Soldiers in a war zone experience more trauma in a week than many others experience in their lives . . . . . . but it still feels like our tools for treating trauma aren’t quite sufficient. Mindfulness meditation could be a powerful healing intervention – but does it work with soldiers? The early research is promising. It’s still very young. . . but it’s promising. That’s why I thought this study was so interesting. Anthony King, PhD, research professor in the University of Michigan department of psychiatry, led a team to investigate whether mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) could help…

Many of us fear losing our memory and healthy brain function. Whenever I misplace my car keys or forget my online banking password, I get the fleeting thought of “oh, no, is this a sign?” Meditation is one way that I calm such fears, but I may be helping my memory in the process too. One of the newest directions of Alzheimer’s Disease research involves meditation as a possible approach for improving memory. I recently read about early pilot studies using meditation to change the brain and possibly improve memory. This particular experiment was based upon Kirtan Kriya, a type…

We’ve talked a lot about meditation for general health and even for neuroplasticity. And yet . . . . . . have you ever been curious about what is actually happening in the brain during meditation? This was addressed by a recent study published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Jim Lagopoulos, PhD, out of the University of Sydney in Australia, led a group of researchers who measured brain waves during meditation. Within the same sitting and in random order, participants were asked to practice a 20-minute Acem meditation (a type of Norwegian-inspired nondirective mediation), as well as…

In an earlier post, I reported on some work by Montreal University researcher Pierre Rainville, PhD, who found that meditators experienced an 18% reduction in pain sensitivity compared to their non-meditating counterparts. A new study by Christopher Brown, PhD out of the University of Manchester, UK and published in the journal Pain, found that meditation may also decrease the emotional anticipation and impact of pain. In his experiments, Dr. Brown formed two groups – individuals with meditation experience and a control group whose participants had no meditation background. All participants were then tested to see how their brains would react…

Many of us have incorporated various mindfulness practices into our daily lives and into our work with our patients and yet, as with so many other things that are good for you, there is no one-size-fits-all regimen that we can apply. So how are your colleagues currently adopting mindfulness meditation for their particular client population? Take a look at Felicia Huppert, PhD, et al. from the Well-Being Institute at the University of Cambridge, UK, who recently published a study in The Journal of Positive Psychology based on the introduction of mindfulness meditation to teenage boys. Fourteen and fifteen-year old boys,…

The brain’s plasticity is revolutionary but its evolutionary history is pretty remarkable, too. What’s amazing is that the brain has been evolving since our earliest predecessor, “Tool Maker” first appeared on the planet. But it’s only recently (during these last few minutes of our evolutionary past when neuroscience has been able to take us inside the living brain using imaging techniques) that we’re now learning so much. We’ve made a short video to take you on a tour of the last few million years in the evolution of the brain. Leading off with how our evolutionary brains have tripled in…