Very inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant recent study on the impact of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion (noticed thanks to heads up by Sharp­Brains reader John):

Build­ing Fit Minds Under Stress (Sci­ence Daily)

• “high-stress U.S. mil­i­tary group prepar­ing for deploy­ment to Iraq has demon­strated a pos­i­tive link between mind­ful­ness train­ing, or MT, and improve­ments in mood and work­ing memory”
• The study also sug­gests that suf­fi­cient mind­ful­ness train­ing (MT) prac­tice may pro­tect against func­tional impair­ments asso­ci­ated with high-stress chal­lenges that require a tremen­dous amount of cog­ni­tive con­trol, self-awareness, sit­u­a­tional aware­ness and emo­tional regulation

Please note that this wasn’t a prop­erly ran­dom­ized study, so in fact much/ most of the effect may be due to the placebo effect, but still the find­ings seem to be con­sis­tent with a grow­ing body of evi­dence on the brain-based effects of struc­tured men­tal train­ing in the form of med­i­ta­tion (usu­ally mind­ful­ness meditation).

Full study Here (opens PDF).

Related arti­cles:

• Med­i­ta­tion on the Brain — a Con­ver­sa­tion with Andrew New­berg: “What is hap­pen­ing is that spe­cific prac­tices that have tra­di­tion­ally been asso­ci­ated with reli­gious and spir­i­tual con­texts may also be very use­ful from a main­stream, sec­u­lar, health point of view, beyond those contexts.”
• Mind­ful Kids, Peace­ful Schools: With eyes closed and deep breaths, stu­dents are learn­ing a new method to reduce anx­i­ety, con­flict, and atten­tion dis­or­ders. But don’t call it meditation.
• Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with Atten­tion Deficits: David Rabiner com­ments on a recent pub­lished study, say­ing that “although this is clearly a pre­lim­i­nary study, the results are both inter­est­ing and encouraging”

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