Mindfulness improves Mental Health via Two Factors

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Mindfulness has been repeatedly shown to be beneficial for mental health. Training in mindfulness can decrease stress, anxiety, and depression at every level of severity. It can improve symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, suicidality, PTSD, substance abuse, eating disorders, and major mental illnesses. It is as yet unclear how such a relatively simple technique could be effective for such a wide range of disparate psychological problems.

Mindfulness may work with very different disorders because it is itself a multifaceted concept. It is usually measured with paper and pencil tests, psychometric instruments. One of the most popular measures is the Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). It contains five subscales that purport to measure observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judgmental awareness, and non-reactive awareness. But, there is an active research discussion whether it may in fact be measuring fewer aspects.

In today’s Research News article “The Serenity of the Meditating Mind: A Cross-Cultural Psychometric Study on a Two-Factor Higher Order Structure of Mindfulness, Its Effects, and Mechanisms Related to Mental Health among Experienced Meditators.”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4199716/

Tran and colleagues demonstrate that the five different aspects of mindfulness can be best accounted for with two higher-order constructs, Self-regulated Attention and Orientation to Experience in both meditators and non-meditators.

The factor of self-regulated attention refers to the ability to sustain attention on the present moment. This factor is increased by meditation experience and was found to be related to lower levels of stress, anxiety and depression. Central to meditation is training on paying attention to the contents of present moment experience. So, it’s not surprising that meditation training would increase self-regulated attention.

Anxiety is an emotional state that derives from worries about possible future problems. Stress effects are exacerbated by worries produced about the future and memories of past stresses. Depression often is magnified by ruminations about past events and expectations of failure in the future. So, improving the focus on the present moment, as produced by meditation training, should improve these psychological problems by removing the past and the future from adding to the problem.

The factor of orientation to experience refers to an ability to maintain an open, curious, and accepting attitude toward experience. This factor is also increased by meditation experience and was also found to be related to lower levels of stress, anxiety and depression. These issues are all affected by low levels of emotion regulation. The individual cannot control the emotion from prompting maladaptive behaviors. In addition, the lack of regulation allows positive feedback mechanisms to multiply the magnitude of the emotion. This can occur as one becomes anxious about being anxious, stressed by being stressed, and depressed about being depressed. The meditation induced improvement in the ability to be open and accepting of what they’re experiencing, including emotions, can markedly improve the ability to regulate the emotions. In this way meditation can improve emotion regulation and decrease stress, anxiety and depression.

In stress, anxiety and depression the individual can become attached to the state where they incorporate it into their self-concept. This can occur when the individual classifies themselves as a “stress case”, a depressive, or a worrier. The meditation induced improvement in the ability to be open and accepting of what is being experienced can undercut the attachment. One cannot be open and accepting and simultaneously be attached. In this way meditation by reducing attachment can decrease stress, anxiety and depression.

So, meditate and improve psychological health.

CMCS

Building a Better Adult – Preschool Mindfulness Training

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What we learn as young children continues to affect us throughout our lives. If we wish to build better adults the place to start is in early childhood education. Here we can mold and build behaviors and attitudes that will shape the individual’s behavior over a lifetime.

Our focus to date in early education has been almost exclusively on building knowledge and performance on standardized tests. We have neglected to specifically work on developing cognitive, emotional, and social skills despite the fact that it has been established that these skills are not only important unto themselves, but are also turn out to be very important in developing academic skills. Research has demonstrated that cognitive, emotional, and social skills in childhood predict health, financial stability, and educational attainment into adulthood.

Childhood is an optimum time to develop these skills. Children are malleable and their nervous systems are particularly plastic and capable of being shaped and molded. In today’s Research News article “Promoting prosocial behavior and self-regulatory skills in preschool children through a mindfulness-based kindness curriculum.”

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Lisa Flook and colleagues test the effectiveness of a mindfulness program in 4 and 5 year old preschool children. They demonstrate that a brief program in mindfulness improves a whole spectrum of cognitive and social behaviors, including social competence, health, social-emotional development, cognitive flexibility and delay of gratification and even improves report card grades. That the effect may be lasting was evidenced by the fact that the improved grades carried over into the semester following the training.

This is quite remarkable that relatively brief mindfulness training with 4 to 5 year olds can produce such far ranging effects. A key element may be that the mindfulness training improves self-regulation. The better performance of the trained children in the delay of gratification task is indicative of improved ability for self-control. Doing well on this task has been shown to predict success in later life. This improved self-regulation may also be the reason for the improved grades.

