Sobre harmony

Do these benefits apply to people with attention-deficit disorders, and could meditation possibly supplant drugs like Adderall? We can’t yet say for sure. While there have been some promising small-scale studies, especially with adults, we need larger randomized controlled trials to understand how meditation might mix with other treatments to help both kids and adults manage attention-deficits.

Mindfulness helps us focus: Studies suggest that mindfulness helps us tune out distractions and improves our memory, attention skills, and decision-making.

Notice—really notice—what you’re sensing in a given moment, the sights, sounds, and smells that ordinarily slip by without reaching your conscious awareness.

“The type of meditation matters,” explain postdoctoral researcher Bethany Kok and professor Tania Singer. “Each practice appears to create a distinct mental environment, the long-term consequences of which are only beginning to be explored.” How much meditation is enough? That also depends. This isn’t the answer most people want to hear. Many of us are looking for a medically prescriptive response (e.g., three times a week for 45-60 minutes), but the best guide might be this old Zen saying: “You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” To date, empirical research has yet to arrive at a consensus about how much is “enough.

The raisin exercise, where you slowly use all of your senses, one after another, to observe a raisin in great detail, from the way it feels in your hand to the way its taste bursts on your tongue.

So what do I do? Instead of letting doubt talk us out of it, take it day by day and keep checking in. We can also remind ourselves that we’re not wasting time when we meditate. We’re taking care of our mind.

A new study examines how different aspects of mindfulness influence our emotional well-being. By Hooria Jazaieri

While you often hear about “clearing your mind” through meditation, the truth is you can’t really clear or empty your mind. Thinking is what these big ol’ brains of ours do! And stopping thinking isn’t the goal of meditation, anyway—not getting caught up in those thoughts is.

Not bad for a few minutes of sitting in silence, right? And it just gets better from here. Read on to learn more about meditation and how to start meditating yourself.

Since that time, thousands of studies have documented the physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness in general and MBSR in particular, inspiring countless programs to adapt the MBSR model for schools, prisons, hospitals, veterans centers, and beyond.

While cognitive stimulation and relaxation training seemed to be somewhat beneficial in comparison to no treatment, the mindfulness training group had much more robust improvements on cognitive scores than any other group. Mindful Breathing

In another study, people with heart disease were randomly assigned to either an online program to help them practice meditation or to a waitlist for the program while undergoing normal treatment for heart disease.

Because they’re experts on how the mind works, they offer friendly motivation and practical advice beginners typically need, like tips for using what we learn during meditation in real life.

At the end, participants who’d practiced mindfulness had higher levels of the spirituality protein interleukin-8 in their nasal secretions, suggesting improved immune function. Another study found increases in interleukin-10 in colitis patients who took a mindfulness meditation course compared to a mind-body educational program, especially among patients whose colitis had flared up. Yet another study found that patients who had greater increases in mindfulness after an MBSR course also showed faster wound healing, a process regulated by the immune system.