Displaying 1 - 16 of 16
African American women experience stress-related outcomes due to race and gender (i.e., gendered race-related stress). Mindfulness meditation training (MMT), an intervention that facilitates increased self-regulation of stress, may reduce the effect of gendered race-related stress on African American women’s psychological and physical health. However, little is known about the perceived benefits and barriers African American women associate with MMT. The current study used the Health Belief Model to investigate how African American women’s (a) severity of symptoms, (b) expected benefits of MMT, and (c) perceived barriers to MMT contributed to their interest in MMT. Data from 12 African American women were analyzed with qualitative thematic analysis. Women reported a need for MMT given their gendered race-related stress experiences. Perceived benefits of MMT included easy accessibility, fit with existing daily activities, and positive health outcomes. Perceived barriers to use of MMT were incongruence with African American culture, stigma, caretaking tensions, and extensive time commitment. Themes are discussed with respect to their implications for increasing MMT engagement among African American women.
With this new book from educational consultant Carla Tantillo Philibert, you'll gain practical strategies for teaching Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), mindfulness, movement, and team-building to help your students grow into contributing and compassionate citizens of the world. You'll find out how to lead students through meditation activities, simple yoga poses, breathing techniques, and other practical methods to help you proactively manage your classroom by meeting your students' SEL needs. This book also offers a set of Professional Development Facilitator's Guides to help you and your colleagues master the core competencies of SEL and implement them effectively across your school or district. The appendix provides additional strategies for teaching personal space, Safe Touch, and making mindful accommodations for students who have experienced trauma.
With this new book from educational consultant Carla Tantillo Philibert, you'll gain practical strategies for teaching Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), mindfulness, movement, and team-building to help your students grow into contributing and compassionate citizens of the world. You'll find out how to lead students through meditation activities, simple yoga poses, breathing techniques, and other practical methods to help you proactively manage your classroom by meeting your students' SEL needs. This book also offers a set of Professional Development Facilitator's Guides to help you and your colleagues master the core competencies of SEL and implement them effectively across your school or district. The appendix provides additional strategies for teaching personal space, Safe Touch, and making mindful accommodations for students who have experienced trauma.
At the end of a short meditation exercise where students were asked to bring attention to their breath and its movement through the body, the teacher asked the young people seated on yoga mats around the room how they were feeling. “Calm.” “Relaxed.” “Good.” “Energized.” “Awake.” “Inside myself.” The students, all Black and Hispanic male clients of an Alternative to Incarceration (ATI) program for 16-to-24-year-olds had just come to the end of a class taught by the Lineage Project, a New York City non-profit that offers mindfulness-based classes to youth in various settings such as detention centres, Alternative to Incarceration/Detention (ATI/ATD) programs, and suspension schools. For the past hour, the students had participated in a class that included a discussion around a mindfulness theme (i.e., acceptance), a sequence of yoga poses, or asanas, and some seated meditation. Lineage Project teachers have been teaching these skills to troubled youth in New York City since 1998. Their work, forged over years working with youth in often challenging settings, is grounded in an expanding body of literature that suggests that youth, especially vulnerable youth, can derive important benefit from learning mindfulness-based practices such as yoga and meditation.
This study used participant/observation and open-ended interviews to understand how male participants (age 18-24 years) benefited from yoga and mindfulness training within an Alternative to Incarceration (ATI) program. Findings suggest that the male participants (age 18-24 years) benefited from the intervention through reductions in stress and improvements in emotion regulation. Several participants noted the importance of the development of an embodied practice for assisting them in managing anger and impulse control. The young men’s narratives suggest that mindfulness-based interventions can contribute positively to rehabilitative outcomes within alternative to incarcerations settings, providing complementary benefit to existing ATI programs, especially for clients amenable to mindfulness training. With many jurisdictions expanding rehabilitation-focused interventions for young offenders, service providers should consider the potential positive contributions that mindfulness-based interventions can have for fostering desistance and reducing recidivism among justice system–involved populations.
BACKGROUND: Research suggests that stress-reduction programs tailored to the cancer setting help patients cope with the effects of treatment and improve their quality of life. Yoga, an ancient Eastern science, incorporates stress-reduction techniques that include regulated breathing, visual imagery, and meditation as well as various postures. The authors examined the effects of the Tibetan yoga (TY) practices of Tsa lung and Trul khor, which incorporate controlled breathing and visualization, mindfulness techniques, and low-impact postures in patients with lymphoma.METHODS: Thirty-nine patients with lymphoma who were undergoing treatment or who had concluded treatment within the past 12 months were assigned to a TY group or to a wait-list control group. Patients in the TY group participated in 7 weekly yoga sessions, and patients in the wait-list control group were free to participate in the TY program after the 3-month follow-up assessment.
