Mindfulness training involves the cultivation of nonjudgemental attention to unwanted thoughts, feelings and bodily experiences via meditation and may help ameliorate both psychological and physical symptoms of chronic disease. Clinical trials have shown that mindfulness training improves the psychological well-being of people with rheumatoid arthritis(RA). However, there is limited evidence for its efficacy on disease activity outcomes in RA. Given evidence linking increased mindfulness to improved immune markers, mindfulness training may reduce disease activity in patients with RA by enhancing their immune function. The aim of this randomised controlled trial was to examine the effects of a standardised mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) intervention on RA disease activity.
PurposeTo examine the effects of a 12-week tai chi program on quality of life and exercise capacity in patients with heart failure.
Methods
Thirty patients with chronic stable heart failure and left ventricular ejection fraction ≤40% (mean [± SD] age, 64 ± 13 years; mean baseline ejection fraction, 23% ± 7%; median New York Heart Association class, 2 [range, 1 to 4]) were randomly assigned to receive usual care (n = 15), which included pharmacologic therapy and dietary and exercise counseling, or 12 weeks of tai chi training (n = 15) in addition to usual care. Tai chi training consisted of a 1-hour class held twice weekly. Primary outcomes included quality of life and exercise capacity. Secondary outcomes included serum B-type natriuretic peptide and plasma catecholamine levels. For 3 control patients with missing data items at 12 weeks, previous values were carried forward.
Results
At 12 weeks, patients in the tai chi group showed improved quality-of-life scores (mean between-group difference in change, –25 points, P = 0.001), increased distance walked in 6 minutes (135 meters, P = 0.001), and decreased serum B-type natriuretic peptide levels (–138 pg/mL, P = 0.03) compared with patients in the control group. A trend towards improvement was seen in peak oxygen uptake. No differences were detected in catecholamine levels.
Conclusion
Tai chi may be a beneficial adjunctive treatment that enhances quality of life and functional capacity in patients with chronic heart failure who are already receiving standard medical therapy.
Op-Ed article by Timothy P Shriver and Robert P Weissberg says promoting students' social and emotional skills--process by which children learn to recognize and manage emotions--plays critical role in improving their academic performance; describes some social and emotional learning programs; says recent studies vindicate what has long been common sense among many teachers and parents: that children who are given clear behavioral standards and social skills, allowing them to feel safe, valued, confident and challenged, will exhibit better school behavior and also learn more (M)
ObjectiveTo assess the effects of a 12-week Tai Chi exercise program on sleep using the sleep spectrogram, a method based on a single channel electrocardiogram (ECG)-derived estimation of cardiopulmonary coupling, previously shown to identify stable and unstable sleep states.
Methods
We retrospectively analyzed 24-h continuous ECG data obtained in a clinical trial of Tai Chi exercise in patients with heart failure. Eighteen patients with chronic stable heart failure, left ventricular ejection fraction ⩽40% (mean [±standard deviation] age, 59±14 years, mean baseline ejection fraction 24%±8%, mean) were randomly assigned to receive usual care (N=10), which included pharmacological therapy and dietary and exercise counseling, or 12 weeks of Tai Chi training (N=8) in addition to usual care. Using the ECG-based sleep spectrogram, we compared intervention and control groups by evaluating baseline and 12-week high (stable) and low (unstable) frequency coupling (HFC & LFC, respectively) as a percentage of estimated total sleep time (ETST).
Results
At 12 weeks, those who participated in Tai Chi showed a significant increase in HFC (+0.05±0.10 vs. −0.06±0.09 % ETST, p=0.04) and significant reduction in LFC (−0.09±0.09 vs. +0.13±0.13 % ETST, p<0.01), compared to patients in the control group. Correlations were seen between improved sleep stability and better disease-specific quality of life.
Conclusions
Tai Chi exercise may enhance sleep stability in patients with chronic heart failure. This sleep effect may have a beneficial impact on blood pressure, arrhythmogenesis and quality of life.
Reviews a broad range of evidence indicating that school-based prevention and youth development interventions are most beneficial when they simultaneously enhance students' personal and social assets and improve the quality of the environments in which students are educated. Asserts that school-based prevention programming--based on coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning--should be fundamental to preK-12 education. (Contains references.) (SM)
<p>Exercises from the world's religions to cultivate kindness, love, joy, peace, vision, wisdom, and generosity.</p>
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Social and emotional learning (SEL) is a fundamental part of education. Incorporating high-quality SEL programming into day-to-day classroom and school practices has emerged as a main goal for many practitioners over the past decade. The present article overviews the current state of SEL research and practice, with a particular focus on the United States. The need for a model of SEL that goes beyond the classroom is illustrated, and a systemic approach to implementing SEL school-wide is introduced. It is argued that school-wide SEL maximises the benefits of SEL programming by becoming the organising framework for fostering students' potential as scholars, community members, and citizens. Further, a Theory of Action (ToA) developed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) is presented that serves as a blueprint for implementing systemic SEL in schools. Potential challenges and barriers involved in moving toward school-wide SEL implementation are considered and discussed.
