Ruth Buczynski, PhD

I have been thinking a lot about alternative paths to healing recently. Last week, we talked about a study comparing the effects of Lunesta (a medication for insomnia) to meditation.

As many of readers pointed out, alternative therapies can be useful in that there are much fewer (or even no) side effects and in some cases these therapies have comparable results to pharmaceutical remedies.

But what about specific effects of the individual alternative therapies? No two therapies work alike so they aren’t interchangeable.

I’d like to share with you a study out of the journal Emotion but with the caveat that it isn’t the type of Gold Standard (randomized, controlled) study that I like to see. Nonetheless, it gave me food for thought.

Researchers out of the UC Berkeley lab of Robert Levenson, PhD, recruited two teams of 21 volunteers each from San Francisco area meditation centers and dance centers using Craigslist. The participants had at least two years of training in either Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation or ballet or modern dance.

In case you haven’t studied Vipassana meditation, it focuses on introspection and self-exploration, generally during a sitting posture.

A third group of 21 volunteers formed the control group. None of the control members had experience in dance, meditation, Pilates, or professional sports.

Electrodes were used to measure body responses of all subjects while watching emotional scenes from select movies clips. Participants were also asked to rank their emotional response.

Researchers were trying to determine the role of body awareness when experiencing emotions by monitoring second-by-second coherence between subjective emotional responses and heart rate.

The results: while all participants showed similar emotional responses to the movie clips, the meditators were the ones whose heart rate also responded. Both the dance and the control group showed lower levels of coherence between heart rate and emotional responses.

Levenson and colleagues theorized that meditators were more attuned to their body sensations and thus to internal organs like their heart, while dancers were able to heighten awareness and focus to become better dancers, but not necessarily to increase mind and body emotional attunement.

More research obviously needs to be done before conclusions can definitely be made, however, for me, this was more evidence that we need to choose our alternative therapies carefully.

Sitting meditation is useful in so many situations, but experts recommend not using it right away if someone has been traumatized. Then dance or yoga may be a better match, at least initially, or perhaps walking meditation. This study may back up this thinking.

Want to find out more about the clinical application of mindfulness – including the times when it is contraindicated? Ron Siegel, PsyD, is a long-time meditation practitioner who is an expert in the application of meditation in psychotherapy.

Registration is currently open for just two more days for his extremely popular intensive training course, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.

For more information on the course, you can click here.

What type of alternative therapies have you used – and under what circumstances? Please leave a comment below.

Imagine a country where we no longer have to depend on medication to help manage depression, chronic pain, or insomnia.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a trend of studies that are showing how mindfulness is just as effective as side-effect loaded medications.

This latest study, conducted by Cynthia Gross, PhD and her colleagues from the College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota, has found some inspiring evidence that mindfulness may be just as powerful as the insomnia prescription medication, Lunesta.

This randomized, controlled trial was conducted at the University of Minnesota’s health center where 30 adults, diagnosed with insomnia, were split into two groups. 20 participants took an 8 week MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) training course, and 10 participants were put on a daily regimen of 3mg of eszopiclone (Lunesta).

The folks in the mindfulness course had one 2.5 hour session a week for eight weeks, one full day retreat, and were provided with homework assignments designed to help them stay focused on their mindfulness practices.

Participants’ quality of sleep was measured using the Insomnia Severity Index, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and sleep diaries. These tests were performed before and after the initial 8 weeks and then again 3 months after the study.

Results show that mindfulness and the sleeping medication had comparable results on several measures − total sleep time, how long it took for participants to fall asleep, and sleep efficiency (percent of time spent asleep compared to total time in bed).

In fact, after 8 weeks of training, the MBSR group fell asleep more quickly than the medication group and this was still true at the 3 month follow-up. What’s more, some of the improvements in quality of sleep continued to rise as time passed.

The more we show the value of mindfulness, the more willing people may be to try an alternative that comes without overwhelming healthcare costs and the burdens of medications.

(Please note: this DOES NOT mean that anyone currently taking medication should stop doing so. Healthcare providers should always be consulted before changing medication regimens).

I think there’s potential for mindfulness to make an impact on the way we practice, which is why we’ve put together something for you.

We’ve just opened registration for our most popular intensive training course − Mindfulness and Psychotherapy with Ronald Siegel, PsyD.

