fisher, M. E., Roberts, S. M. M., & Moser, J. S. (2016). Deconstructing the Emotion Regulatory Properties of Mindfulness: An Electrophysiological Investigation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 451. http://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00451

 

Abstract

The present study sought to uncover the emotion regulatory properties of mindfulness by examining its effects—differentiated as a meditative practice, state of mind and dispositional trait—on the late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potentials (ERPs) indexing emotional processing. Results revealed that mindfulness as a meditative practice produced a reduction in the difference between the LPP response to negative high arousing and neutral stimuli across time. In contrast, a state mindfulness induction (i.e., instructions to attend to the stimuli mindfully) failed to modulate the LPP. Dispositional mindfulness, however, was related to modulation of the LPP as a function of meditation practice. Dispositional mindfulness was associated with a reduction of the LPP response to negative high arousal stimuli and the difference between negative high arousal and neutral stimuli in participants who listened to a control audio recording but not for those who engaged in the guided meditation practice. Together, these findings provide experimental evidence demonstrating that brief mindfulness meditation, but not deliberate engagement in state mindfulness, produces demonstrable changes in emotional processing indicative of reduced emotional reactivity. Importantly, these effects are akin to those observed in individuals with naturally high dispositional mindfulness, suggesting that the benefits of mindfulness can be cultivated through practice.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5013076/

 

Spiral Up Your Mood with Walking Meditation

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walking-meditatio2-gotink

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“One of the most useful and grounding ways of attending to our body is the practice of walking meditation. Walking meditation is a simple and universal practice for developing calm, connectedness, and embodied awareness. It can be practiced regularly, before or after sitting meditation or any time on its own, such as after a busy day at work or on a lazy Sunday morning. The art of walking meditation is to learn to be aware as you walk, to use the natural movement of walking to cultivate mindfulness and wakeful presence.” – Jack Kornfield

 

Contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga, and tai chi / qigong, have been shown to elevate mood in normal individuals and individuals who suffer from mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Two common techniques used with patients with mood disorders are Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Both of these therapies contain a number of mindfulness training techniques including sitting meditation, body scan, and walking meditation. Although the effects of sitting meditation have been well documented, little is known about the effects of walking meditation.

 

It has long been reported that walking in nature elevates mood. It appears intuitively obvious that if it occurred in a beautiful natural place, it would greatly lift the spirits. But, there is little systematic research regarding these effects. It’s possible that conducting walking meditation in nature might potentiate the effects by combining two mood enhancing practices. In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness and mood stimulate each other in an upward spiral: a mindful walking intervention using experience sampling.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1355140297843226/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5010615/

Gotink and colleagues studied the effects of waking meditation in nature on the moods of adults who had completed courses in either Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) or Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). The participants were measured a week before and during a walking meditation retreat of either 1, 3, or 6-days. Walking occurred in nature along the river Rhine in the Netherlands. During the walk their moods (content, cheerful, relaxed, energetic, calm, sad, irritated, insecure, and tense and mindful observing, acting with awareness, non-judgment, and non-reacting) were sampled at random times by responding to a signal on a cell phone which also collected the responses. Before and after the control and walking periods the participants filled out scales measuring depression, anxiety, rumination, and mindfulness.

 

They found that the mindful walking significantly increased positive moods and mindfulness and decreased negative moods. They also found that state mindfulness at one sampling significantly predicted increased positive moods and decreased negative moods at the next sampling. Similarly, positive moods at one sampling significantly predicted increased state mindfulness at the next sampling while negative moods at one sampling significantly predicted decreased state mindfulness at the next sampling. These findings suggest that walking in nature improves mood and that mindfulness increases appear to precede improvements in mood.

 

These are interesting findings. They demonstrate that the experience sampling method can be employed to monitor the growth in mindfulness and mood during walking in a natural setting. They further suggest that walking in nature produces an upward spiral of mindfulness and mood enhancement where increased mindfulness at one moment increases mood at the next which increases mindfulness at the next which increases mood at the next and so on.

 

So, spiral up your mood with walking meditation.

 

“The Buddha stressed developing mindfulness in the four main postures of the body:  standing, sitting, lying down and walking.  He exhorted us to be mindful in all these postures, to create a clear awareness and recollection of what we are doing when we are in any particular posture.” – Buddhist Society of Western Australia

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Gotink, R. A., Hermans, K. S. F. M., Geschwind, N., De Nooij, R., De Groot, W. T., & Speckens, A. E. M. (2016). Mindfulness and mood stimulate each other in an upward spiral: a mindful walking intervention using experience sampling. Mindfulness, 7(5), 1114–1122. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-016-0550-8

 

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of mindful walking in nature as a possible means to maintain mindfulness skills after a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) or mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course. Mindful walking alongside the river Rhine took place for 1, 3, 6, or 10 days, with a control period of a similar number of days, 1 week before the mindful walking period. In 29 mindfulness participants, experience sampling method (ESM) was performed during the control and mindful walking period. Smartphones offered items on positive and negative affect and state mindfulness at random times during the day. Furthermore, self-report questionnaires were administered before and after the control and mindful walking period, assessing depression, anxiety, stress, brooding, and mindfulness skills. ESM data showed that walking resulted in a significant improvement of both mindfulness and positive affect, and that state mindfulness and positive affect prospectively enhanced each other in an upward spiral. The opposite pattern was observed with state mindfulness and negative affect, where increased state mindfulness predicted less negative affect. Exploratory questionnaire data indicated corresponding results, though non-significant due to the small sample size. This is the first time that ESM was used to assess interactions between state mindfulness and momentary affect during a mindfulness intervention of several consecutive days, showing an upward spiral effect. Mindful walking in nature may be an effective way to maintain mindfulness practice and further improve psychological functioning.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5010615/

Improve Brain Processing of Emotions in the Elderly with Meditation

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Yet until recently little was known about how a few hours of quiet reflection each week could lead to such an intriguing range of mental and physical effects. Now, as the popularity of mindfulness grows, brain imaging techniques are revealing that this ancient practice can profoundly change the way different regions of the brain communicate with each other – and therefore how we think – permanently.” –  Tom Ireland

 

Meditation training has been shown to alter the nervous system, increasing the size and connectivity of structures associated with present moment awareness, higher level thinking, and regulation of emotions, while decreasing the size and connectivity of structures associated with mind wandering and self-referential thinking, known as the Default Mode Network (DMN). The brain is capable of changing and adapting in a process called neuroplasticity. As a result, the neural changes produced by meditation training become relatively permanent.

