Research suggests Mindfulness increases empathy and reduces anger and fear. Wouldn’t reframing soldiers or CEOs worldview to be more compassionate galvanize more positive change than trying to convince Sundar Pichai or soldiers that they are bad people?
That's hippie talk. :) As another commenter pointed out, mindfullness and meditation was long used for martial arts training.
There is nothing in the core practice itself that leads to pacifism (or belligerence). It might even make easier to ignore that discomfort, like any other, if you have mental tools.
research does not indicate that [0]. mindfulness meditation isn't real, people only believe it because it comes from the Mysterious East and it's Ancient.
It's like a religious person asking you to prove God isn't real. The science favoring meditation in general is shoddy (such as [0]), when a metaanalysis shows no evidence of a key claimed benefit to something, you'd want to be able to demonstrate a flaw in the metaanalysis.
It's very much like acupuncture. Fake, but because it's steeped in tradition, people will fall for it. Many Westerners have really uninformed views about East Asian / Asian culture, which is why I believe that's the reason meditation has the sway with people who would never convert to something like Islam.
I comment about this all the time. Not once have I ever gotten a single good reply challenging my claims and providing any good evidence that mindfulness meditation is "real".
bonus: "Specifically, the moderation results showed that a significant increase in compassion only occurred if the intervention teacher was a co-author in the published study"
Your linked article is about transcendental meditation - not mindfulness mediation. Mindfulness meditation research is well validated now – I can provide many meta analyses. You may also like to see the following recent articles:
On [0], this "Meta-Analysis" was only for pro-social behavior and the longest study they looked at had people meditate for a total of only three months. You are right science does not have rigorous research to support some of claimed benefits of mindfulness meditation, but calling it fake and citing a sourc that starts its article by declaring meditation pseudoscience does not exactly seem rigorous either. I think the answer is somewhere in the middle: there are definitely benefits to mindfulness meditation, but we need more research.
The following well-conducted studies compared mindfulness to various other 'treatments':
Alsaraireh, et al. (2017). Mindfulness Meditation Versus Physical Exercise in the Management of Depression Among Nursing Students. Journal of Nursing Education, 56(10), 599-604.
Cherkin, et al. (2016). Effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction vs cognitive behavioral therapy or usual care on back pain and functional limitations in adults with chronic low back pain: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA, 315(12), 1240-1249.
Costa, A., 2016. Turning towards or turning away: a comparison of mindfulness meditation and guided imagery relaxation in patients with acute depression. Behav. Cogn. Psychother. 44, 410–419.
Fissler, M., et al., 2016. An investigation of the effects of brief mindfulness training on self-reported interoceptive awareness, the ability to decenter, and their role in the reduction of depressive symptoms. Mindfulness 7, 1170–1181.
Kuyken, W., et al. (2016). Efficacy of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in prevention of depressive relapse: an individual patient data meta-analysis from randomized trials. JAMA psychiatry, 73(6), 565-574.
"Among adults with chronic low back pain, treatment with MBSR or CBT, compared with usual care, resulted in greater improvement in back pain and functional limitations at 26 weeks, with no significant differences in outcomes between MBSR and CBT."
I don't consider this evidence in favor of mindfulness. The claim I make is that mindfulness is merely meditation. The benefits ascribed to it are, I claim, that of relaxation.
One other study compares physical exercise to mindfulness, but this isn't a comparison with non-mindfulness relaxation. Also not great evidence. Same with another. There's also one my IP can't access.
Also, I am aware that transcendental meditation isn't the same.
What would convince me mindfulness meditation may indeed have some unique positive property: Study or even better metaanalysis with good quality and reasonable sample size demonstrating that mindfulness meditation performs significantly better than other forms of relaxation. Costa's comes closest to this but the sample size is not very large. I do suspect there may be a placebo effect at play.
I would have agreed with your comment 10-15 years ago – but now, the evidence is overwhelming. I don’t have time today, but I will reply your comment in a day or so (will also cite several meta-analyses). Meanwhile, you can take a look at the many links I provided to your earlier (above) comment – they cite many research studies as well.
Regarding your comment about mindfulness and CBT – did you know that a large component of CBT is mindfulness? That is the reason why they do not find a big difference in some of the studies.
