Can we interrupt social conditioning? This is a second post in a series considering social conditioning, grit, and stereotype threat. For more information, please check out the earlier posts and also please leave your thoughts in the comments below! Every once in a while, I hear something so true that it seems like I’ve just realized something I’ve always known. I’m a fish learning the word for water. This is exactly the kind of smack in the face learning I have experienced with studying stereotype threat over the past few months, specifically in thinking about its implications to the classroom. I have experienced the cycle myself and watched my students suffer through it but never have articulated what I observed clearly enough to begin to address it. Teachers know the symptoms. Of course there are an infinite number of factors that effect student performance. The thoughts here are heavily influenced by the work of Claude Steele (Whistling Vivaldi), The Shell Center, and Ann Shannon of Ann Shannon and Associates.
Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training Abstract Although research has found that long-term mindfulness meditation practice promotes executive functioning and the ability to sustain attention, the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training have not been fully explored. We examined whether brief meditation training affects cognition and mood when compared to an active control group. After four sessions of either meditation training or listening to a recorded book, participants with no prior meditation experience were assessed with measures of mood, verbal fluency, visual coding, and working memory. Keywords Mindfulness; Meditation; Cognition; Working memory; Mood; Attention; Meta-awareness Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. 10 Simple, Science-Backed Ways To Be Happier Today | Fast Company | business + innovation Editor's Note: This is one of the most-read leadership articles of 2013. Click here to see the full list. Happiness is so interesting, because we all have different ideas about what it is and how to get it. It’s also no surprise that it’s the Nr.1 value for Buffer’s culture, if you see our slidedeck about it. I would love to be happier, as I’m sure most people would, so I thought it would be interesting to find some ways to become a happier person that are actually backed up by science. 1.Exercise more--7 minutes might be enough You might have seen some talk recently about the scientific 7 minute workout mentioned in The New York Times. Exercise has such a profound effect on our happiness and well-being that it’s actually been proven to be an effective strategy for overcoming depression. The groups were then tested six months later to assess their relapse rate. You don’t have to be depressed to gain benefit from exercise, though. 2. 3. 4. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
How Do I Prepare My Students for the Real World? This quick read provides a six-step process, a lesson plan, and self-assessments to help students develop the skills they need to persevere in school and in life. Excerpted below is a passage from the publication. If this is your first time hearing about ASCD’s new short-format imprint, read our big announcement online. Mindfulness meditation for the treatment of chronic low back pain in older adults: A randomized controlled pilot study Received 8 August 2006; received in revised form 12 April 2007; accepted 30 April 2007. published online 02 June 2007. The objectives of this pilot study were to assess the feasibility of recruitment and adherence to an eight-session mindfulness meditation program for community-dwelling older adults with chronic low back pain (CLBP) and to develop initial estimates of treatment effects. It was designed as a randomized, controlled clinical trial. Participants were 37 community-dwelling older adults aged 65 years and older with CLBP of moderate intensity occurring daily or almost every day. Participants were randomized to an 8-week mindfulness-based meditation program or to a wait-list control group. .004) and SF-36 Physical Function (P .03). Keywords: Aged, Low back pain, Mindfulness, Meditation, Randomized, Controlled trial
5 Profound Insights On Success From A Wharton Prof Devoted To Understanding It If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. --Henry David Thoreau Last summer, Parade magazine and Yahoo! Finance jointly surveyed 26,000 Americans and discovered that nearly 60% of them fully regretted their career choices. That’s an incredibly sad statistic, of course--especially when you consider that job satisfaction has become the most critical factor to a person’s sense of well-being and overall happiness with life. So how is it that so many people have found themselves in careers that leave them feeling empty and unfulfilled? “I think that for a lot of these people,” says Shell, “they hadn’t thoughtfully defined what success would look like in their own terms before pursuing work that aligned more closely with family, social or cultural expectations. Shell speaks from experience. Here’s what I found to be five of the author’s most profound and helpful insights:
