Transformation is a mind-body endeavor. Yet in the quest for enlightenment, meditation can overlook body-based practices, while modern yoga can omit the training of the mind and emotions. This talk focuses on the body’s role in transformation. We examine the significance of the body in mindfulness-based practices such as interoception and self-compassion. Drawing from emerging …
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Concurrent Session 5 – NIH Career Award Funding for Your Early Career in Contemplative Science
Do you aspire to have NIH funding as an early career scientist in the field ofmindfulness, meditation, or contemplative studies? This presentation will feature one junior faculty member’s reflection on five years of experience with an NIH “Pathway to Independence” (K99/R00) award, which helped launch his early career research program on the outcomes and mechanisms …
Concurrent Session 5 – Externally-Induced Contemplation: A Neuroscience Study of Architecture
Neuroscience research on contemplation usually considers only internally induced (self-directed) methods for attaining mindfulness (e.g., meditation, prayer). We explored other “external methods” for cultivating mindfulness, focusing on architecture that we design and inhabit. Our study evaluated if buildings designed for contemplation would elicit brain activation patterns similar to those found under contemplation. We used a …
ISCS 2014 – Master Lecture – Catherine Kerr
Contemplative Practice Starts with The Body: Understanding Somatic Awareness, Brain Dynamics, and Healing Presence in Mindfulness and Other Disciplines
Concurrent Session 4 – Improving Attentional Functions Through Mindfulness Practice
An ever-growing number of studies provide evidence for the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions within a variety of clinical and nonclinical contexts. For the field to develop and solidify, it will be essential to go beyond demonstrating clinical effectiveness and to develop an evidence-based understanding of the psychological, physiological, and neural processes that underpin the reported …
Concurrent Session 4 – Mapping the Mind: A Model Based on Theravada Buddhist Texts and Practices
We propose a functional model based on Theravada Buddhist texts and practices to show how the mind works in relation to our senses, and how we perceive the external world. Our model suggests that the mind acts as a common internal sense organ, receiving all sensory data from the five external senses. It shows how …
Concurrent Session 4 – Merleau-Ponty Reads Francisco Varela
Francisco Varela and his colleagues proffer a provoking conclusion in theirgroundbreaking The Embodied Mind. By relying almost exclusively on introspection, Western philosophy from Plato to Merleau-Ponty is at best proto-cognitive scientific. Oddly enough, the movement out of philosophy and into neuroscience is carried out by mindfulness and meditation. Oddly because forms of discursive rational introspection …
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Concurrent Session 4 – Yoga: A Contemplative Technique for Mental WellBeing
Yoga is an ancient mind-body discipline practiced in various forms in differentAsian countries such as India and Tibet, with important contributions for contemporary society. The number of yoga practitioners in Western society is growing worldwide, in particular in the pursuit of mental well-being. Research shows that yoga techniques can improve emotional balance and strength, especially …
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Concurrent Session 4 – Novel Techniques and Applications for Neurophenomenology: Observing Experience to Understand the Mind and Understanding the Mind to Improve Experience
The methodological program of neurophenomenology arose as an approach to understanding the relationship between neurophysiological activity and conscious experience. Since its inception, a growing research community has further cultivated this method with a focus on developing a rigorous and pragmatic science of consciousness. By drawing from the limitations and successes of existing neurophenomenological studies and …
Concurrent Session 3 – A Neurocognitive Model for Internal Time
In our conventional experience, we experience ourselves as positioned in the present between an ever-receding past and an ever advancing present. The phenomenology of internal time has occupied sages and philosophers for centuries; advanced practitioners are said to experience the flow of time in a radically different way. From a neuroscientific perspective, our internal time …
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