Antisocial Prisoners Lack Mindfulness

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“There are only two kinds of people in this world; those who have a conscience and those who do not.” ― P.A. Speers

 

Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) is a problem not only for the individual but also for society. Individuals with this disorder tend to demonstrate a “disregard for right and wrong, persistent lying or deceit to exploit others, using charm or wit to manipulate others for personal gain or for sheer personal pleasure, intense egocentrism, sense of superiority and exhibitionism, recurring difficulties with the law, repeatedly violating the rights of others by the use of intimidation, dishonesty and misrepresentation, child abuse or neglect, hostility, significant irritability, agitation, impulsiveness, aggression or violence, lack of empathy for others and lack of remorse about harming others, unnecessary risk-taking or dangerous behaviors, poor or abusive relationships, irresponsible work behavior, and failure to learn from the negative consequences of behavior” (Mayo Clinic).

 

Needless to say that this disorder is found to be quite prevalent in prison populations. As much as 80% of male and 65% of female prison inmates exhibit signs and symptoms of antisocial personality disorder. But, it is also common in the general population. Around 3.6% of adults in the United States, equal to about 7.6 million people, have antisocial personality disorder affecting about 3% of adult males and 1% of adult females. To make matters worse, APD is very difficult to treat as it frequently does not respond to psychotherapy and there are no drugs that have been approved to treat it.

 

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness moderates the relationship between aggression and Antisocial Personality Disorder traits: Preliminary investigation with an offender sample”

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Velotti and colleagues investigate the relationship of mindfulness to aggression and Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) with 83 imprisoned violent offenders. They verified the positive relationship between APD and aggressive behavior including physical and verbal aggression, anger, and hostility. But they also found a strong and significant negative relationship between APD and the mindfulness facets of describing, acting with awareness, and non-judging. That is high APD was associated with low mindfulness. In addition, mindfulness was negatively related to physical aggression, anger, and hostility. This was particularly true for acting with awareness. In other words, the lower the level of mindfulness, particularly acting with awareness, the greater the levels of aggressive behavior.

 

It is interesting that the key component of mindfulness that appears to be deficient in individuals with APD is acting with awareness. This facet involves paying attention to one’s current activities. It’s deficiency in APD implies that these individuals are lacking in awareness of what they are doing while they are doing it. In other words, as they are engaged in hostile, aggressive, and even violent activities, they may be acting without conscious thought. Rather they may be responding reflexively to immediate situations and the emotions produced. This further suggests that training to improve real time awareness of actions may be effective in treating APD.
Personality Disorders in general including APD are notoriously resistant to treatment. So, Velotti and colleagues’ findings are potentially important. They suggest that increasing mindfulness may be a way to treat Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD). Although there have not been controlled clinical trials training individuals with APD in mindfulness, mindfulness training is included in Dialectic Behavior Therapy which has been shown to be helpful with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). There are a number of overlapping characteristics in common to both APD and BPD. So, it is possible that mindfulness training may be important in treating Personality Disorders in general. Obviously more research is needed.

 

It should be kept in mind that Velotti and colleagues obtained their findings with prisoners who were convicted of violent crimes. It will be important to also study non-violent APD patients to determine the general applicability of the results. Regardless, it appears that at least in violent prisoners, that mindfulness, especially acting with awareness, is a clear deficiency in Antisocial Personality Disorder.

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Meditate to Respond More Effectively to Self-Praise and Criticism

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 “If you’ve ever felt too depressed to solve a problem, it might be because your brain is having a hard time regulating your emotions. One solution? Mindfulness training.” – Ruth Buczynsk

 

Meditation is known to improve the physical and mental health of practitioners. To some extent, it does so by improving emotion regulation (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/emotions/). This improvement involves fully experiencing emotions, not suppressing them, and responding to them in a rational and adaptive fashion. In other words, meditators appear to be able to feel and work with their emotions responsibly, non-judgmentally, and with acceptance, and not react in ways that are harmful to themselves and others.

