Top Of Mind

Silence Heals

Being hospitalized is stressful enough, but the constant beeping, buzzing, ringing of hospital monitors—an average of one every 11 minutes, according to a study—makes the experience downright nerve-wracking. And the effect extends to hospital staff: “Alarm fatigue” is so commonplace that doctors and nurses often stop noticing the sounds, diminishing their effectiveness. After her own hospitalization, ambient musician Yoko K. Sen was determined to make hospitals more peaceful. Working with Johns Hopkins Sibley Innovation Hub, she’s experimenting with adding music, aromatherapy, and moving projections to patient rooms and “tranquility” areas for hospital staff.

A Tale of Two More Cities

Storefront meditation studios/bars/spas keep opening in urban centers: Bar À Méditation is in the Opera district in Paris, and Inhere (inset) opened recently in the City of London.

Wait for It?

Having to wait for food may make us healthier eaters. In an experiment at Rush University Medical Center, when people had to choose to either wait 25 seconds for vending machines to dispense typical snack foods, like chips, or immediately get healthier snacks, like nuts, 5% of the time they chose the healthy option. The effect “is not huge,” admits Brad Appelhans, associate professor of preventive medicine. But on a broad scale, over time, he says, “it could add up to something meaningful.” On the April 14, 2017, edition of the TV game show Jeopardy, the following clue appeared, for $1,000 in the category Shallow Thoughts: “Do the ‘Leaves on a Stream’ exercise to get this, defined by Psychology Today as ‘active, open attention on the present.’” Jeopardy champion Deborah Beams, a certified public accountant from Dallas, answered correctly, “What is mindfulness?”

Gaming Your Brain

Helping people who have experienced trauma has vexed the medical and psychological communities for more than a century. But researchers in England may have discovered a way to interrupt “memory consolidation,” the process by which traumatic experiences form long-term memories: The video game Tetris. Car accident victims were asked to recall their experience and then play Tetris for 20 minutes or fill out a an activity log. The game-players had 62% fewer intrusive memories in the week following the accident, and their bad memories diminished more quickly than in the control group. Researchers speculate that introduced shortly after a traumatic event, the game’s high interactivity level stimulates the brain’s sensory centers so much that graphic memories can’t take hold. They plan to also test other visually engaging video games and activities such as drawing.

The New Greenwashing?

For several years now, “mindful” has been the new “green”—the marketing buzzword that companies (big, small, artisanal, corporate) want to associate themselves with. Mayonnaise, burgers, building, brewing…where will it end? Clearly, they’re using the word in the larger sense. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “mindful” as “attentive, heedful.” But Heedful Mayonnaise and Attentive Brewing just don’t cut it, do they? It’s that faint association with a peaceful mind that does the trick. Caveat emptor.

EXTRA­ORDINARY ACTS OF KINDNESS

• At the Etobicoke Humane Society in Ontario, Canada, cats had to sleep on the “cold, hard floor”—until IKEA donated a bunch of doll beds to the shelter. • For her 3rd birthday, a Missouri girl asked for a poop-themed party. Her parents chose to “embrace the weird” and throw one, with poop balloons, a poop piñata, and a poop cake. • In Manitoba, Canada, an 18-year-old girl rode her horse an hour through a snowstorm to bring dinner and coffee to a stranded truck driver.

Clever or Crazy?

Sometimes you just can’t decide if something’s groundbreaking or a tad over the top. Our jury’s out. What’s your verdict? MeetMindful Are you a meditator looking for love online? Head on over to MeetMindful. It’s a new dating site designed to connect people who identify with living mindfully. Categories of interest include volunteering, green living, meditation, and personal growth. Line Dudes Patience is a virtue—and a lucrative one, at that. Realizing this, Robert Samuel founded NYC-based line-sitting company Same Ole Line Dudes, which once raked in $14,000 in a single day waiting to purchase new iPhones, according to Elite Daily. A Smart Bra Vitali is a forthcoming sports bra that will track a wearer’s posture, breathing, and heart-rate variability. It then reminds her to sit up when needed and to take deep breaths in sync with her heart rate. It sends data to a phone app, which provides “up-to-date wellness scores” and “personalized goals,” among other features.

Research Roundup

More Resilience, Less Reactivity Many of us worry about our health, finances, employment, or relationships, but for those of us with generalized anxiety disorder, worrying like this can be both physically and emotionally exhausting. Might mindfulness help? According to a new study, the answer may be “yes.”Seventy adults with a history of generalized anxiety disorder attended either an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction class or an attention control class. Before and after training, participants were asked to perform a stress test that involved delivering an eight-minute speech and solving math problems out loud in front of a group of evaluators wearing white coats and brandishing clipboards. Researchers collected blood samples from the participants before and after these tests to assess whether there were changes in several known biological markers of stress. The blood tests revealed that MBSR group members experienced significantly less stress compared to individuals in the control group, whose stress levels tended to spike in anticipation of the test. This suggests that mindfulness meditation may make us more resilient and less reactive in the face of real-world challenges. Time for a Retreat? Intensive meditation retreats are great, but the question of whether or not they provide lasting benefits is on its way to being answered. Researchers recently studied the long-term effects of weeklong insight meditation retreats on a sample of 195 adults. After seven days, participants reported fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression, were better at observing and acting with awareness, and were less reactive and judgmental. They also reported having fewer negative thoughts and attitudes. Even better, these benefits persisted one month later. Your Aching Back There’s some good news for the millions of us who suffer from chronic low back pain and would love non-pharma-ceutical alternatives to relieve our symptoms: A two-year follow-up study of 342 adults published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that participants who attended eight weekly group sessions of MBSR maintained post-treatment gains in physical function two years later. Ease Migraine Pain Chronic migraine is a disabling condition often treated with medication. In a study of 44 adult migraine sufferers, those who received six weeks of mindfulness-based training had equivalent reductions in headache frequency to those taking a regimen of migraine medication. Sounder Sleep Trouble sleeping? Consider this: When researchers added mindfulness to an eight-week cognitive behavioral therapy program for insomnia they found that adults in the mindfulness group experienced improved sleep, fewer anxiety symptoms, and a better quality of life compared to a control group. Reducing Symptoms of OCD Can mindfulness help reduce the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder? A group of Canadian researchers decided to find out. They recruited 30 adults with OCD who didn’t respond to conventional treatment. Some were placed in an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy group; the others were put on a wait list to receive the MBCT program eight weeks later. At the end of mindfulness training, participants reported fewer symptoms of OCD and less anxiety and depression than those on the wait list. They were also more mindful and self-compassionate, and less judgmental and reactive. What’s more, the higher a participant’s mindfulness skills, the less likely he or she was to struggle with harmful obsessive beliefs, and the more self-compassionate the participant felt, the less likely he or she was to be depressed. Although more research is needed, these results are good news for those looking for greater relief from OCD symptoms.

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “Brian Quiroz”

The New Picture of Health

We all know that engaging in healthful habits—and eliminating the unhealthy ones—promotes physical and psychological well-being. But knowing what to do to be healthier and actually doing it isn’t the same thing. A new initiative aims to make it easier to adopt a healthy lifestyle by modeling what that looks like. Calling itself a “behavioral pharmacy,” the nonprofit Open Source Wellness offers weekly drop-in events in Oakland, California, that include exercise, meditation, healthful meals, and community interaction—the four pillars of physical and psychological health, according to organizers. “We’re providing structure and support to fill the ‘behavioral prescriptions’ doctors give patients: Eat healthier, exercise more, reduce your stress, connect meaningfully with others,” states cofounder Ben Emmert-Aronson, PhD. There are no lectures, classes, or intakes, just experiential participation designed to show people how to move more, eat better, and get connected. Kind of like a community potluck, plus. And the big vision for this experiential preventive health model? To become integrated into healthcare centers and communities nationwide, and be paid for on a sliding scale by individuals and by health insurers. After decades of internalizing unsolicited remarks from others about her body, British designer Jojo Oldham displayed all the commentary—nasty and nice—on a dress, illustrating her challenging journey to self-acceptance.

Awe Yeah!

We’ve all experienced awe in the face of the momentous: A moment of stunned awareness, when our bodies are suffused with wonder, vitality, and presence. What’s more, research is finding that the experience of awe produces some powerful benefits. In addition to promoting altruism, loving-kindness, and magnanimity, awe may boost the body’s defense systems and help people better cope with stress. Another bit of good news: Awe doesn’t have to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Even something as simple as a walk can bring it about.

If It Is Broke, Do Fix It!

It’s scary how easily most modern devices fall apart, and how hard (and expensive!) it is to repair them. Yet the financial and environmental cost of replacing our broken stuff is reaching a breaking point. Enter iFixIt, the Wikipedia of repair manuals, which offers a virtual library of manuals for fixing phones, staplers, cars—pretty much anything you can think of—all written and edited by the site’s audience.

Making Space to Just Bee

A small Iowa town is doing its bit to reduce the bee-population crisis: Cedar Rapids plans to seed 188 acres with native prairie grasses and wildflowers. Eventually, the city hopes to dedicate 1,000 acres to bee-friendly foodstuffs.