 

Meditation training has also been shown to produce improvements in emotion regulation. Most of the research to date on the neural systems altered by meditation training has focused on higher level cortical centers. But, emotions involve lower centers such as those located in the Pons in primitive brain stem. In today’s Research News article “Pons to Posterior Cingulate Functional Projections Predict Affective Processing Changes in the Elderly Following Eight Weeks of Meditation Training.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1349231245100798/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5006446/

Shao and colleagues investigate the changes in connectivity between the Pons sites involved in emotions and the Posterior Cingulate Cortex and the Precuneus area which are important in the Default Mode Network (DMN). They recruited elderly (>60 years of age) participants with no experience with meditation or relaxation training through newspaper ads. They were randomly assigned to receive 8-weeks of either meditation training or relaxation training. Training occurred with 1.5-hour training sessions occurring 3 time per week. All participants received functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) brain scans and were tested with an emotion processing task both before and after training.

 

They found that after meditation training the elderly participants had moderated emotional responses that converged toward the middle, such that positive emotions were not as positive and arousing while negative emotions were not as negative and arousing as prior to training. This effect did not occur in the relaxation trained participants. They also found increased functional connectivity between the Pons emotion centers and the Posterior Cingulate Cortex and the Precuneus area components of the Default Mode Network (DMN). The increased connectivity was primarily in the Pons to DMN direction. In addition, the greater the change in the connectivity the greater the reduction in negative emotional responses by the participants. Again, these effect did not occur in the relaxation trained participants.

 

These are interesting results that extend the previous findings on improved emotion regulation after meditation training as the training was found to moderate emotional reactivity, making both positive and negative emotions less extreme. They further showed that this moderation of emotions is associated with increased connectivity between the areas of primitive emotion in the Pontine brain stem and the higher level Default Mode Network (DMN) procession in the Cerebral Cortex. These effects were shown to be due to the meditation training as relaxation training did not produce them.

 

One of the ways that emotions can get out of hand is by ruminating about past emotional responses and worrying about future emotional responses. This can increase the magnitude of emotional responses. Rumination and worry is the role of the DMN. The present research suggests that the improve emotion regulation seen after meditation training may be due to the increased influence of lower emotion centers on reducing the activation of the brain areas responsible for rumination and worry. In that way emotions can be experienced and analyzed as real time experiences and not amplified beyond their actual magnitude. This is a tremendous benefit of meditation training, allowing for more realistic appraisal of emotions.

 

So, improve brain processing of emotions in the elderly with meditation.

 

“One way to do this is mindfulness meditation, in which you observe your thoughts and feelings with the objectivity of a disinterested, nonjudgmental witness. This form of mental training gives you “the wherewithal to pause, observe how easily the mind can exaggerate the severity of a setback, note that it as an interesting mental process, and resist getting drawn into the abyss,” – Richie Davidson

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Robin Shao, Kati Keuper, Xiujuan Geng, Tatia M.C. Lee. Pons to Posterior Cingulate Functional Projections Predict Affective Processing Changes in the Elderly Following Eight Weeks of Meditation Training. EBioMedicine. 2016 Aug; 10: 236–248. Published online 2016 Jun 15. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2016.06.018

 

Abstract

Evidence indicates meditation facilitates affective regulation and reduces negative affect. It also influences resting-state functional connectivity between affective networks and the posterior cingulate (PCC)/precuneus, regions critically implicated in self-referential processing. However, no longitudinal study employing active control group has examined the effect of meditation training on affective processing, PCC/precuneus connectivity, and their association. Here, we report that eight-week meditation, but not relaxation, training ‘neutralized’ affective processing of positive and negative stimuli in healthy elderly participants. Additionally, meditation versus relaxation training increased the positive connectivity between the PCC/precuneus and the pons, the direction of which was largely directed from the pons to the PCC/precuneus, as revealed by dynamic causal modeling. Further, changes in connectivity between the PCC/precuneus and pons predicted changes in affective processing after meditation training. These findings indicate meditation promotes self-referential affective regulation based on increased regulatory influence of the pons on PCC/precuneus, which new affective-processing strategy is employed across both resting state and when evaluating affective stimuli. Such insights have clinical implications on interventions on elderly individuals with affective disorders.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5006446/

 

Improve the Brain’s Emotional Responses with Mindfulness

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Meditation gives you the wherewithal to pause, observe how easily the mind can exaggerate the severity of a setback, and resist getting drawn back into the abyss.”— Richie Davidson

 

We’re very emotional creatures. Without emotion, life is flat and uninteresting. Emotions provide the spice of life. We are constantly having or reacting to emotions. We often go to great lengths in an attempt to create or keep positive emotions and conversely to avoid, mitigate, or get rid of negative emotions. They are so important to us that they affect mostly everything that we do and say and can even be determinants of life or death. Anger, fear, and hate can lead to murderous consequences. Anxiety and depression can lead to suicide. At the same time love, joy, and happiness can make life worth living. Our emotions also affect us physically with positive emotions associated with health, well-being, and longevity and negative emotions associated with stress, disease, and shorter life spans. The importance of emotions is only surpassed by our ignorance of them.

 

Emotions occur automatically and reflexively to particularly stimuli in the environment. For example, the sight of a snake almost universally evokes a fear response, or conversely the sight of a baby smiling almost universally evokes loving feelings. Psychologists have demonstrated that these reflexive emotional reactions can be transferred to other stimuli. This occurs in a process first described by Pavlov called classical conditioning. For example, seeing a snake in a flower pot can later produce fear responses to the flower pot itself. This is called emotional learning.

