The World Health Organization estimates that 20 million adults across the globe need palliative care, including a growing cohort of transgender-identified older adults. While best practices for palliative care exist, information to guide community-based care at the end of life for this cohort is not consistently available. Guided by the wisdom from contemplative practice, art, …
Continue reading “Silent Illumination: Compassionate End-of-Life Care for Transgender Elders”
A trauma & context-sensitive mindfulness program for peacebuilding and reconciliation (of TS-MBSR category) will gather 16 young peacebuilders, from India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, working with communities affected by diverse forms of violence such as victims of war or armed conflict, refugees, internally displaced persons, or migrants; with the aim to discuss, reflect, share, …
One in five college students reports declining mental health as a result of the COVID pandemic. This is on top of a recent generational rise in rates of anxiety and depression among college-aged youth. Could a unique course that blends academic and experiential learning help prepare first-year students for the stressors that lie ahead during …
Continue reading “Student Flourishing Initiative: Building Resiliency Among College Students”
In the midst of the COVID pandemic, health care is in the news daily. But there’s an often-overlooked element in many hospital systems: the role of chaplains. For patients experiencing loneliness, isolation, fear, and physical pain, chaplains offer much needed emotional support, spiritual guidance, and hope. But could chaplains and the patients they support also …
Continue reading “Cultivating Compassion in Healthcare: One Researcher’s Journey”
The 2014 International Symposium for Contemplative Studies (ISCS) drew a diverse, talented and enthusiastic group of attendees, and brought together distinct, though overlapping, fields of research and scholarship across the sciences, humanities, arts and other domains. ISCS 2014 focused on advancing our understanding of the human mind, and how training through contemplative practices can lead …
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Trayvon Martin. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. Sandra Bland. Ferguson. Baltimore. Charleston. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. In the wake of so many recent tragedies involving racial discrimination, Americans are taking a hard look at this systemic and divisive issue in our culture, and asking what can be done to change it.
There is a growing consensus among psychologists, educators, and the public at large that a more comprehensive vision of education is needed—one that includes an explicit focus on “educating the heart” and intentionally cultivates children’s social and emotional competencies and positive human qualities, including self-regulation, self-awareness, empathy, compassion, and altruism. This explicit and intentional focus …
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”
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 …
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 …