Through this program you can build skills to deepen your practice and integrate mindfulness techniques into your work.

Click here to get a look at the upcoming program. . .

And please leave a comment below. What are your views on using alternative therapies over medication? Do you favor one over the other? Is there room for both? We’d like to hear your thoughts.

There have been countless studies on mindfulness with adults, but what about children?

Is mindfulness for young kids and adolescents? If so, how do we introduce it and what are some effective ways of teaching it?

A literature review about using mindfulness with children, published in Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry by Miles Thompson, DClinPsy and Jeremy Gauntlett-Gilbert, PhD, DClinPsy from the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases in Bath, England looked at these questions and pointed out useful ways to incorporate mindfulness into practice with young people.

Dr. Thompson and Dr. Gauntlett-Gilbert had some helpful suggestions for tweaking common techniques to make introducing mindfulness a bit more child-friendly.

They found that unlike adults, children and teens need more of a reason “why” before getting started.

A way to explain the value of mindfulness practice is to give some examples of undesirable “mindless” situations.

You might ask a child if they’ve ever eaten a meal without remembering what they ate, or gotten involved in an argument without remembering what originally made them angry. Most young people have experienced something like this before.

But then why practice mindfulness techniques? Dr. Thompson and Dr. Gauntlett-Gilbert use a powerful analogy. We practice mindfulness for the same reason an athlete practices a penalty shot: when the game is on, the player has a better chance of making the goal with the crowd watching, when it really counts.

When a young person understands “why,” the next question becomes “how?”

Dr. Thompson and Dr. Gauntlett-Gilbert emphasize the importance of practices that are both varied (to stave off boredom) and well-integrated into a young person’s daily activities.

For example, you might suggest mindful eating, mindful walking, or – my favorite – mindful texting.

Here, adolescents were encouraged to build in a “pause” before grabbing their cell phone at the sound of a text. This means taking a few moments to observe the thoughts and desires that pass through the mind when receiving a text message.

Through this mindful pause, the young person rewires their habitual reaction and gains the chance to consider their response mindfully (as opposed to quickly and automatically replying to the message).

One final analogy that really gets to the heart of the matter − when introducing mindfulness to a patient of any age, having a personal mindfulness practice is essential.

As Dr. Thompson and Dr. Gauntlett-Gilbert put it – if you want to learn how to swim, would you go to the person who’s read all the books on swimming, or the person who’s actually been in the water?

With that in mind, I have something I’d like to share with you. We’ve recently put out a free report on mindfulness with anxiety by Ron Siegel, PsyD.

In it, Ron gives you the low down on why we tend to be mindless, the physiology of anxiety, and even includes a special practice designed to help your patients overcome their anxiety.

You can get that free report by clicking here.

And remember, you can use many of the tips in this blog with your adult patients, too.

Have you ever used mindfulness practices with children or adolescents? Please let us know by leaving a comment below.

I know I said I would be reporting more on how REM sleep can help regulate emotions, but when I found this, I knew I had to share it with you. So here it is and we’ll get back to REM sleep a little later.

Mindfulness. . .what is it? How does it work? What can it do?

These are common questions that I am asked sometimes with suspicion, as mindfulness has become something of an “in thing” without there being lots of explanation of what it is.

You may have been asked these same questions by your patients when considering whether mindfulness should be a part of treatment.

There is no simple answer, though here is some information you may want to share to set the stage – a mindfulness down and dirty fact sheet if you will, provided to us by the labs of Dr. Sara Lazar at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Ulrich Ott in Justus Liebig University in Germany.

To make mindfulness more understandable, these researchers did an exhaustive literature review and have identified four core ways mindfulness works. But, before we get into all of that, let’s start with the basics.

So, what is mindfulness? To cite Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the head honchos in mindfulness research, it is the nonjudgmental attention to experiences in the present moment. And, it typically cultivates in a formal practice such as sitting meditation, walking meditation, or mindful movements.

Okay, now we have an idea of what it is. . . but how does it work?

Back to our research friends from Harvard.

Through this literature review, Lazar and Ott identified four main ways mindfulness works to improve our quality of life:

• Attention regulation
• Body awareness
• Emotion regulation
• Sense of self

These components synergistically create that sense of calm and wellbeing that mindfulness is known for. Let’s take a closer look at these mechanisms and how they work.