 

Emotion regulation is in part improved in meditators by helping them to take things less personally. Meditation tends to reduce self-referential thinking (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/self/). Mindfulness tends to reduce self-critical thinking and their emotional aftermaths and improve self-esteem. As a result, meditation tends to reduce responses to self-related thoughts, ideas, and stimuli. This improved emotion regulation contributes to many facets of the individual’s mental health.

 

Meditation is also known to alter the nervous system. Actions that are repeated often tend to produce changes in the nervous system in a process called neuroplasticity and meditation is no exception. It tends to increase the size, activity, and connectivity of structures in the nervous system that are involved in attention and emotion regulation, frontal cortex regions, and decrease the size, activity, and connectivity of structures involved in mind wandering, self-referential thinking, and stress, the so called default mode network  (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/neuroplasticity/).

 

In today’s Research News article “Altered processing of self-related emotional stimuli in mindfulness meditators”

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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811915008794

Lutz and colleagues investigate emotional regulation responses in the nervous system of long term meditators (> a year of regular practice) in comparison to meditation naïve participants. As expected the meditators were higher in mindfulness especially in observing and non-reacting, self-compassion, and emotional awareness. The participants were then presented with personality descriptor adjectives that were either positive (attractive, handsome, funny) or negative (unattractive, unsightly, ugly) and recorded the responses of the nervous system to the stimuli.

 

Self-relevant items either positive or negative, but particularly positive, produced greater activation of the Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex in the meditators. The mindfulness component of non-reacting was positively correlated with activation of the Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex in the meditators but not the naïve participants. Finally, they found lower functional connectivity to posterior midline and parietal regions in the meditators compared to the naïve participants during both types of self-relevant items.

 

The meditators stronger activations of the frontal regions suggest that they have stronger self-awareness and focus on inner feelings. It also suggests that they have greater emotion regulation with non-reactive attitudes towards these experiences. Since the posterior structures of the default mode network in the nervous system are associated with self-referential thinking, the decreased connectivity to these regions in the meditators suggest that they have lesser self-focus than meditation naïve participants.

 

In sum, these results indicate that meditation produces changes in the brain that allows for greater emotion regulation and less thinking about self. These neural changes may in part account for the improved mental health in meditators. They are better able to cope with emotions and respond to them constructively and take everything less personally. So, meditation appears to change the brain making it better able to respond more constructively and less personally to emption laden events.

 

So, meditate to respond more effectively to self-praise and criticism.

 

“mindful attention does not inhibit initial evaluations insomuch as it limits the automatic expansion of initial evaluative reactions into activation of a broader set of implications about the self and the world.” – Norman Farb
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Meditate to Improve Attention by Changing the Brain

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“meditation may increase our control over our limited brain resources. To anyone who knows what it’s like to feel scattered or overwhelmed, this is an appealing benefit indeed. Even though your attention is a limited resource, you can learn to do more with the mental energy you already have.” – Kelly McGonigal

 

Meditation practice has many psychological, cognitive, and physical benefits. It has been shown to improve attentional abilities so that we can better maintain our attention when needed and reduce the strong human tendency for mind wandering (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/attention/), the enemy of focused attention. This allows us to better attend to the present moment, what’s happening now, rather than be dominated by thought, memories, and plans for the future.

 

In the last few decades, scientists have discovered that the brain is far more malleable than previously thought. Areas in the brain can change, either increase or decrease in size, connectivity, and activity in response to changes in our environment or the behaviors we engage in. This process is referred to as neuroplasticity. Alterations in the brain can be produced by contemplative practices. The brain appears to change in response to meditation and other contemplative practices. Indeed, mindfulness practices have been shown to not only alter how we think and feel but also to alter the nervous system (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/neuroplasticity/).

 

In today’s Research News article “Increases in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and decreases the rostral prefrontal cortex activation after-8 weeks of focused attention based mindfulness meditation”

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Tomasino and colleagues investigate neuroplastic changes to the brain when individuals who have no experience with meditation engage in an 8-week meditation program. The participants’ brain activity during meditation was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (f-MRI) before and after the meditation training. They found that at the end of training the participants showed greater activation of the right middle frontal gyrus and the left caudate/anterior insular cortex. They also found that the practice decreased activation in the rostral prefrontal cortex and in right parietal cortex. They further demonstrated that these altered brain activities were produced by the focused meditation component and not a body scan component of the practice.

