Deepal-linda's List: Mindfulness

• University of California at Santa Barbara had 48 undergraduate students take either a mindfulness class or a nutrition class. Classes met for 45 minutes four times per week for two weeks. They were taught by "professionals with extensive  teaching experience in their respective fields." The mindfulness class "emphasized the physical posture  and mental strategies of focused-attention meditation." As they describe that class more specifically
• It  required participants to integrate mindfulness into their  daily activities and to complete 10 minutes of daily meditation  outside of class. During class, participants sat on cushions  in a circle. Each class included 10 to 20 minutes of mindfulness exercises requiring focused attention to some aspect of sensory experience (e.g., sensations of breathing, tastes of a piece of fruit, or sounds of an audio recording). ... Classes focused on:
  • Sitting in  an upright posture with legs crossed and gaze lowered, distinguishing between naturally arising thoughts and  elaborated thinking
  • Minimizing the distracting quality  of past and future concerns by reframing them as mental  projections occurring in the present
  • Using the breath  as an anchor for attention during meditation
  • Repeatedly counting up to 21 consecutive exhalations [Ed. note: presume inhalations occurred as well.]
  • Allowing the mind to rest naturally rather than trying to  suppress the occurrence of thoughts.
• RESULTS:  Scores improved in the mindfulness-trained group, but not the nutrition-trained group. For one, their average GRE verbal score went from 460 to, two weeks later, 520. They also improved on tests of working memory and focus (had fewer task-unrelated thoughts).
• Taking time to think about your thoughts, breathing, posture, and the like can be valuable to overall cognitive functioning.

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