Starting Off Right

Here are some exciting projects that are bringing mindfulness to future generations.

A Kinder Sesame Street

We know Oscar is grouchy, but can he learn to be more kind? The folks behind Sesame Street think so. Responding to parental concerns about the unkind state of today’s world, the show dedicated its 2017 season to kindness. And mindfulness plays a role. To formulate its Kindness Curriculum, Sesame Workshop tapped the expertise of researchers and educators, including the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, which developed a mindfulness-based kindness curriculum that’s being taught in area schools. Early research shows improvements on academic performance and measures of altruism among participating students. It even works for Oscar the Grouch: After some reluctance, he agrees to take his pet worm, Slimey, to a garden party to celebrate Be Kind to Your Worm Day. “Cognitively it’s hard for children to take on the perspective of someone else. Through the characters, we can model that behavior,” says Sesame Workshop’s Rosemarie Truglio.

Farmers of the Future

A high school in South Los Angeles might just be training the agricultural and environmental leaders of tomorrow. The Gardening Apprenticeship Program at John C. Fremont High School has taught city kids about urban agriculture, environmental justice, nutrition, and healthy cooking since 2012. The program also provides training in basic agricultural techniques and exposure to career opportunities in the agriculture and environmental studies.

Mindfulness K-12

Kids in Australia are being taught to meditate thanks to a new initiative by the country’s state media. Mindfully…Back to School, a project of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio division and the nonprofit mindfulness education organization Smiling Mind, offers guided meditations designed for kids at the different stages of their youth, from primary school all the way up to their university years, accessible on the ABC website or app.

When Narcissists Won’t Forgive

Narcissists often won’t forgive people who cross them. Curious if having more clarity about one’s emotions about a wrongdoer would mollify or reinforce this unforgivingness, German psychologists asked 1,041 adults to recall a time when someone hurt them. Among participants tending toward arrogant, self-defensive narcissistic behavior, the lack of forgiveness was stronger in those who responded more quickly—indicating greater clarity—in rating their feelings about the transgressor.

Craze or Crazy?

Sometimes you just can’t decide if something’s groundbreaking or totally bonkers. Our jury’s out. What’s your verdict? A mind cleanse Okay, so you start by grabbing some soap and a scalpel, and then…just kidding! “Mind Cleanse” is becoming a popular term to refer to various activities and programs with the aim of a clearer, calmer mind. Just because it sounds suspiciously similar to “brainwashing,” doesn’t make it the same thing, right? Weed yoga People have been smoking joints and doing stretches for decades, but recently yoga studios have opened up that specialize in yoga “enhanced” with marijuana. Meditation trucks Picture a food truck—only for meditation. The latest in portable services, meditation trucks have been popping up and wheeling around US cities, including Detroit and Austin.

Extraordinary Acts of Kindness

When a man showed up at an airport with his toddler daughter, he was unpleasantly surprised to learn that, having just turned two, she now needed her own ticket, and he couldn’t afford it. A nearby stranger noticed and, without hesitation, she bought the $749 ticket.The city of Indianapolis installed tiny ramps along its downtown canal in order to save ducklings and other small semi-aquatic animals from drowning. The ramps, made of wood and insulation (to help them float), allow the birds to mount the canal’s concrete edge with ease.

Research Roundup

Taking a Measure of Compassion All too often, medical care is dismally short on compassion, even though reports have identified it as an essential ingredient for providing quality care. A major barrier to change is the lack of a valid, reliable way to assess compassion in clinical settings. Recently, Shane Sinclair of the University of Calgary and other Canadian colleagues surveyed the existing methods out there. Scouring through research databases, they turned up nine studies describing seven different compassion measurement tools, ranging from a self-report questionnaire for nurses in Korea to a survey of patients’ perceptions of hospital physicians’ caregiving from the Boston-based Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare. All seven methods have “significant limitations that warrant careful consideration,” the authors concluded. No single instrument measured compassion in a comprehensive or rigorous enough fashion; for instance, most of the tools didn’t directly evaluate the desire to help ease suffering, a key element distinguishing compassion from empathy. And for most of the methods, there was little evidence of the measurements’ reliability, validity, or interpretability. Being Humble Can Have Its Strengths Based on national survey responses from 2,800 participants, researchers found correlations suggesting that more humility may help people cope better with stressful life events. Perhaps humble folks are more willing to reach out for support, buffering against mood problems. It’s Official: Americans Are More Stressed In its annual survey on “Stress in America,” conducted in August, the American Psychological Association found that a little more than half of Americans were finding the election a significant source of stress, prompting the surveyers to do a follow-up in January, which revealed that Americans’ stress had increased from 4.8 to 5.1 on a 10-point scale in the intervening months, representing the first significant increase since the poll began 10 years ago. Both Republicans (59%) and Democrats (76%) reported being stressed about the future of the country. The Cost of Happiness? Across six studies, a New York University researcher and colleagues found that participants rated extremely happy individuals as more naïve than moderately happy individuals. Such inferences may lead people to try to take advantage: One online experiment asked 476 adults to sell a used iPad for much more than its true value to earn a bonus. Choosing between two buyers to negotiate with, most participants picked the very happy-looking one—the one they rated as easier to exploit.

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-26” author: “Tracy Milligan”

A Gym for the Brain?

A new meditation studio in Dallas promises a lot more than relaxation. Calling itself a “gym for your brain,” Mastermind has partnered with the University of Texas at Dallas’ Center for Brain Health to teach meditation classes informed by neuroscience.

Prison Reform

The US has the highest rate of prisoners in the world. In fact, though the US has only 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s prisoners—at a cost of anywhere between $30,000 and $60,000 per prisoner per year. But there’s some good news: Programs are popping up both here and abroad to help men stay out of prison or prepare them to better serve their communities once released.

Education

In California, the Insight-Out program engages victims, prison administrators, community members, and inmates to find new ways of “doing prison” that are more humane and effective than the current punitive model. As part of the program, inmates mentor at-risk youth and receive certification in domestic violence training, which allows them to educate others about domestic abuse. In San Quentin alone, more than 400 prisoners have signed up for the program.

Resilience

In a maximum security prison in Naivasha, Kenya, inmates learn self-awareness and mindfulness techniques to help them become more emotionally resilient, improve their mental wellbeing, and increase their desire to be more helpful, honest, and responsible. Three other prisons—Langata, Kamiti, and Kisumu—are looking into using the program.

Yoga

“We firmly believe in the inherent goodness of every human being,” says Rosa Vissers, executive director Yoga Behind Bars, which offers yoga and meditation to inmates in Washington prisons and jails. The program’s popularity has led to a teacher shortage. The solution? Offering teacher-training to inmates. “We believe in transforming our prisons into places of healing and rehabilitation,” says Vissers.

A New Generation of Mindful Doctors

Teaching mindfulness to future health-care providers was a win–win bet for the University of Ottawa’s medical school. Students will now receive mandatory meditation training as part of the curriculum. While elective mindfulness classes are available, including them in the required coursework got high approval from students and faculty. “[This change] carries the hope that increased exposure will result in greater wellbeing for students, and, ultimately, their patients,” says assistant professor of neurology Heather MacLean.

Good News for the Planet

While the effects of climate change are frightening, bold actions around the world hint at hope for the environment.

Drivers of Change

The German parliament passed a resolution that sets the goal to eliminate all gas and diesel vehicles on the country’s roadways by 2030. The resolution, which requires ratification by the European Union as it would impact cars manufactured in EU nations, takes the “money talks” approach: Automakers would face significant tax burdens for failing to produce more electric-powered cars and get them out to the public faster.

Waste Not, Want Not

The US Department of Agriculture is researching a biodegradable—even edible—alternative to plastic food packaging: a film made from milk protein. Casein packaging, which department scientists says is 500 times more effective at protecting food from oxygen, and dissolves in water. A liquid form of casein could be sprayed onto some foods, eliminating the need for outer film altogether. Unfortunately it could be years before we see edible food packaging in the marketplace, and the subsequent reduction in our waste cycle.

A Guiding Light

In Pittsburgh, stoplights controlled by artificial intelligence have cut car emissions by a fifth and idling time by 40%. Driving time overall is down by 25%. The AI uses cameras and radar to predict second-by-second traffic conditions, and adjusts the signals accordingly. Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Stephen Smith, who founded the company behind the Steel City’s pilot test system, says traffic congestion in the US produces 25 billion kg of carbon dioxide emissions, and costs the economy $121 billion a year.

Learning Mindful Life Skills

Some people find stress relief in a bottle or a pill. But a program in Albuquerque is trying to change that. Participants in a DWI-drug court initiative for repeat offenders attend mandatory meditation classes at the start of a yearlong rehabilitation commitment offered in lieu of jail time. “Very few of us are taught skillful means of coming down off that mountain of stress that makes drugs and alcohol so appealing,” says instructor Michelle DuVal. “And this is a way they can do that themselves, right in their own minds.”

Home in a Box

Of food, clothing, and shelter, it can be particularly easy to take the last one for granted. Unless you don’t have one. Inventor Tina Hovsepian created Carborigami—an ingenious collapsible shelter using origami principles—to provide protection from the elements for the homeless and people in disaster zones. 

