Вокруг встреч ЕСДЛ с учеными.

"What's really important," says Richard Davidson, neuroscience and meditation researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison," is that a person find a particular style [of meditation] they're comfortable with so they continue to practice." Some styles train practitioners to focus on an object or a mantra; others cultivate positive emotions; others still aim to train practitioners not to judge thoughts that arise but to just accept them and not get attached. More meditation, it seems, offers stronger effects; Davidson's research on monks who had practiced for tens of thousands of hours in their lifetimes managed to change their brains' functioning and structure. Benefits appear to be attainable with less of a time commitment, he adds—perhaps somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes daily.

Not all doctors have bought into the merits of meditation as a treatment, nor should they just yet. The hard research medical practitioners swear by is still in the early stages. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is starting to fund needed research with larger sample sizes of participants and solid study design, says Jeffrey Greeson, meditation researcher and assistant clinical professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. He predicts that results will begin to emerge in the next five years.

At the heart of the discussion, participants asked, “In addition to developing cognitive skills, how can we restructure our educational system to foster social, emotional, and ethical qualities in young people?”

In the closing session, Lee Shulman, President Emeritus of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, acknowledged the extraordinary complexity of teaching as a profession where every day a teacher might have to address the different cognitive and emotional needs of thirty individual children simultaneously. Teachers themselves have an urgent need for training in contemplative practices in order to improve their own emotional and attention skills, as well as to acquire genuine experience of such practices if they are to embody and teach them effectively.

The recent rapid development of neuroscientic interest in meditation has also provided an avenue to bring together my academic and contemplative practice pursuits. Over the past few years, my laboratory has conducted psychophysiological studies of long-term Buddhist meditators and those trained over brief periods of time in mindfulness meditation. For the first time this year, I have also been teaching a new course, the development of which was supported by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, entitled “The Psychology of Empathy and Compassion: Contemplative and Scientific Perspectives.” Undergraduate honors students in the course not only read original scientific research reports and the writings of Buddhist and other contemplative practitioners and scholars, but they also gain introductory experience in contemplative practices. The orientation, in design and conduct of this course, is a non-dual approach and perspective, endeavoring to be that about which we discuss. Thus far, teaching the course has been very satisfying, and the students are actively engaged.

Here are 3 videos of young scientists (одна из них - Sona Dimidjian) who have been involved in re-defining their program of research to integrate the study of contemplative practice in terms of clinical science, developmental science and neuroscience.

the Clinical Research, Education, Services, and Treatment (CREST) program at the University of Colorado, Boulder focuses on developing, investigating, and providing evidence based treatments to reduce problems that cause suffering in people’s lives and to promote sustained well-being.

We focus on the problem of depression generally and specifically on the mental health needs of women, with an emphasis on helping women and their loved ones navigate important transitions throughout the life cycle, including pregnancy and the postpartum.
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This book examines how Western behavioral science--which has generally focused on negative aspects of human nature--holds up to cross-cultural scrutiny, in particular the Tibetan Buddhist celebration of the human potential for altruism, empathy, and compassion. Resulting from a meeting between the Dalai Lama, leading Western scholars, and a group of Tibetan monks, this volume includes excerpts from these extraordinary dialogues as well as engaging essays exploring points of difference and overlap between the two perspectives.

The Second Morning Session was a panel discussion on Teacher Programs including Robert Roeser, Ph.D., Patricia Jennings, Ph.D. and Linda Lantieri, M.A.

Jennings is piloting CARE (Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education) under a development grant from the U.S. Department of Education. “We are looking at the mediating factors that are really important in social and emotional competence in teachers,” Jennings said. “We know these contribute to a healthy classroom climate and that, in turn, is related to improved outcomes in kids.

Jennings described interpersonal mindfulness in the classroom as including listening with full attention, present centered awareness, openness, non-judgement and acceptance, self-reflection, oрen –heartedness and compassion.

Teaching is one of the most rewarding professions; it can also be one of the most difficult. Growing  demands — from the academic workload to working with students impacted by poverty, violence and divorce — can add up to a highly stressful environment for teachers. Studies show that helping teachers cope with such stress effectively does more than reduce burnout: it allows them to be role models for healthy social and emotional behavior and improves educational outcomes for students.

In the 2010-2011 school year, the Garrison Institute's Initiative on Contemplation and Education will offer this innovative training for teachers introducing an evidence-based set of practical skills. These skills will help you reduce stress, improve your mental concentration and emotional awareness and facilitate responsiveness. You will be able to apply these in the classroom so you can consistently be the caring, compassionate teacher you are.

These skills include relaxation, movement, deep listening, emotion-awareness training inspired by the work of Paul Ekman, Ph.D., and much more. The training has been developed by a team of researchers, educators, psychologists and experts in contemplative practice and will be conducted by former teacher and teacher educator Patricia Jennings, M.Ed., Ph.D., director of the Initiative on Contemplation and Education and a Research Associate with the Prevention Research Center at Penn State University.

Amishi’s research has often been a platform for curiosity and even misunderstanding among the mindfulness community, begging the question of a disconnect between mindfulness practice and war.

“I accept that I am in a cultural context where there is an army and there is a war,” Amishi said. “That is my starting point. My interest is in determining how we might be able to help soldiers be more discerning, act more ethically, reduce their reactivity, and empower them so that they don’t engage in actions they (and all of us) will regret. I am fortunate that the US Military, itself, sees this as a central goal of their current mission. They refer to this as de-escalating force and minimizing civilian casualties. A main long-term question of my work is to determine if and how mindfulness-training might help achieve the goal of promoting soldiers for peace—even in war.”

Amishi was also a presenter at last year's meeting in India with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Mind & Life XVIII: Attention, Memory and Mind. She discussed with him her work on aging and working memory, and the potential protective effects of mindfulness training for normal healthy aging.

The results from this pilot study suggest that MMFT may protect against the cognitive degradation that often accompanies pre-deployment training. Marines who practiced more MMFT exercises outside of class maintained or improved their baseline working memory capacity over time. In addition, MMFT appeared to limit the effects of stress and to moderate emotional experience, despite the real increase of stressors during the pre-deployment period.

Paradoxically, however, as the previous section demonstrates, stress inoculation training depletes warriors’ executive control capacity—that is, the mental capacity that allows us to focus on demanding cognitive tasks and/or emotionally challenging situations. As we explain below, mind fitness training may counteract this cognitive degradation that results from stress inoculation training.

The most common and well-validated training program is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR); more than 250 U.S. hospitals offer MBSR programs, and more than 50 research articles document its utility in many domains.12
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Finally, many studies have shown that mindfulness training improves different aspects of attention, which is the ability to remain focused on task-relevant information while filtering out distracting or irrelevant information.18

MMFT provides skills training through mind fitness exercises. These exercises are practiced 30 minutes a day. Some exercises build concentration by focusing on one object of attention, such as a particular body sensation. Others build situational awareness and nonreactivity through wider attention on internal and external stimuli. And some exercises use focused attention to reregulate physiological and psychological symptoms that develop from traumatic or stressful experiences. The exercises are incorporated into physical training and other mission essential tasks and completed during the duty day, in groups and/or individually. Thus, an important component of the course is engaging in MMFT training exercises each day