New book by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describes four reasons why long-term meditation can lead to profound improvements in our minds, brains, and bodies

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…

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New book on how to practice mindfulness meditation with humor and playfulness

From the out­side, med­i­ta­tion appears to be a thor­ough­ly seri­ous endeav­or. You have to sit down, duti­ful­ly count your breaths and rein in your wan­der­ing mind, and prac­tice this every day whether it’s fun or not. But that isn’t Chade-Meng Tan’s approach to mind­ful­ness. The found­ing chair of the Search Inside Your­self Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, which started…

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How mindfulness meditation is infiltrating the corporate world

I thought I’d read every­thing about mind­ful­ness, but this was news to me: Steve Jobs was a med­i­ta­tor. Back in 1981, long before mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion became a pop­u­lar sub­ject of sci­en­tif­ic inquiry, Jobs, the cofounder and pub­lic face of Apple Com­put­ers, was already prac­tic­ing mind­ful­ness as a way to calm his mind, stay focused, and…

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Does mindfulness meditation work? (Hint: First, define “work”)

How con­vinc­ing is the sci­ence dri­ving the pop­u­lar­i­ty of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion? Brown Uni­ver­si­ty researcher has some sur­pris­ing answers (tri­cy­cle): “Giv­en the wide­spread belief that med­i­ta­tion prac­tice is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly cer­ti­fied to be good for just about every­thing, the results of a recent major analy­sis of the research might come as some sur­prise… (Ques­tion) As a sci­en­tist and…

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Update: For brain training to work, it must induce neuroplasticity in regions that matter

Time for Sharp­Brains’ May 2014 e‑newsletter. If you’re look­ing for new think­ing, research and tools to enhance life­long brain health and per­for­mance, you’re in the right place… New think­ing: For cog­ni­tive train­ing to work, it must induce neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in brain regions that mat­ter Which kind of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion to choose? Com­par­ing sit­ting med­i­ta­tion, body scan, and mind­ful yoga…

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