Extra­ordinary Acts of Kindness

Ben Carter, a 14-year-old boy with severe autism, has drunk only from a Tommee Tippee sippy cup—now discontinued—since he was two. When his cup started to fall apart Tommee Tippee responded by making Ben 500 cups. While working across from a children’s hospital in Indiana, construction worker Jason Haney wanted to help cheer up the kids staying there. So with the help of his daughter he made an 8-foot cut-out of the childrens’ book character Waldo, and planted it around the construction site each day for the kids to find.

Craze or Crazy?

Sometimes you just can’t decide if something’s groundbreaking or totally bonkers. Our jury’s out. What’s your verdict? Spooky Decals In China, drivers found a new way to deter one another from using high beams when sharing the road: reflective rear-window decals that light up when hit by light from high beams, many featuring spooky images of horror film monsters. Rage Rooms Bad breakup? Rough workweek? Let out your emotions the old-fashioned way: by smashing stuff with a bat. In the past few years “rage rooms” have sprouted up around the world, from Asia to Europe and North America. A Caring Car Honda teamed up with a company called Cocoro SB to make a car equipped with an “emotion engine”—an AI-based technology that allows machines to “artificially generate their own emotions,” according to a Honda press release. The car is part of Honda’s goal to “create new relationships between people and mobility products.”

Research Roundup

Seeking Happiness? Lend a Hand Pampering yourself with a shopping spree won’t make you as happy as treating someone else. That’s the word from psychologists who ran a six-week experiment with 347 adults. Results revealed that performing acts of kindness for others (or for humanity) led to higher happiness levels in participants—but indulging in oneself did not. The prosocial giving boosted the do-gooders’ positive emotions. Reducing Biases in Medical Care Like anybody else, health-care professionals aren’t immune to harboring implicit prejudices about people in socially stigmatized groups, whether it’s someone who is obese or from a racial minority background. Unconscious biases may contribute to disparities in the quality of medical care that practitioners provide, especially when they’re stressed out from a heavy workload. Yet solutions have been scarce. Writing in Patient Education and Counseling, University of Minnesota psychologist Diana Burgess and colleagues have floated an idea: “We propose that meditation training designed to increase healthcare providers’ mindfulness skills is a promising and potentially sustainable way to address this problem.” Among other positives, evidence suggests that practicing mindfulness could sharpen healthcare providers’ non-judgmental awareness of when implicit prejudices activate in their minds—and may increase their ability to control their responses. And loving-kindness meditation can foster empathy for patients, which may help reduce those biases. Granting Wishes and Coping with Illness Do make-a-wish programs for children with cancer promote their well-being? In a Spanish study of 75 seriously ill kids, those who had a wish granted by a local foundation showed less nausea and more positive emotions and life satisfaction three weeks later. Parents reported positive responses too, such as increased belief in the benevolence of the world. The magnitude of these changes was small, the researchers note. But when a child is extremely ill, every good moment counts.

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-14” author: “Marshall Bowen”

Jon Kabat-Zinn led a meditation session at the event that aimed “to help political leaders stay resilient, clear-minded and creative in the face of constant change,” according to The Mindfulness Initiative. This policy institute established in 2013 helped create the nonpartisan Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group, and has offered MBCT training to more than 145 British MPs and their staff. Kabat-Zinn’s attendance came on the heels of another notable event, the International Day of Peace, where he led almost 1,000 people in a 30-minute meditation on the lawn of the Canadian parliament in Ottawa.

How do we feel? Let us count the 27 ways…

A study from the University of California, Berkeley, challenges a long-held idea that we mostly experience just six basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise. Alan Cowen and Dacher Keltner instead identified 27 different emotions—ranging from admiration and boredom to sexual desire. (They analyzed how 853 volunteers responded to videos depicting everything from marriage proposals to creepy spiders.) The findings, the researchers hope, will allow investigators to develop a more nuanced understanding of how our emotions actually work.

Legal minds unite

In late 2016, lawyers and would-be lawyers interested in how mindfulness can help them reduce stress, perform better at their work, and promote caring and compassion banded together to form the Mindfulness in Law Society—with divisions for lawyers, law faculty, law students, and judges. In 2017 the MLS held its first conference, Mindfulness in Law, August 3–4, in conjunction with the Association of American Law Schools. It focused on mindfulness in legal education, scholarship, and the legal profession, and on how mindfulness could help with the highly stressful experience of completing law school.

A good-for-you vending machine

“Wellness to Go” vending machines are becoming common at US universities. The machines dispense common over-the-counter products, from allergy and pain relief to condoms. Students campaigned for the machines to be introduced because they offer slightly lower costs, more privacy, and longer hours than most campus pharmacies. Thanks to these improvements in accessibility, students express a sense of greater agency to make responsible decisions about their own well-being.

Therapy…coming to an app near you?

In September, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Pear Therapeutics’ app Reset for treating substance abuse using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy—the first app to be approved for that condition. The FDA began regulating some categories of health-related apps in 2013 to promote innovation while protecting consumers from potential harm. Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH) said of the recent approval, “Millions of Americans are suffering with drug dependency and addiction. Mobile technology may offer a means for immediate therapeutic intervention that could make a tremendous difference in people’s lives at low cost. It may also pave the way for approval of apps employing mindfulness-based interventions.”

Monkeying around at Microsoft

Microsoft is exploring the calming, even immune-boosting effects of trees by building three meeting-space tree houses for employees. They’re open-concept, Wi-Fi-enabled (of course), and designed to flex and expand as the trees grow. Business manager Shanon Bernstine says working in a tree has had positive implications for the company’s culture: “We [get] a lot done in a very different way.”

Mommy mentors

It’s not uncommon for new mothers to experience anxiety and depression in the months after childbirth, yet many don’t seek help out of fear of judgment. One small study found that up to half of new mothers experience depressive symptoms, and 30% said they lacked a close confidant to talk with about their experience. An organization in Florida hopes to relieve the stigma of postpartum depression by pairing new moms with other women who have struggled with and overcome the same issues. The Self-Image Support Team and Emotional Resource (SISTER) program creates a safe, nonjudgmental community through mother-to-mother mentoring via phone, text, and monthly in-person meetings. The mentor moms are also able to steer the new moms to professional support services, like psychological care, if needed. For women outside of Florida, Postpartum Support International offers mentoring through a private Facebook group and a toll-free hotline for new moms and their families in need of local support services.

EXTRA­-ORDINARY ACTS OF KINDNESS

After snapping at a Starbucks barista, a woman came back to leave a $50 tip and apologize for her “trail of unkindness.”Schoolchildren in Victoria, British Columbia, made colorful “friendship cards” and visited a local seniors’ home to give them to the residents.A customer at IHOP would always feed his wife, who has Huntington’s disease, before eating his own meal. A server noticed and offered to feed her instead, so the couple could enjoy their meals together.

For the love of clouds

The Cloud Appreciation Society began more than a decade ago with the delightful mission of “fighting the banality of blue-sky thinking,” according to its website. Through an online forum and photo gallery, members revel in a natural phenomenon they believe is underappreciated. “We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul,” the site says. “Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save money on psychoanalysis bills.”

Healthy hearts, healthy minds

Rhode Island’s Brown University opened its Mindfulness and Cardiovascular Health Lab in fall 2017. The lab has both public service and research goals: to share evidence-based information about mindfulness and health, to work with other researchers, and to promote rigorous scientific standards in the study of mindfulness.

Research Roundup

Minimizing missed workdays If anxiety sometimes makes it tough to get to work, mindfulness may help. In a small clinical trial, 27 people with generalized anxiety disorder took a weekly course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. After two months, the number of partial days missed at work slightly dropped in this group—but edged upward in 30 others who only received stress-management education. Mindful paths to a happy mood Traffic jams and phone glitches ruining your day? Two facets of mindfulness may prevent daily aggravations from harshing your mellow, says a study by psychologist Elisabeth Blanke of Humboldt University of Berlin and her colleagues. Over nine days, they asked 70 college students to answer questions on their smart-phones several times daily about their feelings and levels of mindfulness. The students reported happier emotions when they were attentive to the present moment—which may have helped them see the positives in a situation—and fewer negative emotions when they were nonjudg-mentally accepting. Acceptance even seemed to prevent buoyant moods from being dragged down by ordinary hassles. Perhaps, say the researchers, short practices can be designed to boost the mindfulness components that enhance aspects of emotional well-being. A mindful approach brings brain changes in ADHD Thirty-four teenagers with ADHD in Ontario, Canada, joined a martial arts treatment program that blends mindfulness meditation, yoga, and cognitive behavioral therapy. After five months, measurements of their brain wave activity indicated neural changes reflecting improved attention skills. Exploring meditation’s anti-aging potential Can regular meditation slow down biological aging? The idea sounds wild, but a small new pilot study takes a stab at that question—by looking at a marker of aging in our cells known as the “epigenetic clock.” Recent emerging research says we can gauge how fast this clock is ticking by measuring a process called DNA methylation, which influences whether genes are switched on or off. People with quicker-running clocks, studies have suggested, tend to get chronic illnesses and live shorter lives; cumulative chronic stress seems to speed up the clock. But meditation, with its stress-taming benefits, may slow the ticking, says the new study by a French–US team. They analyzed immune-system cells from 18 long-term practitioners of mindfulness or compassion-related meditation, and from 20 others with no meditation experience. Among non-meditators, the aging clock was accelerated in older adults (52 years and above) compared to younger ones. In contrast, the meditators showed no such acceleration with age. What’s more, older participants with more years of meditation practice had slower clocks. The findings, the researchers say, need confirming in larger studies tracking people over time. Can meditation help protect the ticker? Could be. While the evidence is still preliminary, the American Heart Association has acknowledged for the first time, in a scientific statement, that meditation may help prevent heart disease—perhaps by easing risk factors such as blood pressure.

