This proposal is for a multi-sited ethnographic study of the engagement between contemplative practice, modern psychology and global religious networks among Chabad Hasidim. Our research documents the promotion and adaptation of traditional contemplative practices and their transformation into secularized therapeutic forms through clinical psychology and professional life coaching. In addition, our research is framed by …
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The experience of acute moral distress has become a pervasive and serious problem among health care clinicians. Clinical care, especially of patients with serious and life threatening illness, requires clinicians on the front lines to discern ethically justifiable courses of action in exceedingly complex circumstances, riddled with conflict and uncertainty. Although complex moral decision-making is …
Continue reading “Addressing moral distress in clinical practice: A contemplative, neuroscience-based intervention”
This project investigates the cultural context of contemplative practice in the West through an ethnographic study of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), a contemplative meditation practice derived from the Tibetan Buddhist lojong tradition. Addressing lacunae in current studies of secular meditation interventions, this study seeks to elucidate (1) how CBCT, which focuses on the cultivation of …
Continue reading “Subjective transformation and actual individual practice among at-risk populations engaged in cognitively-based compassion training”
The purpose of this proposal is to integrate the perspectives of religious studies and clinical psychology/science to address the central question of the roles of contexts in contemplative practice. There is a gulf between humanists and scientists on the issue of context, and this is a central challenge to the field of Contemplative Sciences. Our …
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This project is a theoretical and experimental pilot investigation of the impact of contemplative practices on concepts — the fundamental building blocks of cognition. The exploration focuses on intentionality of concepts as their property of representing entities whilst being detached from them. Terms such as ‘metacognitive insight’ (Teasdale et al., 2002), ‘re-perceiving’ (Shapiro et al., …
Continue reading “Meditation, concepts and de-reification: Investigation of possible links between contemplative and neurocognitive perspectives”
First-person reports of phenomenological states are the starting point for phenomenology (including Buddhist phenomenology) and the scientific study of consciousness. The vipassana meditation technique, including the Open Monitoring meditation and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), both of which are secularized versions of vipassana, are reliant on the reliability of First-person reports of phenomenological states. Nonetheless, the …
Continue reading “Introspective reliability: Synergizing Buddhist and contemporary viewpoints”
Clinicians (physicians and nurses) who care for patients with serious illness face significant challenges, both intra-personal and inter-personal, that if unaddressed result in stress, burnout, and exacerbation of patient suffering. Recent developments in contemplative neuroscience and theories of compassion indicate that the time is ripe to build a better understanding of how contemplative practice could …
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This project will investigate the effect of nonattachment on social inclusion operationalized as (1) enhanced self-reported valuing of racial/ethnic diversity; (2) reduced linguistic intergroup bias – a tendency to describe outgroup behaviors more negatively and concretely than ingroup behaviors; and (3) reduced ingroup favoritism at the expense of the outgroup while allocating rewards to ingroup …
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This will be a Scientific Pilot Study of the significance of where practitioners place their attention when they are doing breath awareness meditation. We will concentrate on two distinctive forms of Buddhist meditation, mindfulness practice as drawn from normative Pali Canon texts that emphasize placing the attention on the nostrils and zazen texts from the …
Continue reading “Where’s the Breath? An Interdisciplinary Investigation of Breath Awareness Placement”
The purpose of this pilot study is to examine the effects of a mindfulness intervention on emerging self-regulation and compassion/empathy among low-income preschoolers. The study will be conducted with children enrolled in Project GROW, an Americorps program at UW-Madison that pairs college students with low-income preschoolers over the course of a school year. Project GROW …
Continue reading “Fieldwork on Contemplative Practices with High Risk Preschoolers: Children’s Empathic, Compassionate, and Self-Regulatory Behaviors”
