Now, a new study suggests a potential remedy for overly stressed medical students: compassion training. Caregivers Learn Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) Researcher Jennifer Mascaro and colleagues from Emory University randomly assigned volunteer second-year medical students to either 10 weeks of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) or to a waitlist. The training, based on the Tibetan Buddhist practice of lojong, consists of cognitive exercises that strengthen students’ attention and explore the nature of suffering—how it arises in ourselves and others, of human interdependence, and of the randomness of labels that we assign to other people (e....

The study, a collaboration between Richard Davidson‘s lab and the Madison-based Games Learning Society (GLS), will be the first study of videogames done in the context of Davidson’s pioneering work exploring the link between neuroscience and mindfulness. Crystals of Kaydor is one of two games developed for the study. “This project underscores that social skills should be understood the same way as cognitive skills,” Davidson says. “One’s ability to respond empathically is a skill that can be trained in the same way that memory can be trained....

The goal of the five-day session is to bring the discussion of integrating contemplative practice into higher education to the fore, and engage the conversation on a face-to-face level. The session will cover contemplative practices as they relate to pedagogical issues, recent research, practical applications, and administrative and collegial comunication. The faculty for this year’s session will include professors from a range of backgrounds including: Daniel Barbezat, Professor of Economics at Amherst College, Linda-Susan Beard, Associate Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College Judith Simmer-Brown Professor of Religious Studies at Naropa University Joel Upton, Professor of Art and Art History, at Amherst College, Patricia Wallace, Professor of English at Vassar College, and Arthur Zajonc, Director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and professor of physics at Amherst College....

This is what the students at Bentleigh Secondary College, a publicly funded junior high and high school in Melbourne, Australia, do every day in the school’s new Meditation and Indigenous Cultural Centre (M&ICC). The college teamed up with an eco-friendly architecture firm dwpsuters, which is the Australian arm of design worldwide partnership (dwp). Regular classes on meditation, indigenous culture, and environmental sustainability are taught at the center. The inside is designed to be conducive to meditation, “using calming forms and materials” such as rounded columns of polished wood, says Nick Cini, the center’s designer....

Yeah, right. Try communicating that to a room full of business execs, and you’re bound to be laughed out of the room! But Adam Grant, professor at the Wharton School of Business, makes just such a proposal. In his new book Give and Take, he argues that giving to others is indeed the strategy to win in business as well as in life. Although successful people often have talent, luck, and a willingness to work hard, writes Grant, there is a fourth element to success—how one interacts with others—that is equally, if not more important....

Dacher Keltner: Having a panic-attack in front of millions of viewers set Dan Harris on a path to seeking help for his depression and anxiety. He found it with meditation, which he says makes him at least 10% happier, which is also the name of his best-selling book and podcast. On every episode of our show, we have a happiness guinea pig try out a research-based practice designed to increase happiness, resilience, kindness, or connection and then we dive into the science behind why it works....

But what if we shifted our attention a fraction — toward what hasn’t gone wrong? This short animation from School of Life suggests it’s often the small moments in life (e.g. my car didn’t break down) that bring us the most joy and stoke our well-being. Celebrate what’s going right, right now Falling victim to wants and insecurities is human nature — it’s what happens when you look at what other people have that you do not, and begin to make comparisons....

Experiencing the northern lights remains at the top of many people’s bucket lists, and I felt that longing deeply. The Romans named the northern lights after Aurora, the Goddess of Dawn, and if ever a soul needed a new day, I did. As I revealed to the 14 strangers in our first night “welcome circle”: “I’ve been living in a dark hole for the past two years. Not in an ice cave or anything like that, but the suicide of a friend just before Christmas added to a series of painful losses, including the death of my parents in a three-month window, punctuated by my husband’s exit from our marriage in between Mom’s and Dad’s passing....

Mindfulness Meditation To start, explore these awareness of breath meditation practices: Once you’re familiar with how to work with your breath as an anchor for your attention, try branching out into practices for the body, loving-kindness, working with sounds, and longer meditation practices aimed at working with difficult emotions like anxiety. Below is a list of other online resources offering guided meditations. more mindful audio Free guided meditations from UCLAEach week has a different theme, and usually includes some introductory comments, a guided meditation, some silent practice time, and closing comments....