RESULTS: Eighty nine percent of TY participants completed at least 2-3 three yoga sessions, and 58% completed at least 5 sessions. Patients in the TY group reported significantly lower sleep disturbance scores during follow-up compared with patients in the wait-list control group (5.8 vs. 8.1; P < 0.004). This included better subjective sleep quality (P < 0.02), faster sleep latency (P < 0.01), longer sleep duration (P < 0.03), and less use of sleep medications (P < 0.02). There were no significant differences between groups in terms of intrusion or avoidance, state anxiety, depression, or fatigue.
CONCLUSIONS: The participation rates suggested that a TY program is feasible for patients with cancer and that such a program significantly improves sleep-related outcomes. However, there were no significant differences between groups for the other outcomes.
<p>Results of a research study concludes that Tibetan yoga stress-reduction programs tailored to the cancer setting help patients cope with the effects of treatment and improve their quality of life. Techniques include regulated breathing, visual imagery, and meditation as well as various postures. The authors examined the effects of the Tibetan yoga practices of Tsalung (rtsa rlung) and Trülkhor ('khrul 'khor), which incorporate controlled breathing and visualization, mindfulness techniques, and low-impact postures in patients with lymphoma. They conclude that Tibetan yoga significantly improves sleep in lymphoma patients. However, there were no other significant effects for the outcomes the study measured. (Steven Weinberger 2004-04-23)</p>
Theory of mind (ToM) development is fostered by parent-child interactions characterized by accurate reflection on the child's mental states, or reflective function (RF), by the caregiver. Therefore, attachment-based RF is the foundation upon which children learn to reason about minds outside the attachment context (domain-general ToM). However, it is not known to what extent attachment-based RF of the self versus caregivers uniquely relates to domain-general ToM. Additionally, it is likely that for psychopathology associated with maladaptive parent-child dynamics (i.e., borderline pathology), domain-general ToM impairments are more strongly related to attachment-based RF disturbances. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to evaluate associations between domain-general ToM and attachment-based RF to determine whether RF of the self versus caregivers has unique relations to domain-general ToM. Second, we tested whether borderline pathology would moderate this relation. Among a sample of inpatient adolescents (N = 330 adolescents; Mage = 15.40, SD = 1.44), findings suggest that RF of the self uniquely relates to domain-general ToM and that this relation is strongest among adolescents with high levels of borderline pathology. Therefore, evidence supports theory regarding the association between attachment-based RF and domain-general ToM. Additionally, interpersonal disturbance observed in borderline pathology, even in adolescence, is related to attachment-based social-cognition.
Within the popular mindfulness movement, it is now a common phenomenon to pick up a mindfulness book or click a meditation app on our phones when we are experiencing anxiety or having abad day. It has become habitual for some of us to turn to Jon Kabat-Zinn, Sharon Salzberg, or Jack
Kornfield and their words of wisdom in order to feel more peaceful, more in control of our emotions,
more centered. Sometimes we turn to sitting practice, placing attention on the breathing and shedding thoughts and emotions. Perhaps we are put off by so-called spiritual people who aren’t always
peaceful or blissful. When bad things happen, perhaps we are quick to say it was “supposed to be”
that way, dismissing the pain and hurt we might otherwise feel. These might be a few of the symptoms of what is called “spiritual bypassing.”
Background: Through our survey of Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC) members and its analysis, we sought to gain a broader, more inclusive perspective of physicians' understanding of patients' spiritual care needs and improve our approach to providing spiritual care to patients.Methods: We developed a 16-question survey to assess spiritual care practices. We sent 635 MASCC members four e-mails, each inviting them to complete the survey via an online survey service. Demographic information was collected. The results were tabulated, and summary statistics were used to describe the results.Results: Two hundred seventy-one MASCC members (42.7 %) from 41 countries completed the survey. Of the respondents, 50.5 % were age ≤50 years, 161 (59.4 %) were women and 123 (45.4 %) had ≥20 years of cancer care experience. The two most common definitions of spiritual care the respondents specified were "offering emotional support as part of addressing psychosocial needs" (49.8 %) and "alleviating spiritual/existential pain/suffering" (42.4 %). Whether respondents considered themselves to be "spiritual" correlated with how they rated the importance of spiritual care (p ≤ 0.001). One hundred six respondents (39.1 %) reported that they believe it is their role to explore the spiritual concerns of their cancer patients, and 33 respondents (12.2 %) reported that they do not feel it is their role. Ninety-one respondents (33.6 %) reported that they seldom provide adequate spiritual care, and 71 respondents (26.2 %) reported that they did not feel they could adequately provide spiritual care.Conclusions: The majority of MASCC members who completed the survey reported that spiritual care plays an important role in the total care of cancer patients, but few respondents from this supportive care-focused organization actually provide spiritual care. In order to be able to provide a rationale for developing spiritual care guidelines, we need to understand how to emphasize the importance of spiritual care and, at minimum, train MASCC members to triage patients for spiritual crises.
