During my first few months as president of the Mind & Life Institute, I have spoken with many members of our community. I am inspired to see how you care about Mind & Life and want to be involved in our ongoing efforts to foster individual and societal flourishing through thoughtful interdisciplinary conversations, research, and …
Continue reading “President’s Message: New Vision and Priorities”
In early December 2015, Mind & Life was honored to host a live chat with MLI Fellow and Law Professor Rhonda Magee that explored the following theme: Many who examine the growth of the field of contemplative practice see it as coming only from straight, middle-class whites and corporate America. How might we work to …
Continue reading “Mindfulness and Racial Bias: Resources For Deeper Understanding”
This past winter, it was my honor and pleasure to participate in a Mind & Life Research Workshop convened by the Contemplative Development Mapping Project (CDMP). The CDMP is a group of scholars, scientists, and practitioners who are personally and professionally committed to enriching our understanding of contemplative practices and experiences. This interdisciplinary “think tank” …
We know that high quality social relationships help us live longer, happier, and healthier lives whether we meditate or not. Moreover, research confirms that humans are highly sensitive to context—social, architectural, aural, and so on, regardless of geography or culture. Social baseline theory suggests that even meditation practices should be facilitated by proximity to safe …
Continue reading “The Role of Social Relationships and Context in Meditative Practice”
High-quality social relationships help us live longer, happier, and healthier lives—facts that hold true, as far as anyone knows, regardless of geography or culture. Although links between relationships and health have been observed for decades (if not millennia), the mechanisms responsible for them remain speculative. For this talk, I’ll first describe our work on one …
Continue reading “Social Baseline Theory: Health, Well-Being, and the Social Regulation of Effort”
Attachment theory, first proposed by John Bowlby, tested in infant-parent relationships by Mary Ainsworth, and now studied in adults by personality/social psychologists, focuses on the ways in which fear motivates people to rely for security on “attachment figures,” beginning in infancy and continuing throughout life. A person’s experiences with sensitive and responsive, or insensitive and …
