Through the Smoke

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Tag: Mindfulness

Paper: Mindfulness helps elementary students with stress

December 6, 2016 /

Researchers at the University of Colorado taught mindfulness techniques to a class of Denver 4th graders, who practiced it daily during homeroom check-in for 10 weeks. After comparing those students to a similar class without mindfulness, they reported improvements in pro-social behavior, emotional regulation and academic performance for those who practiced it. Their conclusion?

Mindfulness in urban classroom settings as a feasible option for students to help with personal stress and coping, as well as emotional and behavior regulation in schools and at home.

The methods came from two sources of mindfulness curricula for children:

  • MindUp, from the Hawn (as in Goldie Hawn) Foundation
  • Mindful Schools, which came out of a project in Oakland, California

Related: Mindfulness Goes to School: Things Learned (So Far) from Research and Real-World Experiences.

Article: Actually, Let’s Not Be in the Moment

November 29, 2016 /

Ruth Whippman takes on mindfulness in the New York Times: Actually, Let’s Not Be in the Moment

Mindfulness is supposed to be a defense against the pressures of modern life, but it’s starting to feel suspiciously like it’s actually adding to them. It’s a special circle of self-improvement hell, striving not just for a Pinterest-worthy home, but a Pinterest-worthy mind.

Mindfulness is a $4 billion market, she reports.

As much as I believe that mindfulness is good, her skepticism is on point. It applies to every relaxation practice – yoga, deep breathing and all the rest. Coping with stress is much more than just learning to relax. As I’ve repeated many times, social support has the strongest correlation to our psychological resiliency. Spirituality – in the sense of having values and bigger-than-self purposes – also matters.

Whippman cites a U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report, Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-Being, which surveyed almost 18,000 journal citations covering 41 trials with about 3,000 participants. Its conclusion was that these practices are helpful, but more study is needed:

Meditation programs, in particular mindfulness programs, reduce multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress. Stronger study designs are needed to determine the effects of meditation programs in improving the positive dimensions of mental health as well as stress-related behavioral outcomes.

Paper: Adolescent stress management – there’s an app for that

November 5, 2016 /

Researchers who gave adolescents a mobile phone app for mindfulness and self- compassion, which have been repeatedly shown to help with stress, found that the young people were willing to use the app regularly. Given the ubiquity of mobile devices, this is good news.

Abstract:

The aim of the study was to test the feasibility of a mindfulness and self-compassion based program for adolescents, to be delivered though mobile phones. Twenty racially and ethnically diverse US adolescents enrolled in a study to use the app for 30 days, after which they provided satisfaction data and participated in focus groups to describe their experiences and offer suggestions for improving the app. Usage data were also captured. Results indicated that participants used the app on the majority of days over the intervention period, reported finding it helpful for managing stress, and provided suggestions for substantive areas for improvement. These findings suggest that a mobile app may be a feasible way to disseminate a mindfulness and selfcompassion based program widely among adolescents.

DOI link.

Mindfulness Reduces Texting While Driving

October 7, 2016 /

I titled an earlier post “We are so desperate to connect with others that we will risk our own lives and those around us to exchange 140 characters while driving.” (which the observant reader will have noticed is 136 characters).

If texting while driving is an indication of hunger for connection, driven by stress-induced mind/body imbalance, then we should expect stress management techniques to reduce the urge to text at inappropriate times. Sure enough, a study of 231 undergraduates at at Simmons College showed that those who scored higher on a mindfulness scale were less inclined to text while driving.

However, to be fair to the researchers, they didn’t see the problem entirely as one of disconnectedness. Their focus was on self-regulation of emotions and attention, which mindfulness has been shown to improve. However, two of the study’s three emotion-regulation questions were clearly relational:

  • “When I am feeling upset, I send or read text messages to distract myself.”
  • “If I am bored or annoyed with the people I am with, I will text someone else.”

Another study, which looked at the social influence on texting while driving among teens and young adults, found that “the more a person believes that their friends and peers approve of and engage in texting while driving, the greater their intention to engage in these behaviours .” Social pressure matters. And so do values, the same study concluded – those who believed it is morally wrong to text while driving are less likely to do so – and the moral influence against texting seemed to be stronger than the social one in favor.

 

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