Background: Through our survey of Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC) members and its analysis, we sought to gain a broader, more inclusive perspective of physicians' understanding of patients' spiritual care needs and improve our approach to providing spiritual care to patients.Methods: We developed a 16-question survey to assess spiritual care practices. We sent 635 MASCC members four e-mails, each inviting them to complete the survey via an online survey service. Demographic information was collected. The results were tabulated, and summary statistics were used to describe the results.Results: Two hundred seventy-one MASCC members (42.7 %) from 41 countries completed the survey. Of the respondents, 50.5 % were age ≤50 years, 161 (59.4 %) were women and 123 (45.4 %) had ≥20 years of cancer care experience. The two most common definitions of spiritual care the respondents specified were "offering emotional support as part of addressing psychosocial needs" (49.8 %) and "alleviating spiritual/existential pain/suffering" (42.4 %). Whether respondents considered themselves to be "spiritual" correlated with how they rated the importance of spiritual care (p ≤ 0.001). One hundred six respondents (39.1 %) reported that they believe it is their role to explore the spiritual concerns of their cancer patients, and 33 respondents (12.2 %) reported that they do not feel it is their role. Ninety-one respondents (33.6 %) reported that they seldom provide adequate spiritual care, and 71 respondents (26.2 %) reported that they did not feel they could adequately provide spiritual care.Conclusions: The majority of MASCC members who completed the survey reported that spiritual care plays an important role in the total care of cancer patients, but few respondents from this supportive care-focused organization actually provide spiritual care. In order to be able to provide a rationale for developing spiritual care guidelines, we need to understand how to emphasize the importance of spiritual care and, at minimum, train MASCC members to triage patients for spiritual crises.
BACKGROUND: Current therapies for heart failure (HF) are followed by strategies to improve quality of life and exercise tolerance, besides reducing morbidity and mortality. Some HF patients present changes in the musculoskeletal system and inspiratory muscle weakness, which may be restored by inspiratory muscle training, thus increasing respiratory muscle strength and endurance, maximal oxygen uptake (VO2), functional capacity, respiratory responses to exercise, and quality of life. Yoga therapies have been shown to improve quality of life, inflammatory markers, and peak VO2 mostly in HF patients with a reduced ejection fraction. However, the effect of different yoga breathing techniques in patients showing HF with a preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) remain to be assessed.METHODS/DESIGN: A PROBE (prospective randomized open blinded end-point) parallel-group trial will be conducted at two specialized HF clinics. Adult patients previously diagnosed with HFpEF will be included. After signing informed consent and performing a pre-test intervention, patients will be randomized into three groups and provided with either (1) active yoga breathing techniques; (2) passive yoga breathing techniques (pranayama); or and (3) control (standard pharmacological treatment). Follow-up will last 8 weeks (16 sessions). The post-intervention tests will be performed at the end of the intervention period for analysis of outcomes. Interventions will occur continuously according to patients' enrollment. The main outcome is respiratory muscular resistance. A total of 33 enrolled patients are expected. The present protocol followed the SPIRIT guidelines and fulfilled the SPIRIT checklist.
DISCUSSION: This trial is probably the first to assess the effects of a non-pharmacological intervention, namely yoga and specific breathing techniques, to improve cardiorespiratory function, autonomic system, and quality of life in patients with HFpEF.
TRIAL REGISTRATION: REBEC Identifier: RBR-64mbnx (August 19, 2012). Clinical Trials Register: NCT03028168 . Registered on 16 January 2017).
The Africa Yoga Project (AYP) provides voluntary yoga classes for schoolchildren across Kenya. To study student perceived effects, a mixed-methods concept mapping methodology was utilized combining multidimensional scaling (MDS) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). Children (ages 8-14) who practice yoga with AYP completed the two-phase process of data collection. In Phase 1, 155 children participated in brainstorming sessions asking in what ways they had changed since practicing yoga. Their ideas were aggregated into a list of 85 statements reflecting perceived effects of yoga. In Phase 2, 109 children from the same locations sorted and rated brainstormed effects (Phase 2; N = 109). Analysis yielded a two-dimensional map representing how generated statements were associated in terms of how students understood their relatedness to each other (sorting) and the magnitude of importance (rating). The AYP student concept map met validity standards with an MDS stress value of .32, indicating a model fit within accepted levels. Overall, students' perceptions are reflected in the following concepts (in order of importance rating): finding steadiness and ease, increased wellness, improved physical and emotional health, gratitude for yoga community and practice, neurological and interpersonal integration, and experience of efficacy and possibility. The specific outcomes are discussed along with implications for practice and research.