Milwaukee Health and Fitness Centre

Posts Tagged ‘cognitive therapy’

Mindfulness is the Western version of Eastern meditation techniques that has become one of the key elements of the “third generation” of cognitive therapy.
The mindfulness focuses on learning to monitor the continuing feelings and thoughts more closely, both in meditation and yoga exercises.
Prove that the left brain area is located happiness

• Meditation control that emotion

Many years ago, when still a graduate student in psychology, I conducted an experiment to assess how meditation might work as an antidote to stress.
My professors were skeptical, my measures were weak and my patients were mostly second-year colleagues. Not surprisingly, my results were inconclusive. But today I feel vindicated.
Over the years there have been scores of studies that have studied meditation, some suggesting its powers to alleviate the adverse effects of stress. But only last month took shape what I consider a definitive study that confirms my hypothesis, once loose, revealing the brain mechanism that may explain the ability to relax.
The data emerged as one of many experimental results of an unusual research collaboration: the Dalai Lama, Tibetan religious and political leader in exile, and some of the leading psychologists and neurologists from the United States. The scientists met with the Dalai Lama for five days in Dharamsala, India, in March 2000 to discuss how people might better control their destructive emotions.
One of my personal heroes in this rapprochement between science and ancient wisdom is Dr. Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the, University of Wisconsin. Davidson did in a recent investigation to identify an index to establish the center in the brain of moods.
Magnetic resonance imaging revealed that when people are anxious, angry, depressed parts of the brain converge on the amygdala and right prefrontal cortex, a brain region important for hiperdefensa typical of people under stress. By contrast, when people have a positive spirit, enthusiasm and energy, those sites are quiet and increases the activity of the left prefrontal cortex.
Davidson reported the discovery during a meeting with the Dalai Lama and scientists in India. But the finding, while interesting, raised more questions than answers. Was it just coincidence or a common feature among the monks? Was there something about the training of a blade that could lead to a state of perpetual bliss? And if so, could this wonder be shared by all?
A tentative answer to this last question comes from a study that Davidson held in collaboration with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts.
This clinic teaches meditation in patients with chronic illnesses to help them better manage their symptoms. In an article, Drs Davidson and Kabat-Zinn report on the effects of training in this kind of meditation, a method extracted from its Buddhist origins and now taught to patients in hospitals and clinics in many countries. Read the rest of this entry »