compassion-meditation

Scientia Pro Publica #16: Us, Friends, and Society

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Wel­come to the 16th edi­tion  of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­li­ca, the blog car­ni­val  that cel­e­brates the best sci­ence, nature and med­ical writ­ing pub­lished in the blo­gos­phere with­in the past 60 days.

What are some of the fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics you can explore and dis­cuss with this group of bloggers?

Sci­ence & Us

The Evolv­ing Mind: What’s the point of day­dream­ing?

Credit: Johan Stigwall, via Flickr
Cred­it: Johan Stig­wall, via Flickr

Gen­er­al­ly Think­ing: What is the brain impact of dif­fer­ent types of med­i­ta­tion (focused, open mon­i­tor­ing, compassion)?

The Emo­tion Machine: Can blog­ging help you con­trol your envi­ron­ment and man­age stress?

Greater Good Mag­a­zine: Want to live longer and bett­ter?

Col­lec­tive Imag­i­na­tion: Can you share a pow­er­ful uncan­ny expe­ri­ence?

Sci­ence & Friends

via LiveScience
via Live­Science

Lab Rat: Pros and Cons of hav­ing amphib­ian skin?

Sci­ence in Par­adise: Do sharks get can­cer?

Mau­ka to Makai: Can bun­nies offer new light on what comes after Via­gra, how to deal with nuclear feces, and new sources of electricity?

Kind of Curi­ous: Did dinousaurs migrate? dead or alive?

Migra­tions: Do beliefs on evo­lu­tion affect one’s abil­i­ty to appre­ci­ate bird­ing?

Sci­ence & Society

Sci­ence & Soul: Can we reverse corn mono­cul­ture trends?Lock1

Genomics Law Report: If a Direct-To-Con­sumer genomics com­pa­ny goes bank­rupt, what hap­pens to your data? does HIPAA cov­er it?

And this con­cludes today’s edi­tion.  Kelsey will host next edi­tion (Decem­ber 7th) at Mau­ka to Makai;  you can sub­mit posts using this handy form. And if you’re inter­est­ed in host­ing Sci­en­tia at your blog, con­tact Grrlsci­en­tist!

Meditation and The Brain

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Superb blog arti­cle by Newsweek’s Sharon Beg­ley: The Lotus and the Synapse, intro­duc­ing a new Study that shows com­pas­sion med­i­ta­tion changes the brain.

To read the orig­i­nal paper led by Richard David­son and Antoine Lutz, click Here. We will be cov­er­ing this in more detail next week.

Manage your feelings for conflict resolution

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Stephanie West Allen kind­ly alert­ed us of her impres­sive new ini­tia­tive and blog, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dr. Jef­frey M. Schwartz, titled Brains On Pur­pose. They have part­nered to bring a series of sem­i­nars on neu­ro­science and con­flict res­o­lu­tion: Port­land, Ore­gon, in Novem­ber 2007, and San Fran­cis­co Bay Area in Jan­u­ary 2008-so far. Dr. Schwartz has pre­vi­ous­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sim­i­lar and fruit­ful ini­tia­tive on The Neu­ro­science of Lead­er­ship with David Rock. We wish them best luck in this excit­ing initiative.

Stephanie writes a great blog post on “What are you feel­ing?” “What am I feel­ing?” These ques­tions are tools for brain tam­ing, explain­ing how “A flur­ry of arti­cles appeared this week (such as this one in Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can: “Name that feel­ing: You’ll feel bet­ter”) about the neu­ro­science research show­ing that label­ing your feel­ings can qui­et your brain and increase impulse control”

adding that…

“In our recent arti­cle “Lead Your Brain Instead Of Let­ting It Lead You,” we talk about the prac­tice of mak­ing men­tal notes (first described by Jeff in his book Dear Patrick: Life is Tough — Here’s Some Good Advice). Devel­op­ing your skill in mak­ing men­tal notes can bring relief when high con­flict occurs.” and “The more skilled you get at label­ing, the more quick­ly no mat­ter the sit­u­a­tion you can return to equa­nim­i­ty and composure.”

Check her post to learn more about the label­ing tech­nique. Devel­op­ing men­tal notes can be a very pow­er­ful way to self-reg­u­late behav­ior, not too dif­fer­ent from cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­tion tech­niques.

Excit­ing to see more sci­en­tists and prac­ti­tion­ers bring­ing research into prac­tice! As we have men­tioned, Brain Fit­ness is some­thing that applies to dif­fer­ent ages and dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es, and this is a great exam­ple for lawyers.