 

The increased activity observed in the prefrontal areas makes perfect sense as meditation is an attentional practice and the prefrontal areas have been previously shown to be associated with attention. So, practicing attention alters the brain areas responsible for attention. The decreased activity observed in the rostral prefrontal cortex also makes perfect sense as focused attention is antithetical to mind wandering and the rostral prefrontal cortex has been shown to be involved in the “default mode network” that is activated during mind wandering. So, practicing attention also decreases activity in the brain areas responsible for its opposite, mind wandering. So, meditation practice was found to strengthen the activity of the exact areas of the brain that are known to be increased by attentional activity and reduced activity of the areas known to be increased during mind wandering.

 

Hence, meditation practice by naive individuals appears to alter their brains to better maintain attention and restrain mind wandering. The fact that the brain has been changes suggests that the improved attentional ability will be maintained even when the individuals are not actively meditating. This make the practice far more useful as it has more long-lasting effects.

 

So, meditate to improve attention by changing the brain.

 

“Meditation provides experiences that the mind can achieve no other way, such as inner silence and expanded awareness. And as the mind gains experience, the brain shows physical activity as well—sometimes profound changes. . . . the research has begun to show that meditation can also produce long-term structural changes in the brain. No longer is the “hard wiring” of neural circuits so dominant. The brain can alter its wiring in “soft” ways, thanks to a trait known as neuroplasticity, which allows new pathways and even new brain cells to appear.” – Deepak Chopra

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Reduce Discrimination Produced Depression with Mindfulness

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“The stigmatized individual is asked to act so as to imply neither that his burden is heavy nor that bearing it has made him different from us; … he is advised to reciprocate naturally with an acceptance of himself and us, an acceptance of him that we have not quite extended to him in the first place. A PHANTOM ACCEPTANCE is thus allowed to provide the base for a PHANTOM NORMALCY.” ― Erving Goffman

 

Discrimination based upon race, religion, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, etc. has been going on since the beginning of recorded history. Even though quite common it can have considerable negative impact for all who are involved but especially for the subject of the discrimination. General well-being, self-esteem, self-worth, and social relations can be severely impacted as a result of discrimination. This can, in turn, result in depression.

 

In the U.S. discrimination against African Americans is very common. In a recent poll, 51% of Americans expressed anti-black sentiments which was increased from four years ago, African-Americans comprise only 13% of the U.S. population and 14% of the monthly drug users, but are 37% of the people arrested for drug-related offenses in America, and African Americans receive 10% longer sentences than whites for the same crimes. Discrimination against women is also common. Women on average earn 22.5% less than men, have to work for more years before receiving promotion, the greater the education level the greater the disparity, and minority women fare even worse. In addition, women are 10 times more likely to be exposed to high levels of domestic violence and are nearly 4 times more likely to be exposed to sexual harassment than men. As a society we should do everything in our power to fight against discrimination in any form. But, we also need to deal with the consequences of discrimination when it occurs.

 

Mindfulness practices have been shown to reduce prejudice (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/prejudice/). It has also been shown to reduce depression (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/depression/). Mindfulness has also is known to enhance positive emotions (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/emotions/) and positive emotions reduce the negative effects of discrimination. So perhaps mindfulness is related to the impact of discrimination on the individual. In today’s Research News article “Discrimination hurts, but mindfulness may help: Trait mindfulness moderates the relationship between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3862075/

Brown-Iannuzzi and colleagues analyzed responses on an on-line questionnaire of perceived racism, mindfulness, depression, and positive emotions completed by community participants.

 

They found that “the most common source of discrimination was gender (19.7%), followed by race or ethnicity (17%), body weight (14.4%) and age (14.3%).” They also found that high levels of discrimination were accompanied by high levels of depression while high levels of positive emotions and mindfulness were accompanied by low levels of depression. In addition, high levels of mindfulness were found to mitigate the effects of discrimination on depression. Participants high in mindfulness showed less of an increase in depression when exposed to discrimination.