Attention regulation is the ability to focus on an object of awareness. Training the mind to overcome distraction helps you feel less flustered and “all over the place” and more centered.

Next, body awareness contributes to the ability to sense your own emotions and as a bonus, the emotions of others. In order to develop empathy, it’s key to be able to sense how you are feeling.

The third core feature of how mindfulness works is emotion regulation. By allowing feelings and emotions that might normally be avoided, to come up, be expressed, and fade away, mindfulness builds the capacity to bear undesirable feelings and works in a similar way to exposure therapy.

The final element that makes mindfulness work is the change in perspective of self. With practice, mindfulness can lead to a less static definition of one’s self, and the realization that we’re always changing. A more fluid existence can lead to less suffering and more “in the moment” enjoyment.

What’s really exciting about these findings is that they are being proven in neuroscience and brain imaging. For each of the four components of mindfulness, a specific region of the brain is developed through neuroplasticity (the ability for our brains to physically change in response to our thoughts, actions, and environment).

With neuroscience and brain imaging research backing what mindfulness practitioners subjectively report, many are finding that explaining mindfulness to their patients is becoming easier.

I hope this overview of how mindfulness works has given you ideas on how to broach the issue of mindfulness with your patients because truly, mindfulness is a valuable practice that has the potential for healing people’s lives and helping them change.

A wide range of practitioners are using mindfulness and with diverse populations. We put together one such case study of mindfulness being used in the Arctic. Please click here.
How do you explain mindfulness to your patients? Please leave a comment below.

We’ve all heard of ‘restful’ sleep . . . but what about ‘healing’ sleep? Is it possible that dreaming could help reduce the pain of traumatic memories?

Researchers at UC Berkeley have found that when dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, our stress responses shut down, and the neurochemicals responsible for stressful feelings stop being released. Not only this, but REM helps reduce the negative effects of difficult memories.

“The dream stage of sleep, based on its unique neurochemical composition, provides us with a form of overnight therapy, a soothing balm that removes the sharp edges from the prior day’s emotional experiences,” said Matter Walker, PhD, the senior author of the study that was published in November in Current Biology.

For people with PTSD, this nightly de-stress function may not be properly working. Their emotional experience to their trauma is never successfully separated from their memory during sleep, which is one reason why they can have strong visceral reactions to flashbacks. Dreams normally provide perspective and understanding of daily experiences by reprocessing what has happened while in a low stress state.

One neurochemical, in particular, the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, is significantly decreased in the brain allowing REM sleep to work its magic. This is important because it gives dreams a low stress atmosphere to process our emotional experiences.

Dr. Walker made the connection between REM sleep and PTSD when he found that a generic blood pressure medication was helping people with PTSD get better sleep with less reoccurring nightmares. One side effect of the drug is a decrease in norepinephrine. When Dr. Walker put this together he realized the potential for REM sleep.

In my next post, I’ll tell you about a scientific study that looks specifically at REM sleep and reduced emotional reactivity.

But first, if you’d like to know more about the healing properties of sleep and what it can do for your patients, we have a gift prepared for you.

In “7 Ways Inadequate Sleep Negatively Impacts Health,” you’ll hear from Rubin Naiman, PhD – one of the leading sleep specialists in the country.

Because sleep is such an important part of physical and mental health, we’re making this special report available to you free of charge.

Just click this link to download the free report. I hope you enjoy it.

But before you do, please leave a comment and let us know what you’ve observed – have your patients reported improvements in health after a good night’s sleep?

Water…it’s something that’s so essential, but with modern plumbing, it can be easy to take for granted. . .

. . . that is, until it’s gone.

For those of us in the office, this “gone” phenomenon occurred more than once in the last few months.

We were first reminded of the importance of water last summer. Paige, our diligent Director of Operations, had a water pump break.

Imagine this: she and her husband were hosting weekend guests and had just finished a multi-course dinner. The hot kitchen was full of dirty dishes, pots and pans. . .

By the time the water came back on 2 days later, the kitchen was a festering biohazard, the houseguests had gone home to take advantage of their working showers, and Paige was worn out from lugging home containers of water from a friend’s house.

Flash forward a few weeks, when Hurricane Irene wreaked havoc on the Eastern coastline.

