The latest statistics about America’s opioid epidemic are staggering. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimate an average of 125 deaths from opioid overdoses per day in the United States—that means each month, we’re seeing a tragedy more deadly than September 11th. Between July 2016 and September 2017, hospitalizations from opioid overdoses jumped 30 percent …
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Tania Singer’s Exploration into How Meditation Training Transforms the Brain, the Individual, and Society at Large
During her recent visit to the Mind & Life offices in Charlottesville, social neuroscientist Dr. Tania Singer spoke as much about the heart as the brain. Singer is the director of the Department of Social Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. She is on the board …
The ever-evolving connection between culture and human biology
An Interview with Carol Worthman, Ph.D. Can you please give us a brief description of what you study? What I study with my lab is the interaction of culture and biology as they shape differential mental and physical health. Currently, we have a few studies around the world examining these interactions. For instance, we have …
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Promoting Openness and Transparency in the Contemplative Sciences
For the past two decades, a small but growing number of scientists, philosophers, and scholars of religion have been building a unique community at the crossroads of their disciplines — a place where they can push the boundaries of traditional research to shine new light on fundamental questions about the human experience. What is this …
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Interconnection, Inclusivity and Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Contemplative Research
Each year, the Mind & Life Institute hosts the Summer Research Institute to bring together scholars, researchers, professionals and practitioners from a variety of fields who share an interest in contemplative research. The purpose of this program is to bring students, recent graduates, junior faculty and postdocs into conversation with established investigators in order to …
The Monastery and the Microscope: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mind, Mindfulness, and the Nature of Reality
ORDER NOW Edited by Wendy Hasenkamp with Janna White (Yale University Press) ISBN: 9780300218084 In 2013, during a landmark Mind & Life dialogue at a Tibetan monastery in southern India, with an audience of thousands of monks and nuns, the Dalai Lama gathered with leading scientists, philosophers and monastics for in-depth discussions on the nature of …
The PhenoTank: A Mind & Life Think Tank on the Microphenomenology of Contemplative Experience
What happens when an experience is described? Does the very effort to find words deepen practice, sharpen awareness, clarify an experience? Imagining a lens through which to deepen access to contemplative experience, these were among the questions that drove the conversation at a Mind & Life-funded Think Tank entitled the “PhenoTank,” held at the École …
An in-depth look at a Mind & Life Think Tank on Abrahamic traditions
To date, the traditions and techniques that have been most substantively researched in the field of contemplative science have largely derived from Buddhism and Buddhist-inspired movements. While there have been tremendous advances and developments due to this collaboration—indeed there would be no field without it—a natural consequence of this specific alliance is that insights from …
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Contemplative Social Research: Caring for Self, Being, and Lifeworld
PURCHASE NOW By Valerie M. Bentz, Vincenzo M. B. Giorgino CreateSpace Independent Publishing ISBN-13: 978-1541119147 Contemplative Social Research brings together research and insights from scholars throughout Europe and North America, and from a variety of social science disciplines. The book argues that contemplative-based inquiry is unique in recognizing the deep oneness of humanity, since it …
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How personal experience as a racial minority led to a career studying compassion meditation in diverse populations
An Interview with Mind & Life Fellow, Helen Weng, PhD. Helen Y. Weng, PhD is a Mind & Life Fellow and a postdoctoral scholar at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Helen is interested in how contemplative practices can improve communication within and between individuals, and how this in turn improves …
