Category: Mindfulness

Try these 6 steps a few times a week and enjoy the benefits of feeling your mind open up.

We all suffer from the pressures of life from time-to-time.

Time spent relaxing can naturally provide a great antidote.

But relaxation is an art-form in itself that needs to be learnt.

Not everyone is born a good relaxer!

Some people even find time designated for ‘relaxing’ to be terrifying — they would rather be rushing around, keeping busy.

That is only because they haven’t worked out the best way to relax yet.

Try these six steps to help open up your mind and live in the moment.

Step 1: Make time

It can be hard to make time, but believe me it will be worth it.

You will probably need an hour, although whatever time you can spare is fine.

Make sure you won’t be distracted during this time.

Step 2: Wind down

The first step is to wind down from the frenetic pace at which life is lived nowadays.

Very simple activities that allow your mind to wander free will work for this.

Cooking a familiar meal, listening to music, taking a walk — you will know what works best for you.

If you use more formal methods like progressive muscle relaxation or meditation, that is also fine.

Try to avoid alcohol for winding down — it has side-effects and makes it hard to maintain your focus.

Similarly, TV and anything too stimulating will also make it difficult for you to wind down.

The mind needs space to expand.

Step 3: Find positive emotions

Use your memory to locate positive emotions.

Focus on a good moment in your life.

It doesn’t have to be anything major, although it can be.

Simply a nice smell, the sense of satisfaction of a small job well done or even a memory from years ago will do.

Focus in on that memory for a while and let the emotion wash over you.

Explore it for as long as you like.

Step 4: Give thanks

Consider one or two things in life that you feel grateful for.

They could be anything, but people often choose relationships, such as family and friends.

Or perhaps it could be your health, or even someone who did you a small kindness recently.

Let your mind dwell on that feeling for a while.

Step 5: Wave at negative thoughts floating past

When letting the mind float free, sometimes it ends up on negative thoughts.

Try to notice these and let them go.

It is important not to push them away, but just to notice them and accept them — just as you might wave at an acquaintance as you pass them on the street.

Then gently refocus your mind to a positive thought or something you are grateful for.

Step 6: Deep focus

After a time, you will probably start to enter a more peaceful state of mind.

Here it feels like you have more time…

…and that your time is your own.

Now you have a choice.

If you are enjoying being like this, then carry on.

If you have something meditative that will maintain the state, then now is the time to turn to that.

Open a book you have been meaning to read, start a journal, draw a picture or whatever it is you are in to.

But, if you do choose an activity, make sure it is one that does not disrupt the state of deep focus.

Turning on the TV, for example, will likely ruin the moment.

Shopping online, reading the news or playing video games will not help you maintain the feeling.

Far better than any of those is to maintain the sense of deep focus for as long as you can — even if you focus on nothing more than enjoying the moment.

In fact: especially if you do nothing more than enjoy the moment.

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Why not try these six steps a few times a week and see how it makes you feel….?

In this modern age of multitasking, everyone could do with boosting their attention.

1. Learn something new

Simply learning new information or using existing knowledge in new ways can help boost attentional skills, a new study finds.

It’s just the same way that young children learn to ‘train’ their brains: they learn new things about the world.

Acquiring knowledge and then thinking about how it fits into what we already know helps boost our attention.

2. Eat chocolate

Dark chocolate can improve attention and a new formula may also lower blood pressure, a study shows.

Professor Larry Stevens, who conducted the study, said:

“Chocolate is indeed a stimulant and it activates the brain in a really special way.

It can increase brain characteristics of attention, and it also significantly affects blood pressure levels.”

The study measured the effects of eating 60% cacao chocolate (commonly called dark chocolate) on the brain waves of 122 participants.

They found that chocolate boosted attention and people were more alert for a period — although their blood pressure increased.

3. Meditate

Practising meditation can help improve your focus while reading, a study finds.

For the research, some people were sent on a one-month intensive vipassanā meditation training program.

They then took a reading test which had nonsensical sentences deliberately placed within it.

Compared with a control group, those who had been practising meditation were better able to detect the gibberish, suggesting they were paying more attention.

4. Self-check

Learning to periodically self-check can improve attention and help people focus better on tasks, recent research finds.

The study used brain imaging to predict when people were starting to lose their focus on a boring task they were given.

The researchers found that after just one training session to improve attention, those who had received the feedback performed better than a control group.

5. Count your breaths

A short breathing exercise is enough to refocus the minds of highly distracted people, new research finds.

Heavy media multitaskers benefited most from simply counting their breaths, psychologists found.

The mindfulness task simply involved counting groups of nine breaths: nine inhales and nine exhales.

Participants did this a few times before being given tests of their attention.

Dr Green explained:

“No one can stay focused on it indefinitely.

When you notice your attention slipping away, you bring it back over and over.

You’re practicing that skill, refocusing your attention.”

6. Brightly coloured room

Brightly coloured rooms can boost your concentration, new research finds.