 

Mindfulness has been repeatedly demonstrated to reduce the psychological and physiological responses to stress (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/stress/). So, mindfulness may reduce the negative impact of the stress produced by the discrimination thereby reducing depression. Mindfulness may also act by focusing the individual more in the present moment. Rumination about past discrimination and worries regarding future discrimination may well amplify discrimination’s impact on depression. Focusing on the present moment may make it easier to cope with the discrimination, isolating it and thereby decreasing its effects.

 

Regardless of its mechanism of action, it is clear the mindfulness is associated with lower depression and a lessened effect of discrimination on depression. So, reduce discrimination produced depression with mindfulness.

 

“One of the best ways you can fight discrimination is by taking good care of yourself. Your survival is not just important; it’s an act of revolution.” ― DaShanne Stokes
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Control Blood Pressure with Mindfulness

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“A chronic state of arousal isn’t healthy. It causes hypertension, and it has been implicated in diabetes, asthma, and various gastrointestinal disorders. Part of the arousal response is to turn off the immune system, so you are breaking down instead of healing yourself.” ~ Erika Friedmann

 

High Blood Pressure (Hypertension) is an insidious disease because there are no overt symptoms. The individual feels fine. But it can be deadly as more than 360,000 American deaths, roughly 1,000 deaths each day, had high blood pressure as a primary or contributing cause. In addition, hypertension markedly increases the risk heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and kidney disease.  Hypertension is present in about 70% of first heart attacks, about 80% of first strokes, and about 70% of chronic heart failures. It is also a very common disorder with about 70 million American adults (29%) having high blood pressure and only about half (52%) of people with high blood pressure have their condition under control. Additionally, nearly a third of American adults have prehypertension, with blood pressure higher than normal, but not yet considered hypertension.

 

High blood pressure, because it doesn’t have any primary symptoms is usually only diagnosed by direct measurement of blood pressure usually by a health care professional. When hypertension is chronically present over three quarters of patients are treated with antihypertensive drugs. But these medications often have adverse side effects. So, patients feel lousy when taking the drugs, but fine when they’re not. So, compliance is a major issue with many patients not taking the drugs regularly or stopping entirely.

 

Obviously there is a need for alternative to drug treatments for hypertension. Stress is known to be a contributing factor to hypertension. It acts in part by increasing activity in the sympathetic nervous system, the activating component of the peripheral nervous system and by increasing the release of stress hormones. So controlling stress would appear to be a reasonable non-drug approach to reducing high blood pressure.

 

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs were designed specifically to reduce stress. They include meditation, body scan, and yoga practices. Meditation (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/21/control-blood-pressure-with-meditation/), and yoga (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/contemplative-practice/yoga-contemplative-practice/), and body scan (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/29/get-your-calm-on/)  have  been shown to be successful in reducing both the psychological and physiological responses to stress. So, it would seem appropriate to use these techniques as alternatives to drug treatment for hypertension.

 

In today’s Research News article “Effect of Group Mindfulness-Based Stress-Reduction Program and Conscious Yoga on Lifestyle, Coping Strategies, and Systolic and Diastolic Blood Pressures in Patients with Hypertension”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4685370/

Nejati and colleagues compared hypertensive patients randomly assigned to receive an 8-week MBSR program or no treatment. They found significant positive improvements produced by MBSR treatment including improved lifestyle (nutrition, exercise, health responsibility, stress management, interpersonal support, and self-actualization), coping strategies (problem-focused and emotion-focused), and blood pressure (systolic and diastolic).

 

These results are impressive, but need to be tempered with the fact that the control condition was a no treatment condition. Without an active control many potentially confounding variables are present. But the results reinforce previous studies that make a compelling case that mindfulness practices such as MBSR are excellent alternatives to medication for the treatment of hypertension.

 

So, control blood pressure with mindfulness.