Why were you drawn to martial arts? Actually, I told my parents that I wanted to learn to play the piano. A week later, my dad and I were in the car, heading to what I thought would be my first piano lesson. Instead, he dropped me off at a martial arts studio. In retrospect, it’s hilarious. But it was perfect: He knew I was a kid who never stopped moving around, and he knew I was looking for something to connect me to my Asian heritage....

It took me years of mindfulness practice to truly understand the promise of present moment and why it is a helpful place to hang out. As an anxious teenager, I can vividly recall how, in the face of a looming exam, my mind would sometimes spiral into self-defeat. A typical thought stream might look something like: “I’m going to fail this test, then fail out of school, never get into college, probably die homeless and alone under a bridge, and no one will come to my funeral…” But when I practiced mindfulness and staying in the moment, I realized that I could still prepare for the future, like just studying for the darn test, without getting caught up in story of how badly it could go....

There are advantages to this. Mind and body mechanisms have evolved to deal with threats to survival, so when we’re faced with approaching fire or an assailant with a weapon, the monkey mind reacts fast. But there are drawbacks. Working at speed, the autopilot takes mental shortcuts and makes guesses, unconsciously based on what’s happened before, rather than a full appreciation of the here and now. We’re seeing situations with eyes of the past, simultaneously projecting into a possible future as we imagine likely dangers and rewards....

And how quickly it became rote. The exhilaration of driving quickly dwindled. Now, with thousands of miles of road behind me, I just put that sucker into drive and away I go. It’s totally thoughtless, to the point where I can now drive somewhere and forget how I got there, distracted by whatever is going on in my head. Then came a birthday request from my girlfriend, who owns a car with standard transmission....

But something weird began happening when I hit my late 40s that nearly broke my funny bone. As soon as I made with the witticisms, my face, neck, and chest would turn beet red. I’d perspire so intensely it was like I’d taken a shower. In public. Instead of laughs, now I was getting totally mortifying sympathy stares. I had no explanation for this super-uncomfortable phenomenon, but the dots quickly connected once I noticed other weird sensations....

You might think you’re too smart to be swindled by this or other scams. But not everyone is so fortunate. Microsoft estimates that this and similar tech scams (which in fact either upload malware to your computer, charge hundreds of dollars to remove nonexistent or planted bugs, or exploit the access you’ve provided to steal your identity or financial information) net their perpetrators $1.5 billion a year. Facebook “love scams,” in which criminals posing as US service members prey on the credulous and soft-hearted and get people to wire money so they can fly back to the US, netted $362 million in 2018....

This animation from The School of Life suggests that finding fulfilling work takes reflection, some mental digging, and giving ourselves permission to do this kind of inner questing (you’ll want to block out some weekends). They offer six tips on how to find fulfilling work: 1) Accept that you’re not alone in feeling confusion about careers. Many choices can lead to anxiety, or prevent us from making a choice at all....

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher. He is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he was founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (1995), and founder (in 1979) and former director of its world-renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic. He is the author of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness (Dell, 1990, 2005, 2013), Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (Hyperion, 1994, 2005), Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting (co-authored with Myla Kabat-Zinn; Hyperion, 1997, 2014), and Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness (Hyperion, 2005)....

The materials are locally-sourced from a nearby dump, home to 25,000 people, many of whom survive by picking through garbage. Favio Chavez leads the chamber ensemble of 25 budding musicians. He’s a music teacher and a social worker. The orchestra has performed in Brazil, Panama, and Columbia, and offers young players hope for a way out of poverty. A Kickstarter campaign for the film launched in March. This web extra provides additional information related to an article titled, “Sound Garden,” which appeared in the June 2013 issue of Mindful magazine....

Make Attention a Priority My previous post explored what attention is and why it’s important to both quality of life and fundamental effectiveness. Attention is the basic resource or energy you have to invest in your experience. You are what you attend to. It’s that simple. Let’s go “Big Picture” for a moment. Managing attention has not been on our radar screens because until recently most of us took it for granted....