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-04” author: “Sharon Solis”

Having a baby can be fraught with health risks in these rural areas, resulting in tragically high maternal mortality rates. While SAM has also aided in tuberculosis detection and increased acceptance of contraceptives, their education and advocacy programs are focused on pregnancy, nutrition, immunization, delivery, and infant care. The organization trains volunteers, primarily women, to empower other women in their villages to be proactive about their health needs. Their goal is social change where healthier behaviors become the norm. Since 2008, they’ve worked with more than 2 million people in over 1,000 villages. In that time, maternal deaths decreased by 90% and infant deaths by 57%.

Frisky fun

 Could mindfulness be linked to better sex? Australian researchers surveyed 800 adults about their “dispositional mindfulness”—a quality of nonjudgmental attention to the present moment—and sexual satisfaction. Well, well: The more mindful people reported happier relationships and better sex lives.

Countering trauma two ways

 Researchers at Rutgers University recently examined whether a program that combines meditation and aerobic exercise might ease trauma-related symptoms and depression better than meditation or exercise alone. In a pilot study, 32 women who had experienced sexual violence received either the MAP (Mental and Physical) Training My Brain program, meditation alone, exercise alone, or no instruction. At the end of six weeks, women who’d had MAP training reported significantly fewer traumatic thoughts and less rumination, as well as greater feelings of self-worth. MAP training is unusual in that it activates both branches of the nervous system—one responsible for rest and repair, and one governing our “fight, flight, or freeze” response. Learning to intentionally engage and disengage these systems may be effective for those seeking to heal from trauma.

WHO recognizes the risks of gaming

The World Health Organization has added a new illness to its International Classification of Diseases: gaming disorder, which is marked by “a pattern of gaming behaviour [of] such a nature and intensity that it results in marked distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational or occupational functioning.” Medical professionals have said the addictiveness of gaming is “substantially similar” to that of cocaine and gambling. While many people game in moderation, acknowledging the addictive quality of video games could make it easier for therapists and medical experts to understand and treat people who do not.

Open your mind, learn something new

 What we already know can get in the way of learning something new, a phenomenon called proactive interference. Much of what we’ve learned is stored in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory hub. Researchers in Boston were curious about whether mindfulness training might reduce proactive interference, as well as increase the size of the hippocampus—similar to the way a muscle grows with repeated exercise. So they randomly assigned 79 adults to four weeks of either web-based mindfulness training, or creative writing. Each group had brain scanning before and after their training. Those who’d practiced mindfulness showed significantly less proactive interference than the creative writing group. What’s more, the lower rates of interference were directly linked to increases in the size of the hippocampus, suggesting mindfulness practices that focus attention on the present may improve learning and memory. These findings may help researchers develop strategies to better aid children with learning difficulties or prevent cognitive decline in aging adults. Research gathered from Greater Good Science Ctr. at UC Berkeley, Ctr. for Healthy Minds at U of Wisconsin–Madison, Ctr. for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School, and American Mindfulness Research Association.

Posing no problem

A Denver, Colorado, elementary school is replacing its detention periods with yoga class. The pilot program draws on research that suggests yoga can help kids pay attention to their breathing when they’re mad or anxious, and may even ease symptoms of ADHD. School psychologist Carly Graeber hopes to leave behind the punishment paradigm in favor of “teaching kids social and emotional skills that they can use for their lives.”

Making menopause easier

 The transition to menopause can be physically and emotionally rough. Chinese researchers compared women receiving either Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training or menopause education. At study’s end, while both groups had fewer menopausal symptoms, the MBSR group was significantly less anxious and depressed.

Mindful at work with Michael Carroll 

Q A junior member of staff has asked for mentoring. What does this really mean? What does a good mentor do? A Mentoring is a private relationship between a mature, trusted leader and a talented, motivated protégé. The relationship requires periodic face time, so each party needs to be willing to be available to the other. It’s best if the person being mentored can articulate up front—in writing—what they would like to learn. Mentees should take an active interest from the very start in cultivating the relationship, rather than expecting their mentor always to lead. Mentors should expect to offer guidance and encouragement on: Culture: What does the enterprise value most? What are the unspoken rules that one should be aware of? Politics: Who holds influence in the enterprise? How best can an aspiring leader contribute, inspire, and succeed? Social intelligence: What is expected of successful leaders and how should they behave? Above all, mentoring relationships are about mutual learning; it’s not a one-way street. It’s a collegial relationship bound by shared trust and respect. Michael Carroll is the author of Fearless at Work.

Extraordinary acts of kindness

An Australian man who has a rare antibody in his blood has donated plasma 1,100 times in his life, saving 2.4 million babies. An off-duty Houston cop paid to replace groceries stolen from an ill man who had collapsed in the store’s parking lot. Bermuda native Rodney Smith, while at university in the US, founded Raising Men Lawn Care Service, a nonprofit that helps youngsters volunteer in their communities by mowing lawns for those in need.

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-16” author: “Cynthia Bailey”

To build empathic connections with people we wouldn’t meet otherwise, and to shift the impersonal vibe of city streets, psychotherapist Traci Ruble founded Sidewalk Talk. The nonprofit has chapters in 17 US cities and worldwide. Its volunteers (many of them mental health professionals) take two chairs to the sidewalk and simply offer to listen—to anyone who wants to talk, about anything. Ruble finds that deep listening is transformative: “When we feel a sense of belonging,” she says, “our entire nervous system just goes ‘ahhhhh.’”

Mindful with pets

After struggling to manage her bipolar disorder for years, UC Davis researcher Elisabeth Paige finally committed to meditation, something she’d tried before but couldn’t stick with. This time she did it differently: Instead of closing herself in a room and focusing on her breathing, she allowed her two dogs to join her. Petting the dogs became her anchor to the present, and their response—deep relaxation—helped her to drop into meditation. She’s since written a book on how to “petitate,” and offers guided practices on her website, Mindfulpetitations.org. “When we petitate, we get to improve our health, help our pets relax and form a deeper bond with us, and we no longer have to choose between paying attention to our pets and meditating.”

Discrimination makes us sick

How does coping with racial, gender, and other forms of prejudice affect health? The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and NPR published a report series on this question in autumn 2017. Researchers asked 3,453 adults about discrimination in their daily lives, from employment inequity to police harassment. They found that for some groups, mental and physical health are severely impacted by social and institutional discrimination.

EXTRA­-ORDINARY ACTS OF KINDNESS

A Twitter troll was amazed when Sarah Silverman didn’t lash back but sympathized with his pain and helped him find medical care.A Brazilian company, learning half of their janitors couldn’t read or write, organized literacy classes for the staff during their lunch breaks.This year Canada and the UK are banning plastic microbeads, which pollute the oceans, from toiletry products. The US banned them in 2017. Eco-win!

WHAT’S NEW IN MINDFUL APPS

Your phone can be mindful, too. Here are a few of the latest, coolest apps designed to make life better. AccessNow Maayan Ziv, a Canadian photographer with muscular dystrophy, created AccessNow, a crowdsourcing app that shares accessibility information—from wheelchair-friendly parking and washrooms to Braille signage—for storefronts and businesses worldwide. Ziv says she’s a regular person “who’s interested in going out and doing things in life. And so is every other person who has a disability.” Expectful Expectant and new moms, typically putting self-care last, face high levels of stress. Expectful provides 10- to 20-minute meditation practices for each stage of pregnancy and early motherhood. Bravo Tango Brain Training A former Air Force psychologist collaborated with National Geographic on the Bravo Tango Brain Training app to help veterans relieve stress. The voice-controlled app responds to the user, guiding them through exercises for muscle relaxation, focusing, breathing, grounding, visualization, and interpersonal connection. It makes self-care tools more accessible and available, whenever vets need them. WeCroak If you often forget how short life is, WeCroak is the app for you. Five times a day, it pings you with a pithy quote reminding you you’re going to die.

Buy our phone… but put it down

LG Electronics USA, the American subsidiary of the global electronics giant that manufactures televisions, smartphones, tablets, and more, has launched a social responsibility initiative with mindfulness at its core. Its Experience Happiness platform aims to increase “happiness skills” among young people by 2021. Toward this end, LG has partnered with the Greater Good Science Center, whose research into the “science of happiness” has led to the understanding of six learnable skills to living a fulfilling life, and Inner Explorer, a nonprofit organization that creates and delivers mindfulness practices to classrooms for grades pre K-12. The initiative “will allow us to help further the science of happiness and work with our grant partners to deliver proven skills for sustainable happiness to America’s young people,” said subsidiary president and CEO William Cho.