The office lost power for nearly a week, with almost the entire staff in similar straits.

Now, out here, many of us live on well water. This means that when the power goes out, our water also goes out.

Firehouses gave out drinking water, and in the heat of August we all longed for the luxury of daily showers.

Seven weeks later…and Storm Alfred again knocks out power. This time, most of our staff didn’t get their power or water back for 10 days.

Again, the local firehouses set up water stations. And while getting water was inconvenient, we were thankful that it was available.

With these multiple water outages in the past few months, water has been on my mind. It has been on many of our minds here at the office – which is why Charity: Water was the overwhelming choice when deciding who we wanted to receive half of what we take in during this year’s Holiday Package.

We had only a small and partial taste of what it is like to go without accessible water.

What must it be like for families who have to walk miles each way to find safe, drinkable water? It becomes a full-time job for those (usually younger girls) making this frequent water trek.

These journeys are often quite dangerous and can keep young women out of school as they focus on this basic need for survival.

The bottom line is: water is essential for life. That’s why this year we’re excited to contribute to the effort to make water accessible to everyone.

When you buy the Holiday Package, NICABM will donate 50% of the proceeds to Charity: Water so that more families and communities will be able to count on their water supply.

And you’ll be getting a big savings. Please click here to take a look. It’s chock-full of ideas you can put into your practice this year.

It’s for a limited time only.

If you read my last blog, you already saw this video. But, I wanted as many people as possible to get a chance to see it, so we’re including it again.

Do you have your own water tale? Please leave a comment below.

Modern plumbing is such a blessing. I’ve never shared this, but the first parsonage I lived in (my father is a retired minister) was in a small rural community in Maine.

We had a pump at the sink and an outhouse for a toilet.

My parents had 3 children (I’m the second) all under the age of 5. A lot of thought used to go into preparations for baths and bed time, especially in the cold, long Maine winters.

Today, I turn on the faucets and clean, drinkable water is immediately available. But I’ve been thinking more lately about how almost 1 billion people go without clean water everyday of their lives.

If you’ve ever lost access to water, you know how awful it can be. Now, imagine having to walk 5 miles to the closest water source and carrying a 40 pound container back to your home.

This is the reality for many women and girls in communities without readily accessible water. They are left with the responsibility of fetching water, something they spend more time doing than cooking, cleaning, or collecting firewood.

It’s one of the reasons many girls don’t go to school.

In Africa alone, women spend 40 billion hours each year collecting water. Imagine what they could do with even a portion of that time.

Beyond that, imagine that the water you did get was contaminated. Every 19 seconds a mother loses her child to a water related death.

But, there is a way to help, Charity: Water, a foundation providing clean water for those in need, will be the recipient of NICABM’s donation from the 2011 Holiday Package.

We’ve put together the 2011 Holiday Package to give you the most current methods in the treatment of trauma.

We’ve reduced the price and we’re donating 50% of all the proceeds to Charity: Water in an attempt to bring those in need, the gift of water.

Take a second to check out the Holiday Package, its not only a way for you to enhance your practice, but help to create a world where clean water is available for everyone.

If you want to learn more about Charity: Water, we’ve included a short video below. Let me know what you think.

I find that there can be comfort in [some] traditions.

Here in the office, we have our traditions, and one of my favorites is a new one that we just started last year.

Each mid-December, the entire office gets together and chooses a charity for our end-of-the-year Holiday Special.

Each staff member comes to this meeting with their favorite charity along with background research to lobby the rest of the team to choose their charity.

After everyone has presented their ideas, we vote by secret ballot, discuss some more, vote some more, and eventually narrow it down to one charity.

This year, Chris and Max stole the show.

They did their research early and then arrived at the meeting as a united front, offering one charity and lots of reasons for their choice.

After many rounds of ballots last year, we chose Save the Children as our holiday charity and after the sale, sent $24,000 to aid their life-saving programs. (I was outvoted for my favorite charity, but that’s a story for another time.)

This year, we needed only one ballot to make our decision, Chris and Max were so persuasive.

On our next blog, I’ll announce the charity we chose, as well as which of our 2011 programs we’ll be offering as our Holiday Package.

But for now, what traditions are most dear to your heart? Please leave a comment below.