 

“Meditation can help us in many aspects of our lives, whether it be physically or mentally. It is a discipline that when practiced daily significantly decreases stress related diseases such as high blood pressure while increasing a deep relaxation response and the feel-good factor.” – Zenlama
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Get more Spiritual with Mindfulness

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“While the stillness and connecting with one’s inner self cultivated through mindfulness are certainly an important part of a spiritual practice, feelings of wonder and awe — the amazement we get when faced with incredible vastness — are also central to the spiritual experience. And according to new research, mindfulness may actually set the stage for awe.” – Carolyn Gregoire

 

Mindfulness practices developed primarily as spiritual practices. Contemplative practices developed millennia ago and were seen in Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity and many native (so called primitive) religions. They were used to heighten the practitioner’s experience with ultimate reality, whether that be a deity or seeing the nature of reality. By calming the mind and reducing the internal chatter contemplative practices are thought to open up a transcendent reality not otherwise attainable. So, mindfulness and spirituality/religion have been intimately linked. (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/16/why-are-we-spiritualreligious/).

 

It has only been in the last few decades that mindfulness has been practiced as a secular activity. This allowed it to flourish in a skeptical west which saw it as a heathen religious practice. As a result, mindfulness practices were employed for secular purposes such as improvement of health, psychological well-being, and cognitive development. But, now because their secular benefits have been firmly established by science, mindfulness practices have become accepted and firmly embedded in western life. The establishment of their acceptability, has led to a re-emergence of their initial purpose of the development of spirituality.

 

Adolescence is often a time of rapid spiritual development as the teens begin to seek deeper understandings of reality and life. But, there has been very little research into the emergence of spirituality and religious practice in adolescents. In today’s Research News article “Support for adolescent spirituality: contributions of religious practice and trait mindfulness”

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Cobb and colleagues explore spirituality, religious practices, and mindfulness in 11 to 16-year old adolescents. They asked “two questions: (1) do different portraits of spiritual life exist for adolescents involving religious practice and spiritual experience and (2) might religious practice and trait mindfulness offer support for the development of spiritual experience.” They used statistical techniques to identify different clusters of activity and discovered four unique profiles of spirituality and religious practices: Highest Overall Spirituality, Spiritual Experience, Religious Practice, and Lowest Overall Spirituality.

 

The adolescents indicating Highest Overall Spirituality had a strong religious practice and strong spiritual beliefs and experiences. The Spiritual Experience group had a moderate-high level of spiritual experience and Spiritual Self-Discovery, but generally did not religiously practice. Religious Practice group was defined by moderate-high levels of private religious practice and religious identity and relatively low spiritual experience and values. Finally, the Lowest Overall Spirituality group had low levels of spiritual experience and low levels of religious practice.

 

Spirituality/religious practice groups and percentage of adolescents in each group.

Spirituality
High Low
High 28% 11%
Religious Highest Overall Spirituality Religious Practice
Practice Low 28% 34%
Spiritual Experience Lowest Overall Spirituality

 

Cobb and colleagues also found that the adolescents in the high spirituality groups had significantly higher mindfulness than those in the low spirituality groups regardless of the level of religious practice. This analysis implies that high mindfulness is associated with spirituality while religious practice is not.

 

The authors speculate that mindfulness is a “gateway” to great spiritual awareness and ultimately a more integrated spiritual life. That would certainly fit with the origins of mindfulness practices as means to attain spiritual development. But, their results do not demonstrate that mindfulness causes spirituality as there was no active manipulation of either. It is possible that high levels of spirituality cause high mindfulness or that some third factor such as familial spirituality might simultaneously increase both spirituality and mindfulness. Research is needed wherein mindfulness training is implemented and its effects on spirituality measured. In addition, it will be important to explore these relationships in older individuals to establish that the relationship of mindfulness and spirituality is not simply restricted to adolescents.

 

Regardless, it is clear that spirituality and mindfulness are intimately connected, that an ability to quiet the mind and look inside is highly associated with spiritual experience. So, get more spiritual with mindfulness.