Another key element of mindfulness training is improvement in attentional ability. Young children have very limited attentional ability and any increase can have far ranging consequences for the child’s behavior. Attention is also a component in self-regulation further strengthening the self-control. It also is important for academic achievement and its enhancement may be a major contributor to the grade improvements.

Mindfulness training also improves mindfulness itself. It improves engagement with what is transpiring in the present. Such focus is important in successful academic and social competence. It has also been shown to produce appreciation for life and increased happiness. These attitudes can infect everything that the child engages in, making them more effective and popular.

Humans are social creatures and skillful social behavior can be a key to not only later success but also happiness. Once again attention and self-regulation are important in social interactions and these may be contributing to the improved social competence in the trained children. But an additional focus of the training was on developing the qualities of kindness and care toward oneself and others. This kind of training has been shown to improve empathy and compassion, which are important skills for social success.

So train your children in mindfulness and produce a better adult.

CMCS

Rethink your Emotions

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Our emotions impact our lives in many ways. They provide much of the pleasure and happiness in life. They also torment us with painful, unpleasant, feelings that interfere with our well-being and happiness. Many mental illnesses involve distorted or exaggerated emotions. So a key to our happiness and our mental health is the ability to deal with emotions effectively.

It is well established that mindfulness training increases the ability to control emotions and our responses to the emotions. This is called emotion regulation. It is a very important benefit of mindfulness and it has positive effects on many life situations from dealing with stress and depression, to assisting in recovery from cancer, to improving caregiver well-being, to being a better negotiator.

Since, the mindfulness induced improvement in emotion regulation is so important, understanding it becomes extremely important. There is a need to understand exactly what mindfulness does to improve emotion regulation and what intermediaries are affected that link mindfulness with the emotions. One aspect of this question is addressed in today’s Research News Article “State Mindfulness during Meditation Predicts Enhanced Cognitive Reappraisal”

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The study found that mindfulness was associated with emotional reappraisal which inferred that mindfulness promotes emotion regulation by enhancing cognitive reappraisal.

Cognitive reappraisal is a strategy that involves changing the direction or magnitude of an emotional response by reinterpreting the meaning of the situation that evoked the emotion. For example if you have to give a speech and you are overwhelmed with anxiety a possible cognitive reappraisal would be to ask yourself what’s the worst thing that could happen, your voice may quake and you may forget a few words. That’s not so bad. Then you focus on the positives for example how honored you are by the opportunity to speak to this group and the impact you will have on them. Note how the reappraisal diminishes the anxiety and replaces it with pride.

After a first date a lady does not hear from the gentleman again and becomes deeply depressed. Looking at the thought process involved the lady notes that the snub reinforced her feeling of worthlessness exacerbating her depression. A reappraisal strategy is to look carefully at the date and see that they were no really compatible and continuing dating would only lead to a dead end. Seeing it this way removes it from the problems with self-worth and reinterprets it as a good thing that he didn’t call. This Flips the situation it from a negative to a positive.

Mindfulness teaches us to look carefully at an emotion and experience it fully and not run away from it. This affords the opportunity to think about it and reappraise it. Mindfulness also relaxes the sympathetic nervous system which is highly activated with strong emotions. This makes the feeling less intense and not so overwhelming that the individual can take a look at the rationally and cognitively reappraise them.

So, practice mindfulness and better manage your emotions.

CMCS

Control Emotions the Right Way with Mindfulness

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Sometimes we get carried away by our emotions. Anger is a frequent culprit. Road rage is a perfect example. But we can also get overtaken by many other emotions such as love, jealousy, fear, etc. When this happens we often engage in behaviors that are either harmful or that we deeply regret later.

How do we control these powerful emotions? Can we learn to regulate them so that they don’t overwhelm us? One strategy is to actively strive to suppress the emotion. This is difficult, requires immense self-control, and most of the time doesn’t work. In addition, repression of extreme emotions can lead to later psychological issues. It has long been thought that repression can be problematic as the emotions reemerge late often in disguised forms.

A better strategy is mindfulness. It has been demonstrated that mindfulness training leads to a decrease in emotionality and to an increase in ability to regulate and respond appropriately to these emotions. With mindfulness the emotion is experienced fully, recognized, and appreciated for what it is. Because the emotion is processed, its power to affect behavior is reduced allowing the individual to form a more appropriate response to the situation. This is the exact opposite of emotional suppression which attempts to eliminate the emotion.

