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Chinese Mind-Body Training Reduces Stress

Researchers have unravelled how an emerging mind-body technique, adapted from traditional Chinese medicine and practised by thousands in  China, cuts down stress levels in just five days.
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The integrative body-mind training (IBMT) is now being taught to undergraduates involved in research on the method at the University of Oregon (UO).

In October 2007, researchers led by visiting UO professor Yi-Yuan Tang and UO psychologist Michael Posner documented that doing IBMT prior to a mental math test led to low levels of the stress hormone cortisol among Chinese students.

The experimental group also showed lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue than students in a relaxation control group.

“The previous paper indicated that IBMT subjects showed a reduced response to stress.” Tang said. “Why did it work so fast?”

The new findings point to how IBMT alters blood flow and electrical activity in the brain, breathing quality and even skin conductance, allowing for “a state of ah, much like in the morning opening your eyes, looking outside the grass and sunshine, you feel relaxed, calm and refresh without any stress, this is the meditation state,” he said.

Data were drawn from several technologies in two experiments involving 86 undergraduate students at Dalian University of Technology, where Tang is a professor, said an UO release.

The data were analysed and prepared for publication at the UO with help from Posner and psychology professor Mary K. Rothbart, who are not co-authors of the paper.

The study was published online in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Sources: The Times Of India

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Positive thinking

Honest Wisdom

The Power of Not Knowing .....CLICK & SEE
There is wisdom in not knowing, and it is a wise person who can say, “I don’t know.” For no one knows everything. There are many types of wisdom – from intellectual to emotional to physical intelligence. Yet, even deemed experts in their fields do not know all there is to know about mathematics, yoga, literature, psychology, or art. It is a true master who professes ignorance, for only an empty vessel can be filled.

There are many things in life that we don’t know, and there are many things we may have no interest in finding out. There is freedom in saying “I don’t know.” When we admit that we don’t know something, we can then open ourselves up to the opportunity to learn. And there is power in that. We can’t possibly know everything. And when we think we do, we limit ourselves from growing and learning more than what we already do know. A person who can admit to not knowing tends to be more intellectually and emotionally confident than someone who pretends to know everything. They also tend to be more comfortable with who they are and don’t feel the need to bluff or cover up any perceived ignorance. People can actually end up appearing more foolish when they act as if they know something that they don’t.

We would be wise to respect people who freely admit when they don’t know something. They are being honest, with us and with themselves. And we, too, should feel no shame in saying, “I don’t know.” In doing so, we open ourselves up to the unknown. We can then discover what lies beyond our current levels of understanding. It is the wise person in life that answers questions with a question and inspires the pursuit of internal answers with a funny face, a shrug, and a comical, “I don’t know.”

Sources: Daily Om

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Fish-Eating Moms’ Diet Affects Kids, Study Shows

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Since the current guidelines on fish consumption were issued, Dr. Emily Oken, a physician and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, has led studies to examine the sum effect of eating fish.

………….….CLICK & SEE

One of those was published in May in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Researchers asked 341 pregnant women in Massachusetts about their diet and tested their blood mercury levels during the second trimester. Then, when their children were 3, they were tested in a range of thinking and movement tasks.

Children of mothers who ate more than two servings of fish per week had higher scores than kids of non-fish-eating moms, even when other influences of early childhood development, such as birth weight and breast-feeding duration, were factored out. No measurable benefit was seen in kids born to women who ate fewer than two servings of fish per week, which corresponds to the current FDA/EPA advice.

The improvements in kids were even more striking in kids of moms with lower mercury levels, suggesting that choosing low-mercury fish is key. Researchers did ask about broad categories of fish, but, Oken says, it’s a big uncertainty in this kind of research. “We don’t really know a lot of detail about the kind of fish that women are eating.”

On the flip side, children of mothers with the highest mercury levels in their blood scored poorly, and if their moms ate less fish, the detriments were greater.

In short, Oken was able to demonstrate both the benefits of fish eating and the risks of mercury intake. When both fish and mercury are taken together, Oken’s study suggests that the good may outweigh the bad, at least in the fish-eating habits of her subjects.