 

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” ― Albert Einstein
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Love thyself

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“Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.” ~Malcolm S. Forbes

 

There is a widespread problem in the west that many people don’t seem to like themselves.  The term used to describe this in psychology is self-loathing, although this term is far too strong and is not an appropriate descriptor for the majority of people. In general, the dislike of self has a much smaller magnitude than the word loathing implies. As a result I prefer self-dislike.

 

The self-dislike sometimes means that the individual dislikes every aspect of themselves; but most frequently people only don’t like certain aspects of themselves. Often it is there physical appearance, their school achievement, their career, their social behavior, etc. Making matters worse, they tend to overlook their strengths and discount them, focusing instead in the parts that they find problematic.

 

The discounting and overlooking of strengths shows up in what psychologists call the Imposter Syndrome. Here very successful people do not appear to be able to assimilate their success and instead attribute it to luck. The esteem with which they’re held makes them feel like imposters. It is estimated that two out of five successful people consider themselves frauds that 70 percent of all people feel like impostors at one time or another.

 

When this issue of self-dislike was raised to the Dalai Lama he was totally perplexed and repeatedly asked for clarifications. Not liking oneself is unheard of in his culture. So, he was dumbfounded and without comment. Hence, the problem seems to be primarily one of western culture. This suggests that self-dislike is learned within a particular cultural context with western culture and its values particularly adept at producing it.

 

There are sometimes circumstances that underlie self-dislike. Abuse or bullying, belittling parents, learning disabilities, physical appearance or disabilities are apt to result in self-dislike. But, most frequently it originates from western culture’s tendency to promote unrealistic expectations.

 

Physical appearance is a good case in point where the media holds up extraordinarily attractive individuals as what we should strive to be. Very, very few people can ever measure up and so can end up disliking their appearance. Academic achievement is another case where for many anything less than an “A” is seen as failure. Once again few can measure up and most end up disliking their intellectual ability. Sports are another case where the media holds up professional athletes as role models. These are exceptional people and the vast majority of the population can’t perform anywhere near their level and thus feel inadequate. It is relatively easy to think of many other unrealistic expectations prompted by our hyper-success oriented culture.

 

What can we do to overcome self-dislike. Unfortunately, the self-dislike is usually deeply ingrained and becomes resistant to persuasion or evidence. No matter how successful the person becomes or how much praise is received the person cannot truly believe that he or she has value or worth. They believe themselves to be imposters.

 

Self-dislike is an indicator that the individual is unsatisfied with the way things are. There is a strong desire for them to be different and the individual believes that if one or more aspects of themselves changed, then things would be much better. This is in fact rarely true. An overweight person who loses a significant amount of weight doesn’t usually become happier instead it frequently produces depression. A far better approach is for people to learn to accept things, including themselves, just as they are.

 

Meditation is uniquely suited to promote accepting things as they are. So, it would seem appropriate for dealing with self-dislike. Meditation focuses on awareness of the present moment. As we’ve seen, self-dislike is often rooted in the past. By learning to focus on now, the past recedes in importance. When individuals learn to look closely at what is actually going on in the present moment they can begin to see that there is nothing wrong at all. In fact, there is tremendous good present. So, meditation can move the individual away from the past where the self-dislike originated and can then move forward in the present moment to develop self-acceptance.

 

Another method to address self-dislike is to employ what psychologists call counterconditioning where one behavior or belief is eliminated by replacing it with its opposite. Self-dislike can be eliminated by replacing it with self-love.  Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) is designed to do just that. We practice loving ourselves and wishing ourselves well. It seems overly simple, but experience and research has shown that it can have remarkable impact.

 

Self-dislike is deeply ingrained. It will not be changed overnight. It will take practice and patience to weaken and eventually overcome it. But, contemplative practice can help.

 

So, engage in contemplative practice and learn to love thyself.

