Life can be stress­ful. Whether it’s the stress that comes with hav­ing too much work to do in too lit­tle time, ful­fill­ing care­giv­ing oblig­a­tions, or deal­ing with a major ill­ness or set­back, some­times it can be hard to cope.

In response to stress, many peo­ple today are turn­ing to med­i­ta­tion or mind­ful­ness apps (myself includ­ed). But not all mind­ful­ness prac­tice is equal­ly effec­tive for com­bat­ing stress Read the rest of this entry »

Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion is every­where these days. From the class­room to the board room, peo­ple are jump­ing on the mind­ful­ness band­wag­on, hop­ing to dis­cov­er for them­selves some of its promised ben­e­fits, like bet­ter focus, more har­mo­nious rela­tion­ships, and less stress.

I too have start­ed a mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion prac­tice and have found it to be help­ful in my every­day life. But, as a sci­ence writer, I still have to won­der: Is all of the hype around mind­ful­ness run­ning ahead of the sci­ence? What does the research real­ly say about mind­ful­ness?  Read the rest of this entry »

Study finds mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion offers relief for low-back pain (NIH release):

“Mind­ful­ness based stress reduc­tion (MBSR) and cog­ni­tive-behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) may prove more effec­tive than usu­al treat­ment in alle­vi­at­ing chron­ic low-back pain, accord­ing to Read the rest of this entry »

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More and more stud­ies are show­ing the poten­tial ben­e­fits of mind­ful­ness prac­tices for stu­dents –to improve phys­i­cal health, psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being, social skills, even aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance in some cas­es– as well as for teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors –pri­mar­i­ly to reduce stress and burnout–.

To give you an update on the land­scape of sci­en­tif­ic research about the role of mind­ful­ness in edu­ca­tion, here goes our selec­tion of ten recent stud­ies, all of them recent ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­als, with brief descrip­tions of each Read the rest of this entry »

Med­ical pro­fes­sion­als are bur­dened dai­ly with the pain and suf­fer­ing of patients. Many work long hours, and reg­u­lar­ly face stress­ful sit­u­a­tions. This bur­den does not come with­out con­se­quence: 60 per­cent of physi­cians report hav­ing expe­ri­enced burnout at some point in their careers.

Mind­ful­ness cours­es designed to help health care work­ers Read the rest of this entry »