In today’s Research News article “Neural Networks for Mindfulness and Emotion Suppression”

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http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0128005

it is demonstrated that dealing with emotions with mindfulness or with emotional suppression operate through different neural pathways. Both strategies attenuated the response of the amygdala to the emotional triggers. This area has long been known to be a key neural structure for the production of emotions. It can be thought of as a final common pathway through which emotionality is produced. So, it is not surprising that both mindfulness and emotional suppression result in a decrease in Amygdala activity.

It was shown, however, that the two strategies work through different regulation pathways to affect the Amygdala. The mindful approach affects the Amygdala via connections from the Medial Prefrontal Cortex, which is an important region for emotional awareness and mindfulness, while emotional suppression uses connections with other regions including the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex and an area called the Precuneus, which are involved in top-down regulatory processing and which therefore require more cognitive effort.

The neural systems involved in the two strategies make sense given what we know about mindful vs. suppressive emotion regulation. Suppression takes intentional effort and this can be seen in the activation of cognitive processing areas of the brain. Mindfulness doesn’t take such effort. It is much more laid back and effortless. The structures involved reflect this.

So, use mindfulness to help control emotions; it’s a better way and even takes less effort.

CMCS

Loving Kindness Meditation and Social Function

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Humans are social creatures. All that the species has accomplished resulted from its ability to work together and build upon the work of others. Beyond, the importance of the group, interactions with other people are fundamental to personal well-being. People need to be with and connected with others.

Social connections are crucial to our health and happiness. Hence, it is very important for the individual to have effective satisfying social relationships. Unfortunately, interacting with other people is extremely complex and many find it very difficult to effectively engage with others. Some are better than others, but everyone struggles with human interaction to some extent. Hence it is important for us to find ways to improve how we interact with other people.

Mindfulness in general appears to improve social relationships. In today’s Research News article “The interventional effects of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions and interpersonal interactions.”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4450657/

one form of mindfulness training, Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM), is shown to be quite effective in facilitating interpersonal interactions, and enhancing the complex understanding of others. This appears to produce an enhanced ability to interact socially and to increase positive emotions, improving the individual happiness.

Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) is a meditative practice that focuses on repeatedly wishing well to the self and others. It focuses on developing feelings of goodwill, kindness and warmth towards the self and others. It is simple in concept, yet powerful in effect. How can this simple practice improve one’s social relationships?

LKM appears to increase positive emotional states and it is known that we tend to find people experiencing positive emotions as more attractive. In addition, feeling positive emotions in the presence of others increases our self-confidence and enjoyment of social interactions. LKM like other forms of meditation reduces perceived stress. Many people find social interactions stressful. So reducing perceived stress should make it easier to engage with other people.

These effects by themselves could account for LKM’s improvement of social interactions.

LKM has been shown to increase compassion and empathy and decrease biases. It also increases our feelings about ourselves and decreases self-criticism. These effects of LKM produce more positive and caring feelings towards ourselves and others. Not only does this make us feel better about others, it is communicated either verbally or nonverbally to others making them feel better about us, hence, improving interactions. Indeed, being around people who like themselves and understand others on an emotional level, induces positive feelings toward these people and is very attractive, facilitating interpersonal connection.

Finally, LKM appears to have direct effects on our ability to engage in social interactions. LKM is associated with increases in prosocial behavior, increasing helping behavior. It also improves feelings of social connection. In addition, it improves our ability to have a sophisticated understanding of other people in their full complexity. All of these effects of LKM positively influence our ability and effectiveness in interacting with others.

Loving Kindness Meditation appears to be a technique to help us develop positive feeling toward ourselves and others. This makes us want to help others, feel good in their presence, and helps us understand and care for them. It’s quite amazing that such a simple practice could have such far reaching effects.

So, practice Loving Kindness Meditation and be better socially.

CMCS

Spirituality Improves Recovery from Addiction

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In a previous post we described the relationship between spirituality and recovery from alcoholism. https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1032110166812909/?type=1&theater

This is great, but, what about other addictions? Is spirituality helpful with these also?

Substance abuse and addiction is a terrible problem. It isn’t just illicit drugs but includes many prescriptions drugs especially opioid pain relievers. It is estimated that there are approximately 17,000 deaths from illicit drug overdoses. Prescription drugs, however, exceed this total with overdoses of prescription pain killers producing over 22,000 deaths per year and over 500,000 visits per year to the emergency room.