 

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love & affection.” ~Buddha

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Lower Aggression with Mindfulness

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“There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death. Whether it’s the mundane violence we do to our bodies by overeating toxic food or drink or the extreme violence of child abuse, domestic warfare, life-threatening poverty, addiction, or state terrorism.” – bell hooks
Aggression and violence are highly linked to substance abuse particularly alcohol. It is estimated that the proportion of violent offenders who are likely to be drinking at the time of the offense is up to 86 percent for homicide offenders, 37 percent for assault offenders, 60 percent for sexual offenders, up to 57 percent of men and 27 percent of women involved in marital violence, and 13 percent of child abusers. This relationship appears to have a causal connection to the effect of these substances on the nervous system with many drugs of abuse affecting the brain in such a way as to release aggressive tendencies. Obviously, there is a need to find methods to help deal with aggressive tendencies in substance abusers.

 

Mindfulness has been shown to be helpful in the treatment of substance abuse and for relapse prevention (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/addiction/). It is also know to assist with emotion regulation and anger management (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/emotions/). So, it would seem reasonable to believe that mindfulness may be related to aggressive behavior in substance abusers.  In today’s Research News article “Dispositional Mindfulness and Aggression Among Women in Residential Substance Use Treatment”

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Shorey and colleagues investigated the relationship between mindfulness and aggression in women who were undergoing residential substance abuse treatment. They found that the higher the level of mindfulness the lower the levels of aggression in the women, including verbal aggression, physical aggression, and aggressive attitude.

 

It should be noted that these results were correlational in nature and as such causation cannot be determined. It is possible that high mindfulness lowers aggressiveness, or that low aggressiveness causes increased mindfulness, or that some other factor is related to both. It will require an active controlled test perhaps including mindfulness training to determine if mindfulness may be a useful treatment for aggression in substance abusers.

 

Nevertheless, it would appear that there is a negative, inverse, relationship between mindfulness and aggression in women in substance abuse treatment. There are a number of possible explanations for the relationship. Since mindfulness improves emotion regulation it may assist the women in reacting in a controlled and appropriate manner when anger and frustration arises rather than evoking aggressive behavior. Also, since mindfulness is known to reduce the physiological and psychological responses to stress (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/stress/) and attempting to control an addiction is stressful, it is possible that mindful women may be better at coping with stress rather than lashing out aggressively. Finally, since mindfulness appears to improve the response to substance abuse treatment it is possible that an improved ability to control urges for substances relaxes the women making them less aggressive.

 

Regardless of the explanation, the results suggest that mindfulness is associated with lower aggression.

 

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” – Pema Chodran

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Help Cancer Survivor Memory with Yoga

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“Up to 75% of cancer patients experience some form of cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) during cancer treatments (eg, chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, hormone therapy), and this impairment persists for months or up to 20 years in 20% to 35% of survivors.” – Janelsins, et al.

 

Cognitive impairments are a frequent side effect of cancer treatment. This has been dubbed “chemo brain.” Patients often refer to it as a mental cloudiness. The patients report problems including forgetting things, trouble concentrating, trouble remembering details like names and dates, trouble multi-tasking, like answering the phone while cooking, taking longer to finish things, disorganized and slower thinking, and trouble remembering common words. These cognitive impairments generally produce problems with work and even social relationships such that patients tend to isolate themselves. They can also produce treatment problems as the patients often forget to take their medications.

 

These problems result from the fact that chemotherapy, radiation therapy and many cancer drugs directly affect the nervous system. One of the potential intermediaries is sleep disruption as cancer treatments are known to produce sleep problems and lack of sleep is known to produce cognitive problems like those reported with “chemo brain.” At present there are no known treatments for these treatment induced cognitive impairments. Contemplative practices have been shown to affect memory (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/memory/), promote increased sleep quality (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/sleep/) and have positive effects on cancer treatment and recovery (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/cancer/).  So, perhaps contemplative practices may be useful for the alleviation of “chemo brain” symptoms.