Also, do you know what mindfulness is? It goes way beyond simple relaxation – it is also about getting to know your mind and developing self-knowledge, etc. If you had a look at the links I posted in a different comment here, you might get a better idea about what mindfulness is, etc., and you will also see that the brain also changes (in positive ways) with mindfulness practices.
Anyway, below are some meta-analyses:
Blanck, P., et al. (2018). Effects of mindfulness exercises as stand-alone intervention on symptoms of anxiety and depression: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Behaviour research and therapy, 102, 25-35.
Scott-Sheldon, L. A., et al. (2019). Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Adults with Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
Wang, Y. Y., et al. (2018). Mindfulness-based interventions for insomnia: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Behavioral sleep medicine, 1-9.
Zou, L., et al. (2018). A systematic review with meta-analysis of mindful exercises on rehabilitative outcomes among poststroke patients. Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation, 99(11), 2355-2364.
Goldberg, S. B., et al. (2018). Mindfulness-based interventions for psychiatric disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical psychology review, 59, 52-60.
Carsley, D., Khoury, B., & Heath, N. L. (2018). Effectiveness of mindfulness interventions for mental health in schools: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Mindfulness, 9(3), 693-707.
Carrière, K., et al. (2018). Mindfulness‐based interventions for weight loss: a systematic review and meta‐analysis. Obesity Reviews, 19(2), 164-177.
Dunning, D. L., et al. (2019). Research Review: The effects of mindfulness‐based interventions on cognition and mental health in children and adolescents–a meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 60(3), 244-258.
Borquist-Conlon, D. S., et al. (2019). Mindfulness-based interventions for youth with anxiety: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Research on Social Work Practice, 29(2), 195-205.
Van Driel, C. M., et al. (2019). Mindfulness, cognitive behavioural and behaviour‐based therapy for natural and treatment‐induced menopausal symptoms: a systematic review and meta‐analysis. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 126(3), 330-339.
Simpson, R., et al. (2019). Mindfulness-based interventions for mental well-being among people with multiple sclerosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 90(9), 1051-1058.
DiRenzo, D., et al. (2018). Systematic review and meta-analysis: mindfulness-based interventions for rheumatoid arthritis. Current rheumatology reports, 20(12), 75.
Rusch, H. L., et al. (2018). The effect of mindfulness meditation on sleep quality: a systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Li, J., et al. (2018). Mindful exercise versus non-mindful exercise for schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Complementary therapies in clinical practice, 32, 17-24.
Khoo, E. L., et al. (2019). Comparative evaluation of group-based mindfulness-based stress reduction and cognitive behavioural therapy for the treatment and management of chronic pain: A systematic review and network meta-analysis. Evidence-based mental health, 22(1), 26-35.
I wish I could tell you that I was an expert, but the truth is that we worked on a slow as 1990's software genetic algorithm before we found success with the MIP. :-) If you shoot me an email jwenig@coursedog.com I can connect you with our algorithms engineers who have the background to discuss
Is your student information system handling that for you? I know some powercampus schools handle it that way. I can ping some folks and follow up if I get any recommendations
I’d appreciate it! Catalog management isn’t a feature of any k12 targeted software that I’ve been able to find on my own.
Some good looking solutions for higherEd (eg courseleaf) aren’t available at the high school level, probably because there’s a big need but very tricky to get meaningful funding for it
Appreciate your interest, Lee. Coursicle is a pretty cool product: lots of users and engagement and really nailed the B2C2B play.
I'm inclined to agree that the best Higher Ed products are not actually all that great. Some of the VC's that I've spoken with joke that a B+ product in Higher Ed is a unicorn.
As for the CIO's - we're able to standardize a lot of that using something called the HECVAT which is basically a tell all for security reviews. If you're interested in learning more, looks like you have a super interesting github and would love to connect, just shoot me your email
Many of our schools like BYU or UMontana have campus-wide deployments and do all of their scheduling with us, while some other campuses have started with a subset (Columbia Law School) during the first year with us. We don't work with individual departments for the most part just because they often don't have serious budgets to work with.
To follow up more specifically - most of our schools right now are only using one or two of our products (scheduling vs. catalog publishing vs. degree program handling) but more than 90% of those schools are using that product across campus.
We're seeing a lot of schools now procure additional products once they enjoy their additional experience with us, like this school Laguna College https://coursedog.com/case-study123