What do Matt Damon, Michael J. Fox, Andre Agassi, and Bette Midler have in common?

They all have created charities.

Matt Damon co-created Water.org, Michael J. Fox the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Andre Agassi has the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education, and Bette Midler the New York Restoration Project.

It reminds me of when I was a very young child and I was taught to tithe, giving 10% of my allowance in the Sunday collection plate. (I was the preacher’s daughter).

Beyond that the teaching encourages us to give offerings in addition to the 10% tithe. Something I’ve always admired about my parents is that though we were poor, they modeled for me how both tithes and offerings are important in giving.

So beginning with my allowance when I was 7, to my paper route earnings when I was 10, to my tips as a waitress in high school and college, my tithes and offerings have been something I have taken seriously.

I’ve been one of the lucky ones in this world. All it takes is a glance through the newspaper or a look at CNN headlines to know that while my income has gone through some lean years, it was never as bad as what 85% of the world’s population experiences.

While I may no longer direct all of my giving to a church, to me it feels obvious that having received so much, I have a responsibility to share.

This year I set a goal that NICABM would donate $100,000 to charity.

So how did we do? Well, take a look:

o $37,500 – Doctors without Borders
o $36,500 – Save the Children
o $15,000 – Smile Train
o $12,435 – Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies
o $5,000 – CT Public Broadcasting
o $5,500 – Windham Hospital Foundation in Windham, CT
o $4,000 – Amnesty International
o $2,000 – WAIM (a local ministry to help the poor)
o $2,000 – FINCA
o $2,000 – AmeriCares
o $2,000 – Covenant Soup Kitchen
o $1,000 – The Salvation Army
o $1,000 – Amherst NPR Station
o $1,000 – Hurlock Family Fund (for a local family)
o $1,000 – Oxfam
o $1,000 – Habitat for Humanity
o $1,000 – Democracy Now
o $1,000 – World Vision
o $1,000 – International Justice Mission
o $1,000 – Open Windows Foundation
o $1,000 – Perception Programs
o $500 – CT Audubon Society
o $500 – Insight Meditation
o $500 – ASPCA
o $200 – The Mansfield Holiday Fund in Mansfield, CT
o $100 – Windham Textile Museum

Total: $135,735

There’s always more that can be done and so we are looking ahead to next year.

Soon we will be discounting one of our programs and offering it as the Holiday Special 2011. Not only will there be a significantly reduced price, but we will be giving half of the sales to charity.

Which charity? That’s something the staff gets to choose, so I’ll let you know in my next blog post.

Where do you feel most compelled to give, whether it be money, time, or services? Please leave a comment below.

Thanksgiving is almost here. It’s a time for celebration and thankfulness, but it’s also a time of year when people who are trying to be careful about their weight can feel quite vulnerable.

In a recent conversation with John La Puma, MD, he shared some suggestions he gives to his patients around the holidays. It’s a fresh (and doable) approach to the Thanksgiving meal that will allow your patients to participate socially without feeling anxious about (or destroying) their diet.

Three ways to approach this year’s holiday meal:

1. One is that you start or end the meal with a walk, outside – no matter the weather – then you are on the right track.
   I think we’ve lost that tradition in our country, and it’s an important one; to hang out with friends and family, anticipate the meal, enjoy it, and then, in a way, recap it with a walk. You can even walk before you eat – and/or after – but it’s an important part of the day.
2. The second is to really enjoy the food. Food is so much more difficult to enjoy if you have a huge amount of guilt about it – like, “I’m eating this and I really shouldn’t” or, “I wonder how many calories this is.” If you have decided to sit down and enjoy it, then really embrace it – and don’t worry so much.
3. And the third – and maybe most important – is simply to use the right plates. If you have a choice, if you are the hostess or host and you are setting the table for people, try using slightly smaller plates; six-inch plates / seven-inch plates with rims.
   Serve the food on individual plates in a beautiful way; if you’re not serving individual plates, then put serving dishes on the table in a beautiful way. It helps people capture the delight of eating and feasting together, and with that delight and beauty, you feed both their eyes and their stomachs.

If you would like to download a PDF version of the tip sheet to share with your patients, just click here. We only ask that you keep NICABM’s attribution on the printout when you share it with others.

So, enjoy yourself – and have a Happy Thanksgiving!