 

One of the most important effects of mindfulness training is improving emotion regulation. Research has demonstrated that people either spontaneously high in mindfulness or trained in mindfulness are better able to be completely in touch with their emotions and feel them completely, while being able to respond to them more appropriately and adaptively. In other words, mindful people are better able to experience yet control emotions. The influence of mindfulness training on emotional learning has not, however, been extensively studied.

 

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Fear Conditioning, and The Uncinate Fasciculus: A Pilot Study.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1312616582095598/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4908122/

Hölzel and colleagues randomly assigned adult participants to either receive an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program or be placed on a wait-list. Prior to and after the 8-week training period, both groups were assessed for mindfulness, perceived stress, and emotion regulation ability. They were also tested with a 2-day fear conditioning emotional learning, extinction and retention of extinction procedure which occurred while the participants laid in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. The conditioning occurred to red and blue lights paired with a mild electric shock. Then only one light and not the other was paired with shock so that the fear response to one would decline in strength (extinguish).

 

They found that the MBSR training produced significant improvements in mindfulness, emotion regulation and perceived stress. In addition, the more home practice the participants engaged in the greater the improvement. They found that the MBSR participants retained the fear conditioning from prior to, to after the conditioning while the control group did not. In addition, MBSR was found to produce a significant increase in the fiber density, axonal diameter, and myelination of the Uncinate fasciclus; in other words, it increased the size of this fiber tract that interconnects the limbic system to the frontal lobes. Aslo, the greater the increase in the size of the Uncinate, the stronger the increase in the strength of the fear conditioning.

 

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that mindfulness (MBSR) training increases emotion regulation and decreases stress responses. So, these results in the present study were no surprise. The increased retention of the fear conditioning found after mindfulness training is interesting and suggests that the training did what is was supposed to, increasing attentiveness to environmental stimuli and thus making the individual more responsive to them over longer periods. It is possible that mindfulness training, by improving emotion regulation and stress responding allowed for better appreciation and control of prior emotional conditioning. Hence, mindfulness training appears to make us better at being attentive to and regulating both our primary and secondary (learned) emotions.

 

The improved retention of the fear conditioning may also result from the increased size of the Uncinate fasciculus which connects the limbic system which is known to be involved in emotions to the frontal lobes which are known to be involved in emotion regulation. Hence, the MBSR training appears to have altered the brain to accentuate the processing and regulation of emotional signals. These kind of changes in brain structure, known as neuroplasticity, are commonly found after mindfulness training. In the case of the present study the change in the brain produced by mindfulness training appears to alter the individual’s responsiveness and control of their emotions.

 

So, improve the brain’s emotional responses with mindfulness.

 

“Mindfulness practice isn’t meant to eliminate thinking but aims rather to help us know what we’re thinking when we’re thinking it, just as we want to know what we’re feeling when we’re feeling it. Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we’re heading toward an unhealthy path, and if so, let go and change directions. It allows us to see that who we are is much more than a fearful or envious or angry thought. We can rest in the awareness of the thought, in the compassion we extend to ourselves if the thought makes us uncomfortable, and in the balance and good sense we summon as we decide whether and how to act on the thought.” – Sharon Salzberg

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Hölzel, B. K., Brunsch, V., Gard, T., Greve, D. N., Koch, K., Sorg, C., … Milad, M. R. (2016). Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Fear Conditioning, and The Uncinate Fasciculus: A Pilot Study. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 10, 124. http://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00124

 

Abstract

Mindfulness has been suggested to impact emotional learning, but research on these processes is scarce. The classical fear conditioning/extinction/extinction retention paradigm is a well-known method for assessing emotional learning. The present study tested the impact of mindfulness training on fear conditioning and extinction memory and further investigated whether changes in white matter fiber tracts might support such changes. The uncinate fasciculus (UNC) was of particular interest in the context of emotional learning. In this pilot study, 46 healthy participants were quasi-randomized to a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR,N = 23) or waitlist control (N = 23) group and underwent a two-day fear conditioning, extinction learning, and extinction memory protocol before and after the course or control period. Skin conductance response (SCR) data served to measure the physiological response during conditioning and extinction memory phases. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were analyzed with probabilistic tractography and analyzed for changes of fractional anisotropy in the UNC. During conditioning, participants were able to maintain a differential response to conditioned vs. not conditioned stimuli following the MBSR course (i.e., higher sensitivity to the conditioned stimuli), while controls dropped the response. Extinction memory results were not interpretable due to baseline differences. MBSR participants showed a significant increase in fractional anisotropy in the UNC, while controls did not (group by time interaction missed significance). Pre-post changes in UNC were correlated with changes in the response to the conditioned stimuli. The findings suggest effects of mindfulness practice on the maintenance of sensitivity of emotional responses and suggest underlying neural plasticity.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4908122/

 

Adapt to Emotions with Mindfulness

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Through mindfulness you can learn to turn your difficult emotions into your greatest teachers and sources of strength. How? Instead of ‘turning away’ from pain in avoidance we can learn to gently ‘turn towards’ what we’re experiencing. We can bring a caring open attention toward the wounded parts of ourselves and make wise choices about how to respond to ourselves and to life.” – Melissa O’Brien

 

One of the most important effects of mindfulness training is improving emotion regulation. Its importance arises out of the fact that we’re very emotional creatures. Without emotion, life is flat and uninteresting. Emotions provide the spice of life. We are constantly having or reacting to emotions. We often go to great lengths in an attempt to create or keep positive emotions and conversely to avoid, mitigate, or get rid of negative emotions. They are so important to us that they affect mostly everything that we do and say and can even be determinants of life or death. Anger, fear, and hate can lead to murderous consequences. Anxiety and depression can lead to suicide. At the same time love, joy, and happiness can make life worth living. Our emotions also affect us physically with positive emotions associated with health, well-being, and longevity and negative emotions associated with stress, disease, and shorter life spans.

 

The importance of emotions is only surpassed by our ignorance of them. Our rational side tries to downplay their significance and as a result research studies of emotions are fairly sparse and often ridiculed by politicians. So there is a great need for research on the nature of emotions, their effects, how they are regulated or not, and what factors affect them. One important factor is mindfulness. Research has demonstrated that people either spontaneously high in mindfulness or trained in mindfulness are better able to be completely in touch with their emotions and feel them completely, while being able to respond to them more appropriately and adaptively. In other words, mindful people are better able to experience yet control emotions.

 

In today’s Research News article “Mechanisms of mindfulness: the dynamics of affective adaptation during open monitoring.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1261033743920549/?type=3&theater

or below.

Uusberg and colleagues investigate the development of emotion regulation with mindfulness practice. It is difficult to measure emotion regulation directly while meditating. But, it can be measured indirectly by recording the electrical responses of the brain to emotional stimuli. In particular, the Late Positive Potential (LPP) has been shown to be sensitive to the intensity of emotional responses. It is a positive going waveform recorded from the brain that occurs between half a second to a second and a half after a picture is presented.

 

Uusberg and colleagues recruited meditation naïve participants and asked them to view either pictures that were neutral (everyday urban scenes) or that evoked negative emotional reactions (accidents or attacks). They viewed the pictures under three different conditions, an attention condition, where they were asked to pay attention to the details of the pictures, a mindful viewing condition where they were asked to experience “all arising thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations in an accepting manner without trying to change them”, or a distraction condition where they were asked to count backward while viewing the pictures. They then measured the Late Positive Potential (LPP) and how it changed as practice continued.

 

They found that during mindful viewing the amplitude of the LPP was initially significantly larger than the other conditions when negative images were viewed, suggesting that initially mindful viewing evokes strong emotional responses. But then the response disappeared and the LPP for the neutral and the negative images were equivalent for the mindfulness condition. This elimination of the emotional response in later trials did not occur in the other conditions. This suggests that the mindfulness condition produces an eventual loss of emotional responding.

 

These results are interesting and suggest that mindfulness meditation initially makes the meditator more sensitive to emotions but with practice becomes insensitive. Since mindfulness meditation requests that the meditator pay attention to their own internal reactions, it is reasonable that the emotional responses would be more vigorous. Over time however, the attention to the emotion responses appear to result in their extinction. This could be seen as simply getting used to it and not responding as before, sometimes called habituation. All of this suggests that the improvement in emotion regulation resulting from meditation is due to an enhancement of the extinction process produced by paying attention to the feelings.

 

These results also demonstrate how quickly the blunted emotional response occurs, within a brief time at the beginning of meditation practice for beginning meditators. As such, emotion regulation may be one of the earliest effects of mindfulness training. Hence, emotion regulation may make be the basis for later effects such as stress reduction or decreased inflammatory responses. Regardless, the results suggest that you can adapt to emotions with mindfulness and we know that this has profound effects on the health and well-being of the individual.

 

“This is just what the practice of mindfulness helps us remember. Working with emotions during our meditation sessions sharpens our ability to recognize a feeling just as it begins, not 15 consequential actions later. We can then go on to develop a more balanced relationship with it—neither letting it overwhelm us so we lash out rashly nor ignoring it because we’re afraid or ashamed of it.” – Sharon Salzberg

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Uusberg, Helen, Uusberg, Andero, Talpsep, Teri, Paaver, Marika, Mechanisms of mindfulness: the dynamics of affective adaptation during open monitoring. Biological Psychology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.05.004

 

Highlights

  • Mindfulnessinitially increases and then reduces affective LPP amplification.
  • There is no affective amplification during re-exposure to mindfully viewed images.
  • These effects are milder in distraction and attentive-viewing control conditions.
  • In novices a 3-phase emotional adaptation may account for mindfulness effectiveness.

Abstract

Mindfulness − the nonjudgmental awareness of the present experience − is thought to facilitate affective adaptation through increased exposure to emotions and faster extinction of habitual responses. To test this framework, the amplification of the LatePositive Potential (LPP) by negative relative to neutral images was analyzed across stimulus repetitions while 37 novices performed an open monitoring mindfulness exercise. Compared to two active control conditions where attention was either diverted to a distracting task or the stimuli were attended without mindfulness instructions, open monitoring enhanced the initial LPP response to negative stimuli, indicating increased emotional exposure. Across successive repetitions, mindfulness reduced and ultimately removed the affective LPP amplification, suggesting extinction of habitual emotional reactions. This effect arose from reduced negative as well enlarged neutral LPPs. Unlike stimuli from control conditions, the images previously viewed with mindfulness instructions did not elicit affective LPP amplification during subsequent re-exposure, suggesting reconsolidation of stimulus meaning.

 

Practice Yoga in the Morning to Optimize Emotional Well-Being

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Practice Yoga in the Morning to Optimize Emotional Well-Being

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Practice when your body is most limber. Some people find their bodies are stiff in the morning, making practice more difficult. Night practice, however may limit the kinds of postures you do as some are too stimulating and affect sleep. The key is regularity. Enjoy whatever time you have set aside for practice.” – Edith Howell

 

Yoga practice has been shown to have a large number of beneficial effects on the psychological, emotional, and physical health of the individual and is helpful in the treatment of mental and physical illness. As a result, it has been adopted widely in western society including with children in schools. As I quipped to my spouse, “you know yoga has gone mainstream, when yoga pants have become a fashion statement!” But, there are a wide variety of different yoga practices, practiced for different amounts of time, at different number of times per week, at different times of the day. So, as the application of yoga increases, it becomes more and more important to investigate these parameters of yoga practice and their differential effectiveness; to determine the optimal practice parameters for each application.

 

Traditional yoga practice consists of 4-5 practice sessions per week conducted primarily in the morning. But, Western yoga practice has become much looser, with yoga practiced less frequently and often in the evening. It is not known what the impact of this pattern of yoga practice might have on its effectiveness. In today’s Research News article “Evaluating Emotional Well-Being after a Short-Term Traditional Yoga Practice Approach in Yoga Practitioners with an Existing Western-Type Yoga Practice.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1240800935943830/?type=3&theater

or below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4829792/

Meissner and colleagues recruited Ashtanga Yoga practitioners who normally practiced in the evening for 90 minutes, twice a week. Half of the practitioners were asked to maintain their normal practice for two weeks.  The other half were asked to change their practice to the morning for 90 minutes, five times a week for two weeks. Both groups were measured for positive and negative affect, mindfulness, perceived stress, arousal states, and affective regulation style prior to and after the two-week practice period.

 

They found that there were no changes in the emotions, mindfulness, or arousal states of the evening practitioners. But, the morning practitioners showed significant increases in positive emotions (37%) and mindfulness (17.5%) and decreases in negative emotions (29%) and arousal states (15%). Hence, the findings indicate that switching from a twice per week, evening yoga practice to a five times per week morning practice is beneficial for the emotional well-being of the practitioners.

 

An obvious weakness in the study was a confounding of practice change, practice frequency, amount of practice, and time of day of practice. So, it is impossible to determine which of these variables or which combinations of these variables may be responsible for the emotional improvements. Future research should manipulate each of these variable independently and in combination to differentiate what works and what doesn’t. It should also be noted that the test was only conducted over two weeks. This leaves open the question as to whether the effects would be sustained into the future or perhaps just the novelty of change was responsible for the effects.

 

So, it is possible that practicing yoga in the morning improves emotional well-being.

 

“A morning yoga practice wakes you up, stretches stiff muscles you haven’t used all night, revs up your circulation, and breaks out a healthy sweat before your morning shower and breakfast.” – Lorraine Shea

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Meissner, M., Cantell, M. H., Steiner, R., & Sanchez, X. (2016). Evaluating Emotional Well-Being after a Short-Term Traditional Yoga Practice Approach in Yoga Practitioners with an Existing Western-Type Yoga Practice. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine : eCAM, 2016, 7216982. http://doi.org/10.1155/2016/7216982

 

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of a traditional yoga practice approach (morning daily practice, TY) compared to that of a Western yoga practice approach (once-twice weekly, evening practice, WY) on determinants of emotional well-being. To that end, in a pre/posttest between-subject design, measures of positive (PA) and negative affect (NA), mindfulness, perceived stress, and arousal states were taken in 24 healthy participants (20 women; mean age: 30.5, SD = 8.1 years) with an already existing WY practice, who either maintained WY or underwent a 2-week, five-times-per-week morning practice (TY). While WY participants maintained baseline values for all measures taken, TY participants showed significant beneficial changes for PA, NA, and mindfulness and a trend for improved ability to cope with stress at the completion of the intervention. Furthermore, TY participants displayed decreased subjective energy and energetic arousal. Altogether, findings indicate that the 2-week TY is beneficial over WY for improving perceived emotional well-being. The present findings (1) undermine and inspire a careful consideration and utilization of yoga practice approach to elicit the best benefits for emotional well-being and (2) support yoga as an evidence-based practice among healthy yoga practitioners.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4829792/

 

Promote Adaptive Emotions with Mindful Non-Judgment

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“By cultivating such mindfulness of emotions, we can build our resiliency to handle all of the intense experiences associated with urban living. We can limit our ability to get hijacked by emotions, which can carry us away to undesired places (like getting on the wrong subway).” – Jonathan Kaplan

 

We are very emotional creatures. Without emotion, life is flat and uninteresting. Emotions provide the spice of life. We are constantly having or reacting to emotions. We often go to great lengths in an attempt to create or keep positive emotions and conversely to avoid, mitigate, or get rid of negative emotions. They are so important to us that they affect mostly everything that we do and say and can even be determinants of life or death. Anger, fear, and hate can lead to murderous consequences. Anxiety and depression can lead to suicide. At the same time love, joy, and happiness can make life worth living. Our emotions also affect us physically with positive emotions associated with health, well-being, and longevity and negative emotions associated with stress, disease, and shorter life spans.

 

The importance of emotions is only surpassed by our ignorance of them. Our rational side tries to downplay their significance and as a result research studies of emotions are fairly sparse and often ridiculed by politicians. So there is a great need for research on the nature of emotions, their effects, how they are regulated or not, and what factors affect them. One important factor is mindfulness, which has been shown to affect our ability to regulate emotions. Research has demonstrated that people either spontaneously high in mindfulness or trained in mindfulness are better able to be completely in touch with their emotions and feel them completely, while being able to respond to them more appropriately and adaptively. In other words, mindful people are better able to experience yet control emotions.

 

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness and Emotional Outcomes: Identifying Subgroups of College Students using Latent Profile Analysis.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1235541963136394/?type=3&theater

or below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4269250/

Pearson and colleagues explore the components of mindfulness and how they relate to emotions in college students. They measured mindfulness with the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) which measures the mindfulness components of observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging, and non-reactivity. Using sophisticated statistical analysis they were able to identify 4 distinct classes of student responses; a high mindfulness group that were relatively high on every facet of mindfulness; a low mindfulness group that were relatively low on every facet of mindfulness; a judgmentally observing group that is high in observing but very low on non-judging of inner experience and acting with awareness;  and a non-judgmentally aware group that were high on non-judging of inner experience and acting with awareness, but very low on the observing facet of mindfulness.

 

They found that the “high mindfulness” and “non-judgmentally aware” groups did not differ and had lower depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, affective lability, and distress intolerance. On the other hand, the “judgmentally observing” groups had higher depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, affective lability, and distress intolerance. Finally, they found that the “low mindfulness group” was in the middle significantly better than the “judgmentally observing” group, but significantly worse than the “non-judgmentally aware” and “high mindfulness groups” in adaptive emotionality. Hence, having high mindfulness and being aware without judging are associated with relatively positive emotional states while observing while judging experiences is associated with relatively negative emotional states. Simply being low in mindfulness is associated with an average emotional state.

 

These results suggest that mindfulness is associated with positive emotional states but judging experience is associated with poor emotional states. So, being overall mindful and particularly non-judging leads to the most adaptive emotional states. This reinforces the previous findings of mindfulness promotion emotional regulation. But, they extend this understanding to emphasize just how important judging experience is; if its judged it leads to poor emotional outcomes while if it’s not, it leads to positive emotional outcomes. Although correlational these observations suggest that emotional states can be elevated with mindful non-judgement.

 

So, promote adaptive emotions with mindful non-judgment.

 

“For many of us, instead of feeling our emotions, we criticize ourselves for having them. We call ourselves weak, dramatic, stupid, too sensitive. . . we get angry with ourselves for feeling scared or upset. We become disgusted when we’re jealous of others. We get frustrated when we’re still grieving a breakup or a fight. The key is to accept our emotions.” – Margarita Tartakovsky

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Pearson, M. R., Lawless, A. K., Brown, D. B., & Bravo, A. J. (2015). Mindfulness and Emotional Outcomes: Identifying Subgroups of College Students using Latent Profile Analysis. Personality and Individual Differences,76, 33–38. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.009

 

Highlights

  • We used latent profile analysis to group college students based on mindfulness scores
  • A 4-class solution was selected, leading to four subgroups of college students
  • High mindfulness and non-judgmentally aware groups had adaptive outcomes
  • Low mindfulness and judgmentally observing groups had maladaptive outcomes
  • We discuss the implications of person-centered analyses for studying mindfulness

Abstract

In non-meditating samples, distinct facets of mindfulness are found to be negatively correlated, preventing the meaningful creation of a total mindfulness score. The present study used person-centered analyses to distinguish subgroups of college students based on their mindfulness scores, which allows the examination of individuals who are high (or low) on all facets of mindfulness. Using the Lo-Mendell-Rubin Adjusted LRT test, we settled on a 4-class solution that included a high mindfulness group (high on all 5 facets, N = 245), low mindfulness group (moderately low on all 5 facets, N = 563), judgmentally observing group (high on observing, but low on non-judging and acting with awareness, N =63), and non-judgmentally aware group (low on observing, but high on non-judging and acting with awareness, N =70). Consistent across all emotional outcomes including depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms (i.e., worry), affective instability, and distress intolerance, we found that the judgmentally observing group had the most maladaptive emotional outcomes followed by the low mindfulness group. Both the high mindfulness group and the non-judgmentally aware group had the most adaptive emotional outcomes. We discuss the implications of person-centered analyses to exploring mindfulness as it relates to important psychological health outcomes.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4269250/

Increase Health Behaviors with Mindfulness

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By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Even though the academic research on mindfulness meditation isn’t as robust as, say, nutrition or exercise, there is a reason why it’s been around for literally thousands of years. And we’re starting to get a better understanding of why it seems to be beneficial for so many aspects of life, from disease and pain management, to sleep, to control of emotions.” – Amanda Chan

 

We tend to think that illness is produced by physical causes, disease, injury, viruses, bacteria, etc. But, many health problems are behavioral problems or have their origins in maladaptive behavior. This is evident in car accident injuries that are frequently due to behaviors, such as texting while driving, driving too fast or aggressively, or driving drunk. Other problematic behaviors are cigarette smoking, alcoholism, drug use, or unprotected sex. Problems can also be produced by lack of appropriate behavior such as sedentary lifestyle, not eating a healthy diet, not getting sufficient sleep or rest, or failing to take medications according to the physician’s orders. Additionally, behavioral issues can be subtle contributors to disease such as denying a problem and failing to see a physician timely or not washing hands. In fact, many modern health issues, costing the individual or society billions of dollars each year, and reducing longevity, are largely preventable. Hence, promoting healthy behaviors and eliminating unhealthy ones has the potential to markedly improve health.

 

Mindfulness training has been shown to promote health and improve illness. It appears to be associated with a number of factors that also promote health including emotion regulation, stress management, and immune function. Many of the improvements occur by changing health behaviors. This suggests that mindfulness may affect health indirectly through intermediaries, with mindfulness affecting an intermediary which in turn affects health behaviors which in turn affects health.

 

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness facets, trait emotional intelligence, emotional distress, and multiple health behaviors: A serial two-mediator model.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1230914793599111/?type=3&theater

or see below

Jacobs and colleagues explore the role of emotional intelligence and stress management as intermediaries between mindfulness and health behaviors. They had a large group of occupational therapists complete a series of tests on-line and conducted sophisticated statistical analyses to determine mediation effects of emotional intelligence and stress management between four different facets of mindfulness, observing, describing, acting with awareness and accepting without judging, and health behaviors.

 

They found that all of the mindfulness facets were significantly associated with positive health behaviors. The observing facet was primarily associated directly with health behaviors while the mindfulness facets of acting with awareness and accepting without judging affected health behaviors indirectly by affecting emotional intelligence and stress management which in turn, improved health behavior. Hence, the effects of mindfulness on health behaviors is partially direct with observing and indirect through emotional intelligence and stress management for the acting with awareness and accepting without judging facets.

 

These results suggest that observing, being able to notice and pay attention to internal and external occurrences, allow the individual to be better able to change their health behavior. Perhaps, being more aware of the effects of behavior on the body, the condition of the body, and the links to external conditions is helpful in motivating behavioral change. In other words, improved awareness of what the individual is doing and its consequences produces positive change in what the individual does.

 

Emotional intelligence involves being able to experience emotions fully without judging them. The mindfulness facet of accepting involves “being nonjudgmental and allowing the experienced

phenomena to be as they are without attempting to avoid, change or eliminate them.” Hence, mindfully accepting emotions is itself a component of emotional intelligence. In addition, emotional intelligence involves acting appropriately and adaptively in response to the emotions. This includes acting with awareness. Hence, the mindfulness facet of acting with awareness would be directly linked to emotional intelligence. In turn, emotional intelligence would allow for a more rational and adaptive response to our situation which would include promoting health behavior. So, the ability of mindfulness to produce positive health behaviors occurs in part directly and in part through its relationship with emotional intelligence.

 

The most important message here is that mindfulness can contribute greatly to your health. It improves your behavior to take better care of your health and it also improves the way you deal with your emotions making you better able to cope with the stresses of everyday life, improving your health. So, increase health behaviors with mindfulness.

 

“people who have battled with health problems for years find relief through accepting and working with their condition in a new way, dropping the desperate struggle to make things different from how they are. Mindfulness training makes it possible for a different kind of healing to take place, creating an open space of awareness from which people can start choosing to live well, as best they can, even with a serious illness.” – Line Goguen-Hughes

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

 

Study Summary

Jacobs, I., Wollny, A., Sim, C.-W. & Horsch, A. (2016). Mindfulness facets, trait emotional intelligence, emotional distress, and multiple health behaviors: A serial two-mediator model. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology

 

Abstract

In the present study, we tested a serial mindfulness facets-trait emotional intelligence (TEI)-emotional distress-multiple health behaviors mediation model in a sample of N = 427 German-speaking occupational therapists. The mindfulness facets-TEI-emotional distress section of the mediation model revealed partial mediation for the mindfulness facets Act with awareness (Act/Aware) and Accept without judgment (Accept); inconsistent mediation was found for the Describe facet. The serial two-mediator model included three mediational pathways that may link each of the four mindfulness facets with multiple health behaviors. Eight out of 12 indirect effects reached significance and fully mediated the links between Act/Aware and Describe to multiple health behaviors; partial mediation was found for Accept. The mindfulness facet Observe was most relevant for multiple health behaviors, but its relation was not amenable to mediation. Implications of the findings will be discussed.

 

Promote Adaptive Emotions with Mindfulness

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Promote Adaptive Emotions with Mindfulness

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we’re heading toward an unhealthy path, and if so, let go and change directions. It allows us to see that who we are is much more than a fearful or envious or angry thought. We can rest in the awareness of the thought, in the compassion we extend to ourselves if the thought makes us uncomfortable, and in the balance and good sense we summon as we decide whether and how to act on the thought.” – Upaya Zen Center

 

Mindfulness is associated with the health and well-being of the individual. It affects a strikingly wide variety of physical and mental capacities and conditions, from cognitive process, to emotions, to stress, to disease states, to mental health, etc. Its effects are so widespread and diverse that it would seem unlikely that mindfulness would directly affect each individual process or state. It is more likely that mindfulness works through intermediaries. That is, it has direct effects on a few processes that in turn have influences on even more processes. This would suggest that many of the effects of mindfulness are indirect.

 

One possibility for an intermediary is coping style. Mindfulness has been shown to heighten adaptive coping. This is a form of coping with stresses in which the individual does not personalize it but looks directly at its environmental causes and addresses them directly. Mindfulness has also been shown to reduce maladaptive coping such as avoidant coping, where the individual does not directly confront the stress but rather turns away from, ignore, or escape from stress. This form of coping does not adequately address the stress which can reemerge in the future.

 

Mindfulness has also been shown to improve emotion regulation, such that the individual fully experiences emotions but reacts appropriately and adaptively to them. Emotion regulation, then, involves coping with the emotion adaptively. It would seem logical then that the improved emotion regulation that occurs with mindfulness may be a secondary effect of the effect of mindfulness on adaptive and maladaptive coping. So, improved emotion regulation may be the result of the improved adaptive coping or less maladaptive coping produced by mindfulness.

 

Emotions are quite complex and dynamic. They can be considered as reasonably stable traits that characterize and individual. But, emotions also vary from moment to moment and different individuals have different patterns of emotional variation over the course of the day. Some people have highly variable emotions that show frequent changes over the day, while some people tend to have more stable emotions that don’t change much, called emotional inertia, while some people have great instability in their emotions, changing wildly from moment to moment, and some people switch back and forth between positive and negative emotional states frequently over the day. To date the effect of mindfulness on these aspects of dynamic daily emotions has not been investigated, nor their relationships to coping styles.

 

In today’s Research News article “Riding the Tide of Emotions with Mindfulness: Mindfulness, Affect Dynamics, and the Mediating Role of Coping.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1230334476990476/?type=3&theater

or see below

Keng and Tong address these questions. They measured trait mindfulness, coping styles, positive and negative affect, self-esteem, depression, openness, and habitual reappraisal and suppression. They also acquired reports of the emotional states of participants at 19 different points a day for 2 days from which they calculated the individual’s emotional variability, inertia, instability, and switching.

 

Keng and Tong found the higher the levels of trait mindfulness, the lower the levels of emotional variability, instability, and inertia. High mindfulness people were also more likely to switch from feeling negatively in the morning to feeling positively in the afternoon. These relationships with mindfulness were not due to positive and negative affect, self-esteem, depression, openness, and habitual reappraisal and suppression. So highly mindful people tend to have less variability in their emotions, but also less inertia being able to change emotions when appropriate. They were also less likely to have unstable, wildly varying emotions and be more likely to switch from a negative to a positive emotional state. Hence mindfulness appears to produce less variable and unstable emotions that are better attuned to the events of the day and more likely to become positive.

 

Keng and Tong also found that maladaptive coping meditated these effects. Highly mindful people were less likely to use maladaptive coping strategies in their emotional reactivity to daily stressors. Interestingly adaptive coping styles did not mediate these effects. These results suggest that mindfulness does not affect emotional well-being by producing adaptive coping styles, but rather by interfering with maladaptive styles. Thus mindfulness makes it less likely that the individual will use ineffective maladaptive coping with stress and thereby have higher emotional wellbeing.

 

The most important message here is that mindfulness improves your emotional life and makes you less likely to cope with your emotions in such a way as to make matters worse. It doesn’t change your life, just how you experience and deal with your emotions and this make life better. So, promote adaptive emotions with mindfulness.

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

“The next time you sense a strong emotion, take some time to put a finger on exactly what you’re feeling. Get quiet, turn inward, and just listen.” – Lisa Nichols

 

Study Summary

 

Keng, S., & Tong, E. W. (2016). Riding the Tide of Emotions with Mindfulness: Mindfulness, Affect Dynamics, and the Mediating Role of Coping. Emotion, doi:10.1037/emo0000165

 

Abstract:

Little research has examined ways in which mindfulness is associated with affect dynamics, referring to patterns of affect fluctuations in daily life. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), the present study examined the associations between trait mindfulness and several types of affect dynamics, namely affect variability, affect inertia, affect switch, and affect instability. Three hundred ninety undergraduate students from Singapore reported their current emotions and coping styles up to 19 times per day across 2 days. Results showed that trait mindfulness correlated negatively with variability, instability, and inertia of negative affect and positively with negative-to-positive affect switch. These relationships were independent of openness, habitual reappraisal, habitual suppression, depression, and self-esteem. Importantly, lower maladaptive coping was found to mediate these relationships. The study suggests that trait mindfulness independently promotes adaptive patterns of affective experiences in daily life by inhibiting maladaptive coping styles.

 

Improve Security Guards Coping with Emotions with Yoga

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Improve Security Guards Coping with Emotions with Yoga

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Officer safety and wellness can improve when agency leaders are willing to support a shift in the culture that is innovative and supports mind-body approaches to health and well-being.” – Jennifer Elliott

 

It is understood that policing is difficult and stressful. Police are hired, trained, and paid by government entities and as such have reasonable compensations and job security. But, private security service is one of the most rapidly growing occupations worldwide employing a large cadre of people. They are generally hired, trained, and paid by private companies or in some cases are volunteers. In the United States there are over a million security guards employed and providing security services to businesses, schools, medical facilities, private homes, casino surveillance, and involved in investigations. Their compensation tends to be low with a median yearly income of $24,410.

 

It has been demonstrated that officers and civilian staff in law enforcement agencies face enormous stress that can have a negative impact on physical, psychological, and emotional health. But, with security guards, there is very little known about the stresses involved in these positions and their impact on the health and well-being of the guards. In one study, people in different occupations rated their satisfaction and happiness with their jobs. Security guard was rated as the unhappiest career. This was primarily due to a perceived lack of rewards and growth opportunities. Another study found that security guard was rated as a stressful occupation, to some extent due to often working late hours alone. Stress is known to have negative effects on physical and mental health. It is likely that security guards are not immune.

 

It has been shown that mindfulness practices in general can reduce the physiological and psychological responses to stress and improve emotion regulation. Yoga practice in particular has been shown to reduce stress and improve emotions. So, it would make sense to investigate whether yoga practice could be used to improve the emotional states of guards.

 

In India, the Home Guards are a volunteer group that provides security for public events such as festivals, elections, sporting events, traffic control, etc. In today’s Research News article “Effect of integrated Yoga module on positive and negative emotions in Home Guards in Bengaluru: A wait list randomized control trial”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1212075688816355/?type=3&theater

or see below, or for full text see

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728956/

Amaranath and colleagues studied the emotional health of these Home Guards and investigated the impact of integrated yoga practice. Home Guards were randomly assigned to either a yoga group or no treatment. The yoga group practiced yoga for 2 months for 1 hour per day for 6 days per week. Positive and negative emotions were measured. Positive emotions included attentive, interested, excited, strong, enthusiastic, determined, proud, inspired, active, alert, happy, pleased, content, and glad.  Negative emotions included afraid, distressed, upset, jittery, guilty, nervous, scared, hostile, ashamed, irritable, disappointed, sad, unhappy, troubled, and miserable. These positive and negative emotions were measured before and after the 2-months of yoga practice.

 

They found that yoga practice produced and increase in positive emotions and a decrease in negative emotions in the Home Guards. On the other hand, the control group had the opposite effect with a decrease in positive emotions and an increase in negative emotions.  The yoga group showed the greatest changes in the positive emotions of content, glad, pleased, and excited and the greatest reductions in the negative emotions of disappointed, distressed, upset, sad, and unhappy. Hence yoga practice had a large beneficial effect on the emotional states of the Home Guards .

 

These results are interesting but it should be noted that the study lacked an active control. So, it is impossible to determine if the effects were due to yoga practice specifically, or possibly simply to exercise or subject expectancy effects, demand characteristic, etc. It remains for more tightly controlled studies to determine the exact cause of the emotional improvements in the Home Guards.

 

Nevertheless, it is clear that yoga practice can improve security guards coping with emotions.

 

“the scientific study of yoga demonstrates that mental and physical health are not just closely allied, but are essentially equivalent. The evidence is growing that yoga practice is a relatively low-risk, high-yield approach to improving overall health.” – Harvard Medical Health Letter

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

 

Study Summary

Amaranath, B., Nagendra, H. R., & Deshpande, S. (2016). Effect of integrated Yoga module on positive and negative emotions in Home Guards in Bengaluru: A wait list randomized control trial. International Journal of Yoga, 9(1), 35–43. http://doi.org/10.4103/0973-6131.171719

 

Abstract

Background: The beneficial aspect of positive emotions on the process of learning and the harmful effect of negative emotions on coping with stress and health are well-documented through studies. The Home Guards (HGs) are working in a very stressful situation during election, managing traffic and other crowded places. It is quite essential in present day circumstances that they have to manage their emotions and cope up with different stressful situations.

Objective: To study the efficacy of integrated Yoga module (IYM) on emotions (positive and negative affect [PA and NA]) of HGs.

Methods: A total of 148 HGs both males and females who qualified the inclusion and exclusion criteria were randomly divided into Yoga group (YG) and control groups (CG). The YG had supervised practice sessions (by trained experts) for 1 h daily, 6 days a week for 8 weeks along with their regular routine work whereas CG performing their routine work. Positive affect negative affect scale (PANAS) was assessed before and after 8 weeks using a modified version of PANAS.

Results: PA in YG had significantly increased (P < 0.05) whereas it had decreased significantly (P < 0.05) in CG. Other positive effect in YG had significantly increased (P < 0.001), whereas it had decreased significantly (P< 0.001) in CG. NA in YG had significantly decreased (P < 0.001), whereas it had significantly increased (P< 0.001) in CG. Other NA in YG had significantly decreased (P < 0.001), whereas it had significantly increased (P < 0.01) in CG.

Conclusions: The results suggested that IYM can be useful for HGs to improve the PA and to decrease NA score. Moreover, IYM is cost-effective and helps HGs for coping up with emotions in stressful situations.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728956/