These statistics, although startling are only the tip of the iceberg. Drug use is associated with suicide, homicide, motor-vehicle injury, HIV infection, pneumonia, violence, mental illness, and hepatitis. It can renders the individual ineffective at work, it tears apart families, it makes the individual dangerous both driving and not, It also degrades the person’s life expectancy, which is about 15-20 years from the moment of addiction.

An effective treatment for addiction has been elusive. Most programs and therapies to treat addictions have poor success rates. Recent research is indicating that mindfulness and also spirituality can be quite helpful for kicking the habit. In today’s Research News article, “NIDA-Drug Addiction Treatment Outcome Study (DATOS) Relapse as a Function of Spirituality/Religiosity”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455957/

it was found that high levels of spirituality/religiosity are associated with much lower relapse rates for drug additions. This was the case for cocaine, heroin, alcohol, and marijuana relapse. Unfortunately, prescription drugs were not investigated.

 Why is spirituality/religiosity associated with better outcomes? In today’s study it was found that the strongest association between remission and spirituality involved attending religious services weekly. Hence, it would appear that it is important to participate in religious/spiritual groups. These groups tend to be populated with non-addicts and abusers. So, engagement with these groups provides a social network of people likely to provide support rather than temptation. It is very difficult to prevent relapse when those around you are using drugs themselves and especially when they encourage you to join them. So religious/spiritual groups should help to make it easier to abstain as a substitute for a drug culture.

It has also the case that spirituality/religiosity is associated with negative beliefs about drug abuse. Buddhism teaches that intoxication is an impediment to spiritual development. Other religions completely prohibit drugs while many decry the behaviors that occur under their influence.  This provides what psychologists call cognitive dissonance; an uncomfortable feeling when there is an incompatibility between drug abuse and spirituality/religiosity. The recognition that drug use is not an OK thing to do might provide the extra motivation to help withstand the cravings.

In addition, spirituality/religiosity provides a source of comfort as the individual faces the challenges of refraining from drugs. The challenges provided in everyday life can be a source of motivation to use drugs. An addict often uses drugs to escape from the pressures, stresses, and emotional upheavals that occur during ordinary life. Spirituality/religiosity may provide another way to cope with the individual’s problems. The individual can take solace in the religion instead of drugs when upheavals occur.

It is not known whether the same pattern of results would occur for prescription drug addicts. But, it would seem that the same logic would apply. Hopefully further research will test whether spirituality/religiosity is predictive of improved outcomes with prescription drug addiction.

Regardless the association is clear that spirituality/religiosity is associated with more positive outcomes in relapse prevention with drugs of abuse.

CMCS

Tackle Cancer with Mindfulness

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Cancer is arguably the most feared disease. Just the word seems to strike fear in the hearts of most everyone, let alone a diagnosis of cancer. Unfortunately this fear is well founded. It is the second leading cause of death. It is estimated that in 2015, 1,658,370 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the U.S. and 589,430 people will die from the disease.

But beyond the mortality figures, cancer is so feared because the treatments are so difficult. It can take years of treatments that produce horrible side effects and even if they are effective there is a never ending fear of reoccurrence. There is a need to not only treat the cancer itself, but to find ways to help the victim to endure the treatments and deal with the difficult psychological and social issues that go along with the living with diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.

Mindfulness training has been found to be very helpful with the physical and psychological issues associated with diagnosis, treatment, and recovery from cancer. In today’s Research News “The impact of mindfulness-based interventions on symptom burden, positive psychological outcomes, and biomarkers in cancer patients.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4457221/

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A large amount of research is reviewed and summarized. It suggests that mindfulness appears to be helpful in dealing with all of the issues surrounding cancer.

Based upon the available evidence, mindfulness training appears to be helpful with the psychological issues of distress, stress, sleep disturbance, and fatigue, quality of life and spirituality. It can assist with regulating the fear associated with cancer. Mindfulness training focuses the individual on the present moment, while fear is focused on potential future negative events. By focusing on what is transpiring now and not in the future mindfulness can ameliorate fear. It doesn’t eliminate fear. It simply makes it more manageable.

Mindfulness is known to improve emotion regulation. With training the individual is better able to deal with emotions as they arise and respond to them more appropriately. So, it helps the victims cope with the myriad of emotions associated with cancer and its treatment. The improved regulation of emotions and the reduction in fear can facilitate better sleep and increase feelings of well-being. Indeed, mindfulness has been found to be associated with improvements in sleep and increases in feelings of calm and well-being in cancer patients.

Mindfulness can help manage the pain associated directly with the cancer and indirectly with the treatments. It appears to slightly reduce the pain but has a larger impact on the psychological perception of pain. Mindfulness decreases the nervous systems responses to pain, helping the patients cope with the persistent discomfort.

Mindfulness has been well documented to reduce stress. This is particularly important in cancer patients who are under intense physical and psychological stress. Reducing this stress in turn improves the body’s ability to fight off the disease and also improves the individual’s psychological capacity to weather the storm.

All of these psychological effects of mindfulness result in an improvement in the patients’ quality of life. This is very important as fighting cancer is usually a long term-proposition. The better the quality of life with cancer the better the individual’s ability to persevere and continue to fight over the long haul.

Beyond the psychological help provided by mindfulness it also appears to help physically. It has been show to improving immune function and even alters the expression of genes associated with inflammation. It improves the regulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis which is associated with stress hormones. It reduces the activity of the sympathetic nervous system which is associated with activation and stress. In addition, it can affect the body’s cells themselves increasing the important indicator of cellular aging, telomere length. All of these physical changes are indicators of improvements in the body’s ability to fight off the cancer, withstand the treatments, and improve recovery.

So, use mindfulness as a tool to improve your ability to tackle cancer.

CMCS

Eat Mindfully and have a Healthier Weight

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Obesity is epidemic in the industrialized world. In the U.S. more than 2 in 3 adults are considered to be overweight or obese, while more than 1 in 3 adults are considered to be obese. Particularly troubling is that about one-third of children and adolescents are considered to be overweight or obese and half of those are obese. This is having a major impact on the health of the population. Obesity has been found to shorten life expectancy by eight years and extreme obesity by 14 years.

There has been extensive study of overeating and obesity and countless dietary programs have been proposed, but the epidemic appears to be getting worse rather than better. Recently mindfulness has been looked at as potentially helpful in weight control. In today’s Research News article “Association between Mindfulness and Weight Status in a General Population from the NutriNet-Santé Study.”

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it is shown that the risk of obesity is lower in women and men who have high mindfulness.

The use of mindfulness as an aid for healthy weight is very exciting and early results are very promising. But, how can mindfulness, being aware in the present moment, affect eating and body weight?

A substantial proportion of eating occurs mindlessly. We often eat while distracted, immersed in conversation, watching television, reading etc. It has been shown that intake is increased when we eat mindlessly. With mindless eating, we tend to ignore the body’s cues of hunger, satiety, and fullness and keep eating even when full. Mindfulness training, simply by improving attention to what is transpiring in the present moment is an antidote to mindless eating. It is impossible to be simultaneously paying attention and being mindless. It is impossible to be mindful and not notice the body’s signals of hunger and fullness. Hence, one way that mindfulness can assist in intake and weight control is by making us more mindful eaters.

People, particularly women, tend to eat when they are experience intense emotions. Food seems to be used as a salve for ruffled emotions. Mindfulness can help here also. Mindfulness training improves the individual’s ability to regulate and respond appropriately to their emotions. This improved emotional regulation is an antidote to emotional eating. Rather than attempting to control emotions through eating the individual can apply mindfulness, improving emotional regulation, and thereby reducing overall intake.

Chronic stress also tends to promote overeating and obesity. As has been shown in a myriad of studies, mindfulness training is an antidote for chronic stress. Hence, by reducing stress mindfulness can help to reduce food intake.

Many obese people try to control their eating through avoidance or limit-setting, thinking “willpower” is what they need. As a result they are constantly trying the latest diet fad. But the diet makes them miserable and produces negative feelings about food. This, by itself, is sufficient reason to abandon the diet, which is almost the inevitable outcome. Mindful eating, on the other hand, enhances the pleasantness of eating. By paying close attention to the food, its flavors and textures, the individual begins to savor food and truly enjoy eating. So, mindful eating can not only reduce intake but also can do so while promoting enjoyment of food. This makes mindful eating programs much easier to maintain, making them more effective.

SO, learn to eat mindfully and maintain a healthier weight.

CMCS

Mindfulness, the Pain Killer

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Many people have to deal with pain on a daily basis. Most use prescription medications to help. But, these drugs are dangerous and over 12,000 people a year die from overdoses of these powerful pain killers. In addition, there are a number of disorders that do not respond well to these drugs. One of these painful disorders is fibromyalgia.

In today’s Research News “Mindfulness meditation alleviates fibromyalgia symptoms in women: Results of a randomized clinical trial.”

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It is reported that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) reduces symptoms of fibromyalgia, including perceived stress, sleep disturbance, and symptom severity, but not pain or physical functioning. This study and prior research suggest that mindfulness is a safe and effective treatment for this painful disorder. It is not a magical cure, but can be of great assistance in coping with the disorder.

MBSR contains both meditation and yoga practice. Prior research suggests that both may be helpful with pain management. Yoga exercises may help reduce fibromyalgia pain. Yoga has been shown to reduce pain, fatigue, depression, and improve sleep and energy. But, it is unclear whether meditation and yoga practice act in the same way, synergistically, or additively. Regardless they seem to work; but how?

Mindfulness practice and particularly MBSR appears to calm the sympathetic nervous system, reducing stress. This benefit can lead to a lowering of resting heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and relax muscle. Mindfulness promotes deep muscle relaxation which lessens tension and irritability. With the reduction of the stressful effects of pain, the pain becomes more manageable. The physiological relaxation itself can stop the pain from amplifying itself through the induction of the stress response.

Mindfulness practice can also help manage the psychological effects of pain. When pain is consistently part of the day, the individual starts to dwell on it. This in turn produces stress and anxiety about the present pain, as well as a dread concerning future pain. Mindfulness training can help patients learn to direct their attention away from pain. By focusing on the present moment, thoughts of future pain are removed.

Mindfulness practice can promote relaxation and awareness of what is actually transpiring. This can reduce the distressing thoughts and feelings that come with pain and prevent them from making the pain worse. Mindfulness training can enhance body awareness, which may lead to improved self-care. All of these effects of mindfulness training can help with the pain management.

Mindfulness training is known to produce changes in the nervous system that may provide benefits for pain patients. The changes appear to result in an inhibition of the central nervous system’s ability to perceive pain, reducing the sensations the patient actually feels.

So practice mindfulness to assist in pain management.

CMCS

Be Smart about Emotions

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Emotions are powerful forces in our lives. They supply the richness and texture to life experiences, producing joy, surprise, love, happiness, elation, and satisfaction. But, they can also be troubling, associated with fear, hate, stress, anxiety, and anger. We are highly motivated by these emotions and in general seek the experience of positive emotions and try to avoid the experiencing the negative ones.

We should not view emotions as a problem and that our lives would be better without them. To the contrary, eliminating or blunting emotions is itself a problem. This is termed by psychologists as flat affect. People who experience this often comment that they have lost the “juice” in life and desire to return to the emotional ups and downs that seem to supply life’s richness. So, the emotions appear to be essential for humans to lead a rich full life.

On the other hand, when emotions become too strong they can overwhelm the individual and lead to maladaptive behavior. For example thrill seeking can lead to dangerous activities. Also, many mental illnesses are characterized by extremes of emotions. These include phobias, panic disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, etc. In addition, strong negative emotions can lead to violence and aggression.

We need to be emotional, but not too much so. We need to be able to have emotions, but not in the extremes and we need to not overreact or overly seek emotions. In other words we need to be able to be smart with our emotions and develop the ability to regulate our emotional lives. This is termed by psychologists as emotional regulation and the ability to do so is termed as emotional intelligence.

Mindfulness has been shown to increase positive emotional states and decrease negative ones. This is one of the reasons that many people practice techniques to develop mindfulness. It seems to make their live better by assisting them in dealing with emotions. It appears to increase emotional regulation and thus mindful people can be said to have higher emotional intelligence.

How this might work to improve an individual’s ability to cope with life is explored in today’s Research News article “Dispositional mindfulness and perceived stress: The role of emotional intelligence.”

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In this article Bao, Xue, & Kong explore how mindfulness might reduce perceived stress in life. They document that mindfulness is associated with lower levels of perceived stress and can do so directly. It appears to improve the individual’s ability to cope with life and be less stressed by the events in life. It is also demonstrated that mindfulness may reduce perceived stress by improving emotional intelligence, improving the individual’s ability to regulate and use emotions to their benefit and thereby reduce perceived stress.

Hence, the well documented ability of mindfulness to lower the individual’s feelings of stress in response to life appears, at least in part, to result from its ability to improve how well the individual can regulate their emotions. In other words, it appears to make people emotionally intelligent.

So, practice mindfulness and be smarter with your emotions; letting them enhance the experience of life while blunting their destructive side.

CMCS