This is because people perform at their best when somewhat stimulated.

Too much and too little stimulation, though, tends to make people’s performance worse.

The study’s results showed that participants’ reading comprehension was higher in the vividly painted red and yellow rooms.

7. A little language learning

Mental agility can be increased by even a relatively small amount of language learning.

After only a week of study, students show improved attention skills — as well as learning a new language.

Language learners were better able to switch their attention and filter out irrelevant details.

Continuing to learn a new language led to sustained improvements 9 months later, the researchers also found.

Need more pointers? Here you go:

• Super-Focus: 10 Natural Steps to Nurture Your Attention

Mind hack image from Shutterstock

Laptops and tablets are changing the way we think about information — maybe for the worse.

If you want to make more intellectual leaps, it may be better to print out information than read it on a laptop or tablet.

Using tablets and laptops reduces the ability to think in abstract ways, a new study finds.

Instead, people using these digital devices tend to concentrate more on the concrete details of their work.

For the research people read a series of texts either on paper or on a laptop/tablet.

They were then asked questions about them afterwards.

Some of these tested their abstract understanding and others tested their concrete understanding.

When reading off paper, people performed roughly 30% better on questions that required a leap of understanding.

However, the results were reversed when the questions simply required concrete answers.

Dr Geoff Kaufman, one of the study’s authors said:

“There has been a great deal of research on how digital platforms might be affecting attention, distractibility and mindfulness, and these studies build on this work, by focusing on a relatively understudied construct.

Given that psychologists have shown that construal levels can vastly impact outcomes such as self-esteem and goal pursuit, it’s crucial to recognize the role that digitization of information might be having on this important aspect of cognition.”

The conclusions come from four studies with over 300 people.

Professor Mary Flanagan, a study co-author, said:

“Compared to the widespread acceptance of digital devices, as evidenced by millions of apps, ubiquitous smartphones, and the distribution of iPads in schools, surprisingly few studies exist about how digital tools affect our understanding — our cognition.

Knowing the affordances of digital technologies can help us design better software.

Sometimes, it is beneficial to foster abstract thinking, and as we know more, we can design to overcome the tendencies — or deficits — inherent in digital devices,”

The study was presented at ACM CHI ’16, the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems on May 10, 2016.

Awe and wonder can help people feel more connected and reframe problems.

Astronauts who see the Earth from space could provide a clue as to how we can all feel more awe and wonder, new research suggests.

The view from so far away from the Earth provokes a special phenomenon called the overview effect.

Dr David Yaden, the study’s first author, said:

“We watch sunsets whenever we travel to beautiful places to get a little taste of this kind of experience.

These astronauts are having something more extreme.

By studying the more-extreme version of a general phenomenon, you can often learn more about it.”

The researchers analysed the reports of many astronauts from all over the world.

Each had documented their own experience of seeing the Earth from space for extended periods.

They frequently described it as a life-changing experience.

They mentioned ideas like connectedness, vastness, perception and unity.

Despite the religious or spiritual overtones, the experience was very secular for the astronauts, Dr Yaden explained:

“Space is so fascinating because it’s a highly scientific, highly secular environment, so it doesn’t have these connotations.

We think of people who do a lot of meditation or climb mountains, people who are awe junkies, having these experiences.

We don’t [often] think of these very strict scientists reporting these blissful moments.”

The astronauts’ experience is so fascinating — and potentially life-changing — that the researchers want to find out how we can all have more of it in our lives.

Mr Johannes Eichstaedt, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“Behavior is extremely hard to change, so to stumble across something that has such a profound and reproducible effect, that should make psychologists sit up straight and say:

‘What’s going on here?

How can we have more of this?'”

The researchers are planning a follow-up experiment which will give people the opportunity to gaze at the Earth from space in virtual reality.

Perhaps it will be a life-changing experience — just as it is for the astronauts.

The study was published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness (Yaden et al., 2016).

Heavily distracted people benefited most from the simple task.

A short breathing exercise is enough to refocus the minds of highly distracted people, new research finds.

Heavy media multitaskers benefited most from simply counting their breaths, psychologists found.

Media multitaskers might typically have a chat session open on the computer while also watching a video and checking their email.

Thomas Gorman, the study’s first author, said:

“In general, people perform better after this mindfulness task.

But we found a significant difference for heavy media multitaskers.

They improved even more on tests of their attention.”

Dr C. Shawn Green, a senior author of the study, said:

“Many people have had the experience where they’ve felt a phantom phone ring or vibration in their pocket.

That means part of your attention is actively monitoring your leg, even while you’re trying to do other things.

Most of us who study media multitasking think that monitoring lots of sources constantly — instead of devoting yourself to one thing –induces a more distributed attentional state.

The mindfulness task simply involved counting groups of nine breaths: nine inhales and nine exhales.

Participants did this a few times before being given tests of their attention.

Dr Green explained:

“We thought this mindfulness task might be particularly useful to media multitaskers because it is, conceptually, somewhat the opposite of media multitasking.