Mental health care falling short

The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act was enacted to ensure that mental health treatment in the US would be just as available as any other treatment. Now, a study by healthcare consultant Milliman Inc reports that health insurers are still not meeting this standard, a dozen years after the law’s passage.

Helping teens find purpose

A sense of purpose is tied to our sense of identity, which develops in youth. Yet only 1 in 5 high schoolers, and 1 in 3 college students, report feeling they live purposeful lives. The Purpose Challenge, launched this past winter by the Greater Good Science Center, aims to change that. The online toolkit helps highschool seniors explore what a meaningful life can look like.

Research Roundup

Building the case for mindful treatments How well do mindful therapies stack up against other remedies for mental health issues? For certain ailments, the evidence appears promising. In a new assessment in Clinical Psychology Review, psychologist Simon Goldberg and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Madison pooled results from 142 randomized clinical trials involving more than 12,000 people. The meta-analysis covered psychiatric disorders ranging from social phobia to schizophrenia. It showed that at a broad-brush level, when all the data are combined, mindfulness-based interventions in those trials appear to be as helpful as long-standing therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants. However, when it comes to specific disorders, the proof of mindfulness’s effectiveness is still lacking in most cases; that’s generally because not enough rigorous studies have been done yet. There are key exceptions, though: For depression, pain, smoking cessation, and addictions, consistent evidence indicates that mindfulness interventions are as good at easing symptoms as frontline treatments, the investigators found. Mindfulness isn’t a cure for all that ails us, Goldberg says, but “we should be taking it seriously as an intervention.” Wait without worry Law school grads who practice mindfulness, or who are naturally mindful, coped better while awaiting bar exam results, a University of California study found. With a more non-judgmental focus on the present, they braced for the worst later in the waiting period. Bracing early may heighten distress. How marriages can thrive post-baby First-time parenthood can throw couples for a loop. But tracking 218 newlyweds, Dutch psychologists identified relationship elements that predict a happier marital adjustment. The keys are having a partner who’s responsive to your needs, who you feel gratitude for, and whom you trust. A better way to right a wrong? In an Australian study, 192 students who’d recently offended or hurt someone were asked to write about their transgressions, either taking a self-compassionate view or describing values that they violated and why those were important. Engaging in compassion brought less self-blame and more self-forgiveness—yet didn’t reduce feelings of defensiveness or encourage attempts at reconciliation. But the more painful work of examining and reaffirming values fostered even greater self-forgiveness, along with decreased defensiveness and more making of amends. Train your mind, grow your brain A nine-month study reveals new details of how daily mental exercises can alter your brain. 160 adults each completed three 90-day programs with weekly instruction and daily exercises (including meditative practices). One program concentrated on honing mindful awareness; two others emphasized social skills (either compassion and handling difficult emotions, or imagining others’ perspectives). Testing showed participants improved in the targeted skills, and MRI scans revealed corresponding growth in specific brain areas. Greater mindful awareness enlarged brain regions that underlie attention, while heightened empathy and perspective-taking fostered growth in areas involved in social interactions. The findings are among the first evidence that neural regions supporting social intelligence can be specifically nurtured. Coping in grim places The harsh stresses of jail time harm cognitive functioning and impulse control in teenagers, says a four-month study of 197 adolescent inmates at New York’s Rikers Island. But the study also hints that a program blending mindful breathing practice with cognitive behavioral therapy may buffer these declines. Alongside its stress-reducing potential, mindfulness may help youths attend to and accept their emotions without acting on them.

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-09” author: “Willie Lynch”

A new initiative in Miami, Florida, is assessing how mindfulness in families might cultivate resilience and reduce domestic violence. The pilot program is headed by Scott Rogers, a mindfulness teacher and director of Miami Law’s Mindfulness in Law Program. Rogers has developed mindfulness exercises to be integrated into an Early Head Start educational setting, where preschool teachers, parents, and young children can learn about and practice mindfulness together—in the classroom as well as at home. Each session includes creative games and draws upon elements of nature to help children learn the basics, such as paying attention to their bodies and breath. Rogers is launching the pilot in collaboration with Maria Riestra, Director of Head Start; Lucia Davis-Raiford, Director of Miami-Dade County’s Community Action and Human Services Department; and Judge Carroll Kelly, Administrative Judge of the Domestic Violence Division of the Miami-Dade County Courts. They believe it’s important that the tools for developing mindful awareness be contextualized and made accessible for parents and children to practice together. If mindfulness is nurtured by parents from early childhood, this capacity may foster greater resilience within families. “We want to provide opportunities for parents to see more clearly what happens during challenging moments,” Rogers says, “and to perhaps be less reactive in those moments.” Fast walk, strong heart If you’re a slow walker, you may be at greater risk of developing heart disease. After analyzing data gathered over six years from nearly half a million people, British researchers discovered that those who identified as “slow walkers” were about twice as likely to die from heart disease as “steady” or “brisk” walkers. Overall fitness level likely has much to do with it, the researchers noted, but interestingly, other risk factors, such as smoking, diet, or body mass index, did not. Perhaps we can learn to walk more mindfully and swiftly.

Extra-Ordinary Acts of Kindness

An Uber driver in Florida was concerned when he saw his depressed passenger’s destination was a bridge. Discreetly alerting patrollers, he stayed and talked with the man until help arrived. A retrofitted minivan delivers books to refugees living in Athens, Greece. With reading materials in English, Greek, French, Arabic, Kurdish, and Farsi, this traveling library makes culture more widely accessible. How far would you go to save a beloved pet? A man in Gloucester, England, revived his drowning tortoise, Freda, by giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for an hour.

Dying: Not as bad as we think? Thinking about death is scarier than actually facing it, according to a new study. Researchers reviewed the journal entries of terminally ill patients and the last words of death row inmates, and compared them to those written by people asked to imagine imminent death. Those actually confronting death were much more positive, leading researchers to conclude that “the experience of dying may be more pleasant than one imagines.” Mindfulness on TV Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe led Jimmy Fallon, The Roots, The Tonight Show’s audience, and those watching at home in a two-minute guided mindfulness meditation on the August 5, 2017 show. Drink less with mindfulness Even short sessions of mindfulness meditation may help heavy drinkers imbibe less, according to a team of University College London psychologists that compared mindfulness to simple relaxation. A group of 68 women, who drank an average of 26 units of alcohol a week (14 units is the maximum recommended weekly amount), learned either an 11-minute mindfulness practice—simply noticing cravings, without acting on them—or a relaxation exercise. They were asked to practice their intervention daily for 15 minutes but were not monitored. One week later, the mindfulness group—who practiced 3-4 times for 8-9 minutes—reported drinking 9.3 fewer units of alcohol. There was no significant difference among those doing the relaxation exercise. As the researchers concluded, these findings “suggest that even ‘ultra-brief’ experiences with mindfulness can have measurable and potentially clinically meaningful effects.” Furry friends A new indie game presents a way to make social situations a little easier for partygoers with anxiety: In “Pet the Pup at the Party,” your goal is to navigate through crowds to uncover (and pet) over 50 friendly dogs. Emojitation Ever wished for an emoji to express your love of mindfulness? Soon you’ll have it! The Unicode Consortium, the standard-bearer of emojis, will add an icon of someone in lotus pose, a traditional posture used for meditation, to its library, which is used by platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Apple.

Research Roundup

Who’s meditating? Around 4.3 million US adults engage in mindfulness meditation, says a new analysis of the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. Among those exclusively practicing mindfulness, the most common motivations were to improve stress levels, emotional wellbeing, and general health. Rover feels your pain That was the word from the Clever Dog Lab in Vienna, Austria, when 53 dogs heard recordings of people, pooches, and rustling leaves. Sounds of negative emotions—whether from a crying person or whining dog —elicited signs of distress in the canines themselves. Clever researchers! If you tend to see the glass as half-empty… …good company may help. University of Maryland researchers pinged 127 students on their phones several times a day for a week, asking questions about their emotional status and who they were with. Particularly for those with a more negative disposition, interacting with close friends or loved ones brought a big boost in mood and optimism. You touch it, you buy it Researchers at the University of British Columbia found in a survey that online shoppers using a touchscreen device made more “hedonic” purchases (like a restaurant gift card) than “useful” ones (like a grocery gift card). The reverse was true for laptop users. Touchscreen shoppers were also more likely to report impulsive, fun-seeking thoughts while shopping. One explanation is that touch triggers an emotional connection, so if we “touch” an item, we tend to want it more. In addition, many of us associate laptops with logic and work, whereas our smartphones or tablets are for leisure and reward. Step out of the salt mines Want to work less but perform just as well? A mindfulness practice called meditation awareness training (MAT), which includes a focus on loving-kindness and meditative work, may be the ticket. European researchers taught MAT to 35 people who fit criteria for being workaholics (yes: there are criteria for this). After three months, compared with a group assigned to a waiting list, the MAT group showed fewer workaholic tendencies and were more satisfied at work. Their managers, meanwhile, reported no drop in their performance. Defending memory from stress Stress is an enemy of short-term “working memory,” which lets you briefly hold and manipulate information in your brain. In military personnel, this skill is known to decline during stressful periods like combat deployment or even field training. Can mindfulness help? In a University of Miami study, researchers provided eight hours of mindfulness instruction to US soldiers over a month during pre-deployment training, then instructed them to practice daily for the next four weeks. The investigators tested the soldiers’ short-term memory before and after the intervention. In 33 soldiers who completed a mindfulness program that emphasized in-class exercises, researchers detected no deterioration in working memory. In 37 soldiers who took a lecture-focused mindfulness course, memory scores dipped—but the most slippage occurred in a third group that got no mindfulness training at all. By bolstering cognitive resilience, the researchers say, mindfulness may help prevent errors during combat. Civilians in high-stress, high-performance situations may reap similar benefits.