After describing social-emotional learning, provides a framework for implementing an effective program that includes, for example, building connections between students and their schools, involving families and communities as partners. Describes three exemplary social and emotional learning programs for grades K-6: Caring School Community, Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), and Skills, Opportunities and Recognition (SOAR). (PKP)
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The science of meditation has grown tremendously in the last two decades. Most studies have focused on evaluating the clinical effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions, neural and other physiological correlates of meditation, and individual cognitive and emotional aspects of meditation. Far less research has been conducted on more challenging domains to measure, such as group and relational, transpersonal and mystical, and difficult aspects of meditation; anomalous or extraordinary phenomena related to meditation; and post-conventional stages of development associated with meditation. However, these components of meditation may be crucial to people’s psychological and spiritual development, could represent important mediators and/or mechanisms by which meditation confers benefits, and could themselves be important outcomes of meditation practices. In addition, since large numbers of novices are being introduced to meditation, it is helpful to investigate experiences they may encounter that are not well understood. Over the last four years, a task force of meditation researchers and teachers met regularly to develop recommendations for expanding the current meditation research field to include these important yet often neglected topics. These meetings led to a cross-sectional online survey to investigate the prevalence of a wide range of experiences in 1120 meditators. Results show that the majority of respondents report having had many of these anomalous and extraordinary experiences. While some of the topics are potentially controversial, they can be subjected to rigorous scientific investigation. These arenas represent largely uncharted scientific terrain and provide excellent opportunities for both new and experienced researchers. We provide suggestions for future directions, with accompanying online materials to encourage such research.
The burgeoning multidisciplinary field of social and emotional learning now has a comprehensive and definitive handbook covering all aspects of research, practice, and policy. The prominent editors and contributors describe state-of-the-art intervention and prevention programs designed to build students' skills for managing emotions, showing concern for others, making responsible decisions, and forming positive relationships.--From back cover.
Health Education Ideas and Activities provides fresh, cost-effective, and multifaceted ways to teach health education at the middle and high school levels. Grounded in the real world and tested in classrooms, each lesson idea and teaching tool is ready to use with minimal preparation time.Health Education Ideas and Activities includes 24 units and 139 lesson ideas spanning a variety of health and wellness topics such as resiliency, self-awareness, conflict resolution, self-esteem, yoga, and alternative healing.
You can use these materials to tailor your existing units and lessons to the changing needs of your students. You also can use the materials to reinforce or expand your existing physical education curriculum to drive home the importance of health. You'll be able to develop the health literacy of students in any class setting while meeting revised 2006 national standards for health education.
This resource is classroom developed and tested by a physical and health educator with more than 30 years of experience teaching at the middle and high school levels. Roger Puza understands that kids growing up in today's world face more health challenges than ever. The lesson ideas and activities in this book reach into their world and take hold, laying the groundwork for tomorrow's healthy, active adults.
Health Education Ideas and Activities contains these time-saving features:
-Specific, ready-to-use assessments for easily building accountability into your teaching
-Over 200 handouts and 20 tests
-A handy CD-ROM containing all the reproducibles for quick access
-A lesson idea finder for quickly locating the content you need
Health Education Ideas and Activities provides new and experienced educators with organized information on all dimensions of health--intellectual, physical, spiritual, emotional, and social. The book's comprehensive and multifaceted approach guarantees this will be one resource you'll go to time and again.
This blog, part of the Center for Koru Mindfulness, a form of mindfulness developed at Duke University, targets “twenty-somethings” but many of its postings are geared specifically for college students, with tips on how to spend spring break, how to stop procrastinating school work, and how to start the semester off right. Many contemplative instructors draw from this method in their classrooms.
This article presents findings from a meta-analysis of 213 school-based, universal social and emotional learning (SEL) programs involving 270,034 kindergarten through high school students. Compared to controls, SEL participants demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance that reflected an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement. School teaching staff successfully conducted SEL programs. The use of 4 recommended practices for developing skills and the presence of implementation problems moderated program outcomes. The findings add to the growing empirical evidence regarding the positive impact of SEL programs. Policy makers, educators, and the public can contribute to healthy development of children by supporting the incorporation of evidence-based SEL programming into standard educational practice.
This article presents findings from a meta-analysis of 213 school-based, universal social and emotional learning (SEL) programs involving 270,034 kindergarten through high school students. Compared to controls, SEL participants demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance that reflected an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement. School teaching staff successfully conducted SEL programs. The use of 4 recommended practices for developing skills and the presence of implementation problems moderated program outcomes. The findings add to the growing empirical evidence regarding the positive impact of SEL programs. Policy makers, educators, and the public can contribute to healthy development of children by supporting the incorporation of evidence-based SEL programming into standard educational practice.