 

Yoga has been shown to improve sleep quality in recovered cancer patients. So, it would seem to be a likely contemplative practice candidate for the treatment of the cognitive effects of cancer treatment. In today’s Research News article “YOCAS©® Yoga Reduces Self-reported Memory Difficulty in Cancer Survivors in a Nationwide Randomized Clinical Trial: Investigating Relationships Between Memory and Sleep”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1152258194798105/?type=3&theater

Janelsins and colleagues conducted a randomized clinical trial of the effect of a yoga practice program on the sleep and cognitive symptoms of recovered cancer patients. They randomly assigned the patients, 2 to 24 months after completing surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation therapy, to either a yoga or a standard care group. The toga practice consisted of twice weekly 75-minute yoga sessions for four weeks. The study found that the yoga practice both reduced memory problems and sleep impairments. In addition, they showed that the sleep improvement was in part responsible for the yoga produced improvement in memory.

 

These results of this was a well conducted controlled trial are encouraging. Additionally, the yoga practice did not produce any adverse effects. So. the results suggest that yoga practice is a safe and effective treatment for the sleep and memory problems that accompany recovery from cancer. They further suggest that at least in part, the poor sleep quality in recovered cancer patients is responsible for some of the memory impairment and the sleep improvement produced by yoga may in part be responsible for some of the memory improvement seen in these patients.  Since, yoga has many other physical and psychological beneficial effects (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/contemplative-practice/yoga-contemplative-practice/), it would seem to be an almost ideal addition to the usual care that recovered cancer patients receive.

 

So, help cancer survivor memory with yoga.

 

“The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head – chemo-brain they call it. It’s awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.” – Christopher Hitchens

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Improve High Level Thinking with Mindfulness

psyjdc 13 Comments

 

“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” – Og Mandino

 

In the modern world education is a key for success. Where a high school education was sufficient in previous generations, a college degree is now required to succeed in the new knowledge based economies. There is a lot of pressure on students to excel so that they can be admitted to the best universities and there is a lot of pressure on university students to excel so that they can get the best jobs after graduation. As a result, parents and students are constantly looking for ways to improve student performance in school.

 

The primary tactic has been to pressure the student and clear away routine tasks and chores so that the student can focus on their studies. But, this might in fact be counterproductive as the increased pressure can actually lead to stress and anxiety which can impede performance. A better tactic may be the development of mindfulness skills with contemplative practices. These practices and high levels of mindfulness have been shown to be helpful in coping with the school environment and for the performance of both students and teachers (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/school/). So, perhaps, mindfulness training may provide the needed edge in school.

 

In today’s Research News article “Effects of a Mindfulness Meditation Course on Learning and Cognitive Performance among University Students in Taiwan”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1151653591525232/?type=3&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4657094/

Ching and colleagues took advantage of the natural experiment provided in a private university which required a semester long mindfulness course as a core course for all students. The course taught meditation, body scan, and everyday mindfulness skills. They compared students who completed the course in the fall semester to those who were scheduled to take the course in the spring semester. They measured the students with the College Learning Effectiveness Inventory (CLEI) which measures psychosocial factors including thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to academic outcomes and also measured performance on the cognitive tasks of vigilance, choice reaction times, spatial working memory, and memory scanning.

 

The study demonstrated that the mindfulness training produced significantly higher scores on the CLEI suggesting improved attitudes and behaviors impacting learning and academic performance. In addition, the mindfulness training produced improved performance on the cognitive tasks, including increased accuracy in the vigilance, choice reaction time, and spatial working memory tasks. These results suggest that mindfulness training can improve cognitive performance in college students and improve their psychosocial attitudes toward and adjustment to college life. Although actual grade performance was not investigated, the improved skills would predict better academic performance.

 

There are a number of known effects of mindfulness practice that could be responsible for the improved cognitive and psychosocial skills in the college students. Mindfulness training has been shown to directly affect cognitive skills (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/cognition/), social skills (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/social-behavior/), and psychological well-being (see   http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/well-being/). In addition, mindfulness training is known to reduce the physiological and psychological responses to stress (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/stress/) which may reduce the anxiety produced by the pressures of college. Finally, mindfulness training is known to improve sleep (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/sleep/) which is known to be a problem for college students. So, it appears clear that mindfulness training has many desired effects that promote school performance and thus mindfulness training should be considered for incorporation in school curricula.

 

So, improve high level thinking with mindfulness.

 

“Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.” – W. E. B. Du Bois
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies