Improve Mental Health in Disadvantaged Populations with Mindfulness By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “Mindfulness training could be integrated into educational settings on a city, state, or national level, thus promoting health and mental health. Integrating mindfulness-based practices into educational settings could offer the potential to promote a more positive path for our […]
Reduce Youth Dissociative Disorders with Mindfulness By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “It sounds elementary, I know. But that’s the beauty of it. Rather than wasting energy fighting dissociation, we can decrease its severity simply by increasing awareness.” – Holly Gray Sometime during the lives of about 2% of the population, a Dissociative […]
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “Through Mindfulness, you can embrace that staying positive in the face of cancer includes recognizing and validating all the feelings you are experiencing, negative ones included.” – Richard Dicken Over half of the people diagnosed with cancer are still alive 10 years later and this number […]
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “Since mindfulness has a lot to do with being in touch with the sensations in your body, and being aware, new moms are in a prime state to learn it! In fact, pregnancy and early motherhood, nursing and sleep disturbance, weight gain and weight loss-these all in some […]
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “Mindfulness meditation is known to have a positive emotional and psychological impact on cancer survivors. But some groundbreaking new research has found that meditation is also doing its work on the physical bodies of cancer survivors, with positive impacts extending down to the cellular level.” – Carolyn Gregoire Receiving a […]
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “While meditating as we walk, we can experience how our bodies feel much more intensely than we can either while doing a sitting meditation or simply walking with our normally scattered mental energy. Instead of thinking of the past or of the future — which our minds […]
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “Our unwanted and self-destructive habits often were formed as children to help us survive. Childhood abuse, whether physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, or the covert traumas of neglect, oppression, and isolation, demands that if the child is to survive, she must create coping skills to deal with the abuse […]
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “Mindfulness has its roots in meditation and blends numerous approaches such as yoga. Meditation enables the individual to reprocess internal experiences with more awareness, neutrality and acceptance. It focuses on the breath to develop concentration and take control of attention. This is particularly helpful for people with […]
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “If today is a celebration of freedom, I think we as a nation, as a people, have squandered an opportunity. We have sought outer freedoms and ignored inner freedoms. We have pursued these freedoms with scandal, exploitation, and domination. Today, instead, I urge you to consider inner […]
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D. “Mindfulness is a valuable practice for improving the cognitive symptoms of depression, such as distorted thinking and distractibility. It helps individuals recognize these more subtle symptoms, realize that thoughts are not facts and refocus their attention to the present” – Margarita Tartakovsky Depression is epidemic. Major depressive […]