Many attempts at bringing successful educational programs and products "to scale" as part of school reform, particularly in urban districts, have been disappointing. Based on the experiences of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and reviews of literature addressing implementation failures, observations about failures to "scale up" are presented. These include persistent structural features in educational settings that are too often unrecognized, the perpetuation of a narrow and decontextualized "programs and packages" perspective, poor management of time and other resources, and inadequate attention to characteristics of the adults who must carry out planned reforms. Several assumptions essential for success are identified, including the need to incorporate social and emotional learning as an integral part of academics and the ways in which diversity provides an ever-changing context for implementation. Concluding thoughts center around three points: the need to prepare professionals with the array of skills needed to lead efforts at scaling up school reform, the importance of an action-research perspective, and the need to better document the stories of educational innovation and scaling up efforts so that contextual details can enrich an understanding of what is required for success. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)
Few complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) institutions require their students to undergo substantive training in research literacy and conduct, and well-developed programs to train CAM institution faculty in research are virtually non-existent. As part of a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) initiative to increase research capacity at CAM institutions, the New England School of Acupuncture (NESA), in collaboration with the Harvard Medical School (HMS) Osher Institute, was awarded a Developmental Center for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (DCRC) grant. This article discusses a number of initiatives that we designed and implemented to train NESA students, faculty members, and alumni in the foundations of clinical research and to stimulate interest in both participating in research and receiving additional research training. Specific initiatives included a 30-hour faculty "Foundations of Research" course; a year-long course entitled, "How to Write a Publishable Case Report"; institution of a monthly research seminar series; revision of an already required student research course; and the addition of 2 new student-mentored independent research electives. We discuss successes and challenges encountered in developing and administering these initiatives and the overall impact they have had on research culture and productivity at NESA.
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Little is known about placebo effects with scientific precision. Poor methodology has confounded our understanding of the magnitude and even the existence of the placebo effect. Investigating placebo effects presents special research challenges including: the design of appropriate controls for studying placebo effects including separating such effects from natural history and regression to the mean, the need for large sample sizes to capture expected small effects, and the need to understand such potential effects from a patient's perspective. This article summarizes the methodology of an ongoing NIH-funded randomized controlled trial aimed at investigating whether the placebo effect in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) exists and whether the magnitude of such an effect can be manipulated to vary in a manner analogous to “dose dependence.” The trial also uses an innovative combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.
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Study Objective
To assess feasibility, and collect preliminary data for a subsequent randomized, sham-controlled trial to evaluate Japanese-style acupuncture for reducing chronic pelvic pain and improving health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in adolescents with endometriosis.
Design
Randomized, sham-controlled trial.
Settings
Tertiary-referral hospital.
Participants
Eighteen young women (13–22y) with laparoscopically-diagnosed endometriosis-related chronic pelvic pain.
Interventions
A Japanese style of acupuncture and a sham acupuncture control. Sixteen treatments were administered over 8 weeks.
Main Outcome Measures
Protocol feasibility, recruitment numbers, pain not associated with menses or intercourse, and multiple HRQOL instruments including Endometriosis Health Profile, Pediatric Quality of Life, Perceived Stress, and Activity Limitation.
Results
Fourteen participants (out of 18 randomized) completed the study per protocol. Participants in the active acupuncture group (n = 9) experienced an average 4.8 (SD = 2.4) point reduction on a 11 point scale (62%) in pain after 4 weeks, which differed significantly from the control group's (n = 5) average reduction of 1.4 (SD = 2.1) points (P = 0.004). Reduction in pain in the active group persisted through a 6-month assessment; however, after 4 weeks, differences between the active and control group decreased and were not statistically significant. All HRQOL measures indicated greater improvements in the active acupuncture group compared to the control; however, the majority of these trends were not statistically significant. No serious adverse events were reported.
Conclusion
Preliminary estimates indicate that Japanese-style acupuncture may be an effective, safe, and well-tolerated adjunct therapy for endometriosis-related pelvic pain in adolescents. A more definitive trial evaluating Japanese-style acupuncture in this population is both feasible and warranted.
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Zotero Collections:
- Practices Specific to Tibetan Buddhism,
- Literature Specific to Tibetan Buddhism,
- Contemplation by Tradition,
- Kalachakra,
- Means of Accomplishment (sadana, druptap),
- Literature of Buddhist Contemplation,
- Practices of Buddhist Contemplation,
- Generation phase (utpattikrama, kyerim),
- Deity yoga (devata-yoga, lhé nenjor),
- Buddhist Contemplation
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