Sources: The Times Of India

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Positive thinking

Reversed Perceptions

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Being Projected Upon
We all have issues, as well as undesirable qualities or traits that we don’t like about ourselves. Most of us realize that we are not perfect and that it is natural to have unpleasant thoughts, motivations, desires, or feelings. However, when a person does not acknowledge these, they may ascribe those characteristics to someone else, deeming other people instead as angry, jealous, or insecure. In psychological terms, such blaming and fault finding is called projection.

When we are the target of projections, it can be confusing and frustrating, not to mention maddening, particularly when we know that we are not the cause of another person’s distress. Even people who are well aware of their issues may find that sensitive subjects can bring up unexpected projections. They may feel insecure about a lack of funds and thus view a friend as extravagant. Or, if they really want to get in shape, they may preach the benefits of exercise to anyone and everyone.

While we can try to avoid people we know who engage in projecting their “stuff” onto others, we can’t always steer clear of such encounters. We can, however, deflect some projections through mindfulness and meditation. A useful visualization tool is to imagine wrapping ourselves in a protective light everyday. At other times, we may have to put up a protective shield when we feel a projection coming our way, reminding ourselves that someone else’s issues are not ours. Although it’s difficult not to react when we are the recipient of a projection, it is a good idea to try to remain calm and let the other person know if they are being unreasonable and disrespectful. We all know that it’s not fun to be dumped on. Likewise, we should be mindful that we don’t take our own frustrations out on others. When we take ownership of our thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings, we are less likely to project our issues or disowned qualities onto others.

Sources: Daily Om

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‘Talking Cure’ for Mental Problems

Intensive psychoanalytic therapy, the “talking cure” rooted in the ideas of Freud, has all but disappeared in the age of drug treatments and managed care.
But now researchers are reporting that the therapy can be effective against some chronic mental problems, including anxiety and borderline personality disorder.

In a review of 23 studies of such treatment involving 1,053 patients, the researchers concluded that the therapy, given as often as three times a week, in many cases for more than a year, relieved symptoms of those problems significantly more than did some shorter-term therapies.

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The authors, writing in Wednesday’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, strongly urged scientists to undertake more testing of psychodynamic therapy, as it is known, before it is lost altogether as a historical curiosity. The review is the first such evaluation of psychoanalysis to appear in a major medical journal, and the studies on which the new paper was based are not widely known among doctors.

The field has resisted scientific scrutiny for years, arguing that the process of treatment is highly individualized and so does not easily lend itself to such study. It is based on Freud’s idea that symptoms are rooted in underlying, often longstanding psychological conflicts that can be discovered in part through close examination of the patient-therapist relationship.

Experts cautioned that the evidence cited in the new research was still too meager to claim clear superiority for psychoanalytic therapy over different treatments, like cognitive behavior therapy, a shorter-term approach. The studies that the authors reviewed are simply not strong enough, these experts said.

“But this review certainly does seem to contradict the notion that cognitive or other short-term therapies are better than any others,” said Bruce Wampold, chairman of the department of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin.

“When it’s done well, psychodynamic therapy appears to be just as effective as any other for some patients, and this strikes me as a turning point” for such intensive therapy.

The researchers, Falk Leichsenring of the University of Giessen and Sven Rabung of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, both in Germany, reviewed only those studies in which the therapy had been frequent – more than once a week – and had lasted at least a year or, alternatively, had been 50 sessions long. Further, the studies had to have followed patients closely, using strict definitions of improvement.

The investigators examined studies that tracked patients with a variety of mental problems, among them severe depression, anorexia nervosa and borderline personality disorder, which is characterized by a fear of abandonment and dark squalls of despair and neediness.

Psychodynamic therapy, Leichsenring wrote in an email message, “showed significant, large and stable treatment effects which even significantly increased between the end of treatment and follow-up assessment”.

The review found no correlation between patients’ improvement and the length of treatment. But improve they did, and psychiatrists said it was clear that patients with severe, chronic emotional problems benefited from the steady, frequent, close attention that psychoanalysts provide.

The new review is encouraging, some psychoanalysts said, but also a reminder of how much more study needs to be done.

Sources: The Times Of India

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