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-19” author: “Richard Scranton”

“Stress, anxiety, and depression before, during, and after having a baby can create long-lasting negative outcomes for all involved. We ought to do anything we can to reduce that stress and lessen those outcomes,” says Nancy Bardacke, founder of Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) and author of Mindful Birthing. In a recent study—overseen by lead researcher Larissa Duncan, associate professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison—Bardacke taught an 18-hour intensive workshop, The Mind in Labor, to 30 first-time mothers, all of whom had reported fear of the pain of childbirth. The encouraging results: Participants had lower scores for prenatal & postpartum depression and a trend toward less opioid medication use during labor than those who participated in a traditional childbirth class. “This is a very promising result,” says Bardacke. “Now what we need is more robust research to demonstrate the long-term effectiveness of these methods and more trained MBCP instructors.” Talk, Don’t Type Some Canadian coffeehouses have decided to cut off or limit WiFi. “People have socially taken for granted that the coffee shop is a workplace. We don’t want to be an office. We wanted to do it old school and be a social hub,” Jimson Bienenstock, co-owner of HotBlack Coffee in downtown Toronto, told the Globe & Mail. Shortly after opening in 2016, the café turned off its WiFi. Bienenstock admits that business suffered, but he’s sticking by the decision. Meanwhile another Toronto café has limited WiFi usage during the popular dinner and weekend brunch hours, while others don’t have it at all. Two Birds, One Stone, and a Nice Home A rural region in Nova Scotia, Canada, had a radical housing idea: to pair seniors who have extra space in their homes with younger people seeking affordable housing. The initiative, devised by the Women’s Place Resource Centre in the Annapolis Valley, aims to bridge a generational divide while giving seniors support and giving young people a roof over their head. Mindful Police Gather From May 21-23, police, scientists, trainers, and community activists came together at the Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz for the inaugural Summit on Mindfulness in Policing, under the auspices of Mindful Badge, an initiative begun by Richard Goerling, a police lieutenant in Hillsboro, OR. Plans are under way to repeat the event in 2018. Trust in Well-Being “Mental health and substance abuse have become the most pressing health issues…. Beyond the human, family, and social toll, mental health challenges are costing our nation hundreds of billions of dollars annually,” says Tyler Norris, chief executive of the Well Being Trust, created by Providence St. Joseph Health. The trust funds innovations that “improve outcomes on the most critical mental health and wellness challenges facing America” and advance “the mental, social and spiritual health of the nation.” New Name in Fashion When it comes to creative, contemporary design that’s kind to the earth and to the people who make it, “mindful” is the new description of choice. As Lissome, a European digital magazine and store, declares: “The Future Of Fashion Is Mindful.” Health-Care Leader Opens Mindfulness Center Aetna, the American-managed health-care company, has long been at the forefront of well-being initiatives for its employees and its customers. A mind-body stress-reduction pilot program in 2011 led to a 35% reduction in workers’ perceived stress, according to the company. This commitment continues with the opening of a mindfulness center at Aetna headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut. There, employees can learn mindfulness techniques and how to incorporate exercises into their everyday life. Aetna employees working in other offices can access the classes virtually. “This is igniting the transformation. We’re going to be offering programs and trying to gradually change the workplace culture,” Andy Lee, the chief mindfulness officer at Aetna, said in a press release. “Stress affects all companies. Mindfulness is an effective way to provide people with the tools to help manage their stress.” “It’s a part of the company’s broader strategy,” said Cheryl Jones, the director of mindfulness at Aetna. “We’re evolving beyond the mindfulness-based wellness programs and aiming to create a workplace culture of well-being.”

Extra­-ordinary Acts of kindness

Nurse Stephanie Treherne at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital makes tiny superhero capes for babies in the ICU. In 1991, Pamela and Anil Malhotra bought 55 acres of desolate land in South India and founded SAI Sanctuary, which today covers more than 300 acres and is home to more than 200 endangered plants and animals. When 10 people—including a family of six—got caught in a riptide at a beach in Florida, around 80 other beachgoers formed a human chain and rescued them.

Research Roundup

The End of Nature? Are we less in touch with nature nowadays? A University of Wisconsin researcher examined thousands of references in songs, fiction, and film. Beginning in the 1950s, mentions of nature steadily declined. Noting this, she hopes, can spur us to connect with the natural world. Practice Protects During Tough Times Certain times in our lives, inevitably, are super-demanding, stressing us out emotionally, mentally, and physically. University of Miami researchers wanted to find out whether mindfulness training could buffer some of the effects of these high-demand periods. So they worked with 100 college football players during four weeks of intense pre-season training—a time when emotional well-being and ability to concentrate typically decline. Half of the players took part in mindfulness training, while the other half did relaxation training. The players who were more engaged in the mindfulness practice showed less of a decline in their ability to concentrate, compared both with the relaxation group and with players less engaged with mindfulness. Players who showed high engagement with either mindfulness or relaxation training had better emotional well-being at study’s end. Healing Help Finding out you have breast cancer is often just the beginning of a long, difficult journey. Taking part in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class may help. In a Swedish study of 166 women recently treated for the disease, those who took part in an eight-week MBSR class were less depressed, coped better, and had better bloodstream immune markers than two comparison groups: one given MBSR resources for practicing at home, the other receiving no therapy. The women in the MBSR class also experienced fewer symptoms. While other research has found positive effects of MBSR for breast cancer patients, the design of this study provides more convincing evidence of benefits and, the researchers say, may spur additional research into how MBSR affects the immune system. The study will continue for five years. Easier Reading People with dyslexia, as well as those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), often struggle with the written word. Mindfulness training can reduce reading errors, probably by improving the ability to sustain attention, Tel Aviv University researchers found. Wander No More We all want to concentrate better, and there’s no shortage of online tools offering to help. Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark randomly assigned about half of a group of 95 people (average age early 40s) to a month of mindfulness training using the Headspace app. The other half did Lumosity brain training. Before-and-after measures of performance on a task requiring sustained attention showed that the mindfulness training significantly reduced mind-wandering, while the brain training did not. A Healthy Dose of Friendship Want to be both happy and healthy as you age? Cultivate strong friendships. That’s the conclusion of two studies by a Michigan State University researcher involving almost 280,000 people. While many studies have shown that close family relationships enhance health and well-being, the impact of friendship has been less clear. In the first study, William Chopik, an assistant professor of psychology, analyzed multicountry interview data from 271,000 people ranging in age from 15 to 99. He found that throughout the lifespan, people who said they highly valued their relationships with family and friends were both happier and healthier. Among older adults, though, good relationships with friends were better predictors of happiness and good health. Chopik then looked at data from a study of 7,500 over-50 adults in the US, which included more detailed questions. Here, too, the impact of friendship was strong: When friends were a source of support, people were happier. But those who said their friendships were sources of strain had more chronic illnesses over a six-year period. “Keeping a few good friends around can make a world of difference for our health and well-being,” Chopik said. “It’s smart to invest in the friendships that make you happiest.”

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-04” author: “Frank Barrientos”

Meditation is often practiced alone, but two studies indicate that thinking of or being in the presence of others may confer different, and at times greater, benefits. Researchers in Leipzig, Germany, conducted two studies with 300 volunteers over nine months. In the first, an MRI showed that people who meditated alone by focusing on the breath or body had thickening of their prefrontal cortex, which is linked to attention control. Those who practiced loving-kindness meditation and then did a sharing and empathetic listening exercise with a partner had increases in the areas that process emotions and bring them into conscious awareness. The second study measured cortisol levels among all participants, and found that those who meditated alone felt calm, but their cortisol levels didn’t change. In contrast, the people who practiced compassion meditation and shared with a partner experienced a 51% drop in cortisol. Finding the intervention both low-cost and effective, the researchers concluded that meditating with a partner or group may hold promise for minimizing chronic social stress. Nature’s classroom If herding a classroom of elementary school students outside—and then getting them focused once back inside—seems daunting to some teachers, a new study may change their minds on getting the kids outdoors. Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign studied the impact of outdoor learning on subsequent indoor learning, and found large benefit for using nature as a classroom. After 40 minutes of outdoor instruction, once back inside, teachers were able to teach almost twice as long without having to redirect students’ attention. “The findings here suggest that lessons in nature allow students to simultaneously learn classroom curriculum while rejuvenating their capacity for learning,” the researchers said. Driving change in Germany Already a pioneer of the transition to solar and wind energy, Germany is launching new measures to combat the country’s severe air pollution. The plan, initializing in five cities, introduces free travel on subways and short-distance trains, as well as new low-emission zones and car-sharing. These innovations come with a hefty price tag, however, and critics point out that similar endeavors in the US and Europe have flopped. Screening minors An unexpected reason to check screen use among children: fighting inequality. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, daily time looking at a screen added up to 8 hours and 36 minutes for white children, but 13 hours for Black and Hispanic children. Racialized wealth disparity may be part of the reason. Researchers suspect “too often the message we send to low-income and less-educated parents is that screen time will help their children,” but the risks of too much screen time aren’t shared. Low-income neighborhoods may also be seen as dangerous, discouraging outdoor play. Are college kids headed for burnout? There’s little question that today’s college students are extremely hard on themselves. Looking at 27 years of data, researchers at the University of Wales found that compared to previous generations, college students now have higher academic expectations for themselves, which dovetails with higher rates of anxiety, among other neuroses. American students are more prone to self-oriented perfectionism—putting pressure on yourself to be perfect—but students in Canada, America, and the United Kingdom all struggle with socially prescribed perfectionism, or perceiving that others are judging them more harshly and that they must be “perfect” to win approval. As for why, researchers point to Western cultural shifts that are more individualistic, materialistic, and socially antagonistic and that today’s young people face “more competitive environments, more unrealistic expectations, and more anxious and controlling parents than generations before.” “These are worrying trends and suggest that young people may be increasingly more sensitive to perceived external pressures and are finding it more difficult than previous generations to cope with them,” they note. Inner joy in NYC From March through June 2017, the New York City yoga and meditation studio Three Jewels ran its first wellness program for people living in homeless shelters. Hector Marcel, Three Jewels’ president, summarized the main goal: “To have participants experience genuine personal wellness in a short time.” The program (a collaboration between the studio’s nonprofit Outreach Center, the Department of Health & Hygiene, and the Department of Homeless Services) curated and provided free weekly yoga and meditation classes for all shelter clients age 4 and older. Shelter staff members were also offered free health programs and coaching, so they could understand and benefit from the same wellness tools as the clients. From man-caves to men’s sheds The earliest “men’s sheds” emerged in Australia around the mid-1990s. Providing safe spaces for older men to work on projects, expand their communities, and access mental health resources, the idea has caught on in 11 other countries since. The US Men’s Sheds Association began and opened its first three sheds in 2017. With the motto that “Men don’t talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder,” the movement is a strong step toward combating toxic masculinity. Bring it in, pal. One grande nap, for here A café can provide many kinds of refreshment. A nap café in Washington, DC, offers a chance at rest for the rushed. Described as “a modern meditation and power nap studio,” guests can sink onto a giant bean bag for a 20-minute nap, complete with scented eye masks and soothing music. Healing from the kitchen Work in the restaurant industry tends to be precarious and stressful, and often workers can’t access healthful ways to cope. In a 2015 survey of substance use and dependence across industries, the highest-ranking category was accommodations and food, where 19% of employees reported using illegal drugs within the past month. To combat the high rates of addiction and overdose in these careers, a smattering of organizations are creating resources and networks for climbing out of the addiction pit. Ben’s Friends organizes support groups for attaining and maintaining sobriety, while Big Table hosts an elaborate dinner for food service workers once a month, which doubles as an opportunity to request help for a coworker in crisis. Training with breath If you want a better workout, pay attention to how you breathe. Deep, slow breaths allow us to relax because they activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which may in turn improve workout performance, research finds. Nasal breathing while jogging can improve your peripheral vision and help to maintain proper technique and form (resulting in fewer injuries). Breath work may even help your muscles to recover faster after stressing them, as happens in weight training. Help your honey’s heart You probably already suspect that practicing mindfulness can help you stay cool when your partner annoys you. But in a recent study of married couples and conflict, Florida State University researchers turned up a surprising twist: The higher one spouse’s level of mindfulness, the lower the other partner’s cardiovascular reactivity (as measured by spikes in blood pressure and heart rate) when the inevitable arguments ensue. In other words, the more mindful you are, the less likely your partner is to experience potentially heart-harming physical changes during an argument. Mood lift Want to boost your mood? A University of Mississippi study shows that 10 minutes of either meditation or walking—as well as a meditation/walking combo—made participants feel better afterward. They reported feeling more tranquil and revitalized, as well as less exhausted. Don’t get even—get mindful It’s all too easy for a flash of anger to trigger a vengeful action—but it doesn’t have to be that way. In a rather devilish experiment, Northeastern University researchers had one group of college students learn mindfulness meditation, via the Headspace app, over a three-week period, while a comparison group did puzzles and word games. At the end, each student described their life goals to a person they thought was a fellow study participant—and then got feedback that the listener found their speeches “boring” and “a complete waste.” Here’s the devilish part: The students were given the opportunity to add hot sauce to a “taste test” for the listener who, they were told, hated spicy food. While both groups were angry, the meditators put only half as much hot sauce into the portion. Mindfulness meditation, the researchers concluded, lessens the likelihood of people behaving badly when provoked. A sound therapy People with tinnitus live with a noise inside their head that never goes away. There’s no cure for the condition, and it can lead to depression, insomnia, and anxiety. British researchers conducting one of the first randomized clinical trials of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for tinnitus found that an eight-week program not only reduced sufferers’ distress, but made the noise itself less noticeable. The keys to mindfulness Lots of studies on mindfulness have examined how people fare when they learn mindfulness in groups taught by a facilitator. Now the growth of online mindfulness apps and courses invites researchers to look at the effects of mindfulness apart from the influence of a group or teacher. In one such study on stress among students and staff at the University of Sussex, researchers there compared a two-week online mindfulness course with a two-week online classical music program. At the end of the study, they found that participants in the mindfulness option had significantly lower stress levels. Looking more closely, they found that the mindfulness group showed less worry, greater mindfulness, and more self-compassion than the music-listeners—suggesting that these specific elements may be the key to mindfulness’s ability to lessen stress. Help your honey’s heart You probably already suspect that practicing mindfulness can help you stay cool when your partner annoys you. But in a recent study of married couples and conflict, Florida State University researchers turned up a surprising twist: The higher one spouse’s level of mindfulness, the lower the other partner’s cardiovascular reactivity (as measured by spikes in blood pressure and heart rate) when the inevitable arguments ensue. In other words, the more mindful you are, the less likely your partner is to experience potentially heart-harming physical changes during an argument. Mood lift Want to boost your mood? A University of Mississippi study shows that 10 minutes of either meditation or walking—as well as a meditation/walking combo—made participants feel better afterward. They reported feeling more tranquil and revitalized, as well as less exhausted. Don’t get even—get mindful It’s all too easy for a flash of anger to trigger a vengeful action—but it doesn’t have to be that way. In a rather devilish experiment, Northeastern University researchers had one group of college students learn mindfulness meditation, via the Headspace app, over a three-week period, while a comparison group did puzzles and word games. At the end, each student described their life goals to a person they thought was a fellow study participant—and then got feedback that the listener found their speeches “boring” and “a complete waste.” Here’s the devilish part: The students were given the opportunity to add hot sauce to a “taste test” for the listener who, they were told, hated spicy food. While both groups were angry, the meditators put only half as much hot sauce into the portion. Mindfulness meditation, the researchers concluded, lessens the likelihood of people behaving badly when provoked. A sound therapy People with tinnitus live with a noise inside their head that never goes away. There’s no cure for the condition, and it can lead to depression, insomnia, and anxiety. British researchers conducting one of the first randomized clinical trials of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for tinnitus found that an eight-week program not only reduced sufferers’ distress, but made the noise itself less noticeable. The keys to mindfulness Lots of studies on mindfulness have examined how people fare when they learn mindfulness in groups taught by a facilitator. Now the growth of online mindfulness apps and courses invites researchers to look at the effects of mindfulness apart from the influence of a group or teacher. In one such study on stress among students and staff at the University of Sussex, researchers there compared a two-week online mindfulness course with a two-week online classical music program. At the end of the study, they found that participants in the mindfulness option had significantly lower stress levels. Looking more closely, they found that the mindfulness group showed less worry, greater mindfulness, and more self-compassion than the music-listeners—suggesting that these specific elements may be the key to mindfulness’s ability to lessen stress. Help your honey’s heart You probably already suspect that practicing mindfulness can help you stay cool when your partner annoys you. But in a recent study of married couples and conflict, Florida State University researchers turned up a surprising twist: The higher one spouse’s level of mindfulness, the lower the other partner’s cardiovascular reactivity (as measured by spikes in blood pressure and heart rate) when the inevitable arguments ensue. In other words, the more mindful you are, the less likely your partner is to experience potentially heart-harming physical changes during an argument. Mood lift Want to boost your mood? A University of Mississippi study shows that 10 minutes of either meditation or walking—as well as a meditation/walking combo—made participants feel better afterward. They reported feeling more tranquil and revitalized, as well as less exhausted. Don’t get even—get mindful It’s all too easy for a flash of anger to trigger a vengeful action—but it doesn’t have to be that way. In a rather devilish experiment, Northeastern University researchers had one group of college students learn mindfulness meditation, via the Headspace app, over a three-week period, while a comparison group did puzzles and word games. At the end, each student described their life goals to a person they thought was a fellow study participant—and then got feedback that the listener found their speeches “boring” and “a complete waste.” Here’s the devilish part: The students were given the opportunity to add hot sauce to a “taste test” for the listener who, they were told, hated spicy food. While both groups were angry, the meditators put only half as much hot sauce into the portion. Mindfulness meditation, the researchers concluded, lessens the likelihood of people behaving badly when provoked. A sound therapy People with tinnitus live with a noise inside their head that never goes away. There’s no cure for the condition, and it can lead to depression, insomnia, and anxiety. British researchers conducting one of the first randomized clinical trials of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for tinnitus found that an eight-week program not only reduced sufferers’ distress, but made the noise itself less noticeable. The keys to mindfulness Lots of studies on mindfulness have examined how people fare when they learn mindfulness in groups taught by a facilitator. Now the growth of online mindfulness apps and courses invites researchers to look at the effects of mindfulness apart from the influence of a group or teacher. In one such study on stress among students and staff at the University of Sussex, researchers there compared a two-week online mindfulness course with a two-week online classical music program. At the end of the study, they found that participants in the mindfulness option had significantly lower stress levels. Looking more closely, they found that the mindfulness group showed less worry, greater mindfulness, and more self-compassion than the music-listeners—suggesting that these specific elements may be the key to mindfulness’s ability to lessen stress. Help your honey’s heart You probably already suspect that practicing mindfulness can help you stay cool when your partner annoys you. But in a recent study of married couples and conflict, Florida State University researchers turned up a surprising twist: The higher one spouse’s level of mindfulness, the lower the other partner’s cardiovascular reactivity (as measured by spikes in blood pressure and heart rate) when the inevitable arguments ensue. In other words, the more mindful you are, the less likely your partner is to experience potentially heart-harming physical changes during an argument. Mood lift Want to boost your mood? A University of Mississippi study shows that 10 minutes of either meditation or walking—as well as a meditation/walking combo—made participants feel better afterward. They reported feeling more tranquil and revitalized, as well as less exhausted. Don’t get even—get mindful It’s all too easy for a flash of anger to trigger a vengeful action—but it doesn’t have to be that way. In a rather devilish experiment, Northeastern University researchers had one group of college students learn mindfulness meditation, via the Headspace app, over a three-week period, while a comparison group did puzzles and word games. At the end, each student described their life goals to a person they thought was a fellow study participant—and then got feedback that the listener found their speeches “boring” and “a complete waste.” Here’s the devilish part: The students were given the opportunity to add hot sauce to a “taste test” for the listener who, they were told, hated spicy food. While both groups were angry, the meditators put only half as much hot sauce into the portion. Mindfulness meditation, the researchers concluded, lessens the likelihood of people behaving badly when provoked. A sound therapy People with tinnitus live with a noise inside their head that never goes away. There’s no cure for the condition, and it can lead to depression, insomnia, and anxiety. British researchers conducting one of the first randomized clinical trials of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for tinnitus found that an eight-week program not only reduced sufferers’ distress, but made the noise itself less noticeable. The keys to mindfulness Lots of studies on mindfulness have examined how people fare when they learn mindfulness in groups taught by a facilitator. Now the growth of online mindfulness apps and courses invites researchers to look at the effects of mindfulness apart from the influence of a group or teacher. In one such study on stress among students and staff at the University of Sussex, researchers there compared a two-week online mindfulness course with a two-week online classical music program. At the end of the study, they found that participants in the mindfulness option had significantly lower stress levels. Looking more closely, they found that the mindfulness group showed less worry, greater mindfulness, and more self-compassion than the music-listeners—suggesting that these specific elements may be the key to mindfulness’s ability to lessen stress. Extraordinary Acts of Kindness  Eight parents in Texas painted empowering messages—like “Kindness changes everything”—on bathroom stalls at their kids’ school. A marine biologist was at first frightened when a humpback whale kept bumping into her. Then she realized it was heroically shielding her from a nearby shark. A young single dad in Little Rock, AR, never complained about walking 11 miles to work and back every day. When his coworkers found out, however, they pooled their money and bought him a car.

title: “Top Of Mind” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-12” author: “Christopher Lewis”

According to the American College Health Association, nearly 1 in 5 students struggle with anxiety or depression, and the most recent report from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health lists these two conditions as the top reasons students seek counseling. One of the more creative attempts to address the challenge is a for-credit course called The Art and Science of Human Flourishing, piloted by the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Penn State. It recognizes the fact that college students face the multidimensional challenge of succeeding academically and adjusting to living on one’s own while maintaining a healthy social life–spheres that have traditionally been treated separately. David Germano, religious studies professor and director of UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center, says one of the keys to the course is students doing “reflective tasks together and actively making sense of what they are learning intellectually and connecting it to their lives,” including relationships, family life, career, and the “stress and anxiety they feel.” It’s part of a larger multi-year initiative by the three universities that includes online contemplative resources and assessment of the effect on students’ mental and emotional well-being. Try plogging? (Yes, you read that right) Be kind to your body and your community with a new Swedish fitness trend Mindful is totally on board with (and not just because of the funny name): plogging! A portmanteau of “jogging” and plocka upp—Swedish for “pick up”—plogging involves taking a garbage bag on your jog to pick up street litter as you go. It sounds a little hard to manage, but if you pick up enough trash maybe you can call it weight lifting as well…or shall we call it “plog lifting”? Lift the mask For 10 years, the Ever Forward Club, an after-school program in Oakland, CA, has used a mask exercise to help students get to know themselves. And now you’re invited to take part. Search for #100kMasks Challenge, go to the site, and follow the instructions. The words displayed on the front of your mask indicate “qualities you let people see.” On the back, write down “the things you don’t usually let people see.” Ever Forward intends to collect at least 100,000 of them to “gather a deeper understanding of people all over the world and to show how connected we really are when it comes to the masks we live in.” Share the pineapple love Scott Webb, a photographer who has anxiety and depression, founded Pineapple Supply Co., a stock photo site offering free pineapple snaps, digital wallpapers, merch, and good vibes, as a way to help people connect over something as simple as cute fruit. The site has more than 24,000 subscribers and 500,000 photo downloads. Okay, but can we still read People? Getting a mani-pedi is already a relaxing indulgence. But Namaste Nail Sanctuary, a new franchise based out of Los Angeles, has upped the Om quotient with “Zen architecture,” air purifiers, programing “using light and sound pulses at specified frequencies to help the user relax quickly,” and the “Cocoon,” a meditation space for guests to visit après treatment. Office mindfulness on the move In Phoenix, AZ, the mobile mindfulness studio trend is getting down to business. M2 is a mobile meditation studio with a focus on workplace mindfulness. They drive their meditation truck to businesses and offer employee mindfulness workshops, with themes ranging from relaxation to team-building to leadership. New moves against gendered violence In New Delhi, India, the Special Police Unit for Women and Children believes in the power of self-defense skills that give women a chance to fight back. The female officers teach a free 10-day course for girls and women of all ages that combines moves from karate, taekwondo, and judo. The course’s growing popularity is, unfortunately, justified by the sheer number of brutally misogynist attacks in India’s capital over the past decade, which have spurred women to take their protection more into their own hands. The initiative also takes on gendered violence through a class for men and boys, teaching them to respect women and how to help if they witness harassment. From rubbish to relaxation To raise awareness about litter in her community, St. Louis artist Shea Brown wove Moroccan-style meditation cushions out of strips of discarded plastic shopping bags. Her Meditation and Serenity Station installment was part of the Dutchtown neighborhood’s public-education campaign to reduce illegal dumping. “Plastic is a beast,” said Brown, who also weaves “plarn” into sleeping mats for the homeless. According to the National Resources Defense Council, an average family takes home 1,500 plastic bags in a year. “We’re trying to come up with a way to do something different or upcycle the waste and also educate residents on ways to help keep some of this plastic out of our system.” Changing mindfulness culture at NYU Access to majority-white spaces is determined by racial privilege, and mindfulness meditation spaces are no exception. Hence the need for New York University’s Stay Woke and Meditate, a peer-led program tailored specifically to self-identified students of color. According to peer leader A’nisa Megginson, Stay Woke and Meditate strives to “provide space to exist without expectation” (not always an easy thing to find in college). It also facilitates the process of healing from the impacts of everyday racism. In addition to weekly classes, in April 2018 the program also held its first half-day retreat, “Existence as Resistance,” helping participants to strengthen community while defusing their stress through yoga, meditation, and reflection. Mindfulness in the big leagues The NBA has partnered with meditation app developer Headspace, giving all players and employees in the NBA, WBNA, and its G-League access to mindfulness training. The league also plans to co-produce its own content on the app. This isn’t the only foray into the world of athletics for Headspace: It now also provides guided audio for “mindful runs” and tips for the Nike+ Run Club digital training program.