Paying attention is a skill: Schools need to teach it. Photo by Shutterstock There is no doubt that “diminished attention” is a correct diagnosis of the intellectual temperament of our age. I see it to a greater degree each year even in the students I teach, who are among the very best that our high schools have to offer. But how to treat it? Again and again, we are told in this information-overloaded digital age, complex and subtle arguments just won’t hold the reader’s or viewer’s attention. By catering to diminished attention, we are making a colossal and unconscionable mistake. The key point for teachers and principals and parents to realize is that maintaining attention is a skill. In other words, the “short-attention” phenomenon is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. A person who is my age can read a very brief and oversimplified discussion of a complex issue and note that it is brief and oversimplified. It is easy to find villains in this war on attention. Research on training attention may one day produce a magic bullet.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits: A meta-analysis Received 5 March 2003; accepted 8 July 2003. Objective Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a structured group program that employs mindfulness meditation to alleviate suffering associated with physical, psychosomatic and psychiatric disorders. Methods Sixty-four empirical studies were found, but only 20 reports met criteria of acceptable quality or relevance to be included in the meta-analysis. Results Overall, both controlled and uncontrolled studies showed similar effect sizes of approximately 0.5 (P<.0001) with homogeneity of distribution. Conclusion Although derived from a relatively small number of studies, these results suggest that MBSR may help a broad range of individuals to cope with their clinical and nonclinical problems. Keywords: Chronic disease, Coping, Meta-analysis, Mindfulness, Psychosomatic disorders, Stress
14 Daily Habits That Are Secretly Stressing You Out 'Tis the season for completely losing it. The holidays are a worry-filled time for a lot of people, but it turns out that you might be partially to blame for your own pre-eggnog anxiety. But we know (or we hope) you're not purposely trying to sabotage yourself, so here's a quick rundown of things you might be doing without realizing they're actually making you feel worse. Take a deep breath and try to relax. 1. If you can't remember the last time you laughed so hard you were blinded by tears, you should reconsider your life choices. 2. Photo by Mike Rosenthal In a study on mice, those that had exercised responded to a stressful cold-water bath with a short spurt of anxiety followed by calm, suggesting brains are more equipped to deal with stress when the body has been physically active. 3. Multiple studies have shown the relaxing benefits of listening to music. 4. Consider your cleaning habits. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Stop that. 13. …but for some reason you're still freaking out!
University - Exercise reorganizes the brain to be more resilient to stress Posted July 3, 2013; 02:30 p.m. by Morgan Kelly, Office of Communications Physical activity reorganizes the brain so that its response to stress is reduced and anxiety is less likely to interfere with normal brain function, according to a research team based at Princeton University. The researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience that when mice allowed to exercise regularly experienced a stressor — exposure to cold water — their brains exhibited a spike in the activity of neurons that shut off excitement in the ventral hippocampus, a brain region shown to regulate anxiety. These findings potentially resolve a discrepancy in research related to the effect of exercise on the brain — namely that exercise reduces anxiety while also promoting the growth of new neurons in the ventral hippocampus. The impact of physical activity on the ventral hippocampus specifically has not been deeply explored, said senior author Elizabeth Gould, Princeton's Dorman T. Back To Top
Increase in cerebral blood flow of right prefrontal cortex in man during orgasm Abstract The functional anatomy of human emotional responses has remained poorly understood, mainly because invasive experiments in humans are unacceptable due to ethical reasons. The new functional imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography and single photon emission computed tomography have made it possible to study the neurophysiology of living humans non-invasively. We studied the regional cerebral blood flow with semi-quantitative 99mTC-HMPAO single photon emission computed tomography in eight healthy right-handed heterosexual males during orgasm. The results showed decrease of cerebral blood flow during orgasm in all other cortical areas except in right prefrontal cortex, where the cerebral blood flow increased significantly (P < 0.005). Keywords Single photon emission computed tomography; Man; Orgasm; Prefrontal cortex