It’s deep focus on a single thing, and that single thing is not actually very demanding of your attention.

No one can stay focused on it indefinitely.

When you notice your attention slipping away, you bring it back over and over.

You’re practicing that skill, refocusing your attention.”

The results showed that heavy media multitaskers scored worst on the measures of attention.

But they showed the greatest improvements after counting their breaths.

Dr Green said:

“We know that the beneficial effects aren’t long lasting in this case, as they didn’t carry over across days.

However, one thing the presence of the short-term effects suggests is that the attentional system in heavy media multitaskers isn’t intractably affected.

It is possible for heavy media multitaskers to adopt a more focused attentional state.”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Gorman & Green, 2016).

Multitasking image from Shutterstock

Paying attention to what you are reading can be hard — especially in this age of endless distraction.

Practising meditation can help improve your focus while reading, a new study finds.

Maintaining attention when reading can be difficult, as the study’s authors write:

“It is challenging for individuals to maintain their attention on ongoing cognitive tasks without being distracted by task-unrelated thought.

The wandering mind is thus a considerable obstacle when attention must be maintained over time.

Mental training through meditation has been proposed as an effective method of attenuating the ebb and flow of attention to thoughts and feelings that distract from one’s foremost present goals.”

For the research, some people were sent on a one-month intensive vipassanā meditation training program.

They then took a reading test which had nonsensical sentences deliberately placed within it.

Compared with a control group, those who had been practising meditation were better able to detect the gibberish, suggesting they were paying more attention.

The study’s authors write:

“Meditation practitioners across both studies demonstrated greater levels of error monitoring following training, as measured by their ability to detect gross semantic violations in the text.

This suggests that training group participants were more attentive to the story content and ongoing text, allowing them to better detect these salient text discrepancies.”

The study was published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice (Zanesco et al., 2016).

Reading a Novel Boosts Brain Connectivity

Reading image from Shutterstock

Back pain can be eased with two psychological treatments, study finds.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction helps to reduce lower back pain, a new study finds.

Along with cognitive-behavioural therapy, mindfulness was found to be safer than other treatment options and to have more long-lasting effects.

Other typical treatment options include medication and physical therapy.

The high quality study involved almost 350 patients with chronic lower back pain.

The researchers compared a mindfulness intervention with cognitive-behavioural therapy and treatment as normal.

Dr Daniel Cherkin, the study’s first author, said:

“We are not saying ‘It’s all in your mind’.

Rather, as recent brain research has shown, the mind and the body are intimately intertwined, including in how they sense and respond to pain.

Both mindfulness and CBT involve the brain as well as the body.

We found that these approaches were as helpful for people with chronic back pain as are other effective treatments for back pain.

[…]

…training the brain to respond differently to pain signals may be more effective—and last longer—than traditional physical therapy and medication.”

Eight out of 10 Americans will experience chronic lower back pain in their lives.

The study involved lower back pain patients, some of whom received 8 two-hour sessions in either CBT or mindfulness-based stress reduction.

Dr Cherkin said:

“Our findings are important because they add to the growing evidence that pain and other forms of suffering involve the mind as well as the body.

Greater understanding and acceptance of the mind-body connection will provide patients and clinicians with new opportunities for improving the lives of persons with chronic back pain and other challenging conditions that are not always effectively managed with physical treatments alone.

We want to see whether the effects of mindfulness and CBT persist for more than a year.

And we want to learn whether mindfulness and CBT affect people through the same or different processes.

For example, do the benefits of mindfulness training result from increased mindfulness and acceptance of pain, whereas the benefits of CBT result from changes in pain beliefs and more effective use of pain coping strategies?”

The study was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (Cherkin et al., 2016).

Back pain image from Shutterstock

The “Crunch Effect” can help you eat less.

Being conscious of the sound your food makes in your mouth could help you eat less, a new study finds.

The researchers found that when people could not hear their own eating noises, they ate more.

A different study in the series found that even thinking about the sounds made while eating was enough to reduce consumption.

Dr Ryan Elder, one of the study’s authors, said:

“When you mask the sound of consumption, like when you watch TV while eating, you take away one of those senses and it may cause you to eat more than you would normally.

The effects many not seem huge–one less pretzel–but over the course of a week, month, or year, it could really add up.”

The study may help explain why mindfulness can help people eat less.

Mindfulness helps concentrate the mind on the sensory experience of eating.

https://www.spring.org.uk/2015/10/people-who-think-like-this-have-less-belly-fat.php

Dr Gina Mohr, the study’s co-author, said:

“For the most part, consumers and researchers have overlooked food sound as an important sensory cue in the eating experience.

Dr Elder agrees:

“Sound is typically labeled as the forgotten food sense.

But if people are more focused on the sound the food makes, it could reduce consumption.”

The study was published in the journal Food Quality and Preference. (Elder & Mohr, 2016).

Chewing image from Shutterstock