Mindfulness meditation helps teenage boys

Two phrases you seldom see in the same sentence – ‘mindfulness meditation’ and ‘teenage boys’ – but new research from Cambridge University’s Institute of Wellbeing found how extremely beneficial it was when they introduced one to the other.

Researchers found that after a four-week course in mindfulness, the 155 boys (aged 14-15 years old) were found to have increased feelings of wellbeing, defined as the combination of feeling good (including positive emotions such as happiness, contentment, interest and affection) and also an increased sense of functioning well.

“More and more we are realising the importance of supporting the overall mental health of children,” said Professor Felicia Huppert at the university’s Institute of Wellbeing, who conducted the study. “Our study demonstrates that this type of training improves wellbeing in adolescents and that the more they practice, the greater the benefits.

“Importantly, many of the students genuinely enjoyed the exercises and said they intended to continue them – a good sign that many children would be receptive to this type of intervention.

“Another significant aspect of this study is that adolescents who suffered from higher level of anxiety were the ones who benefited most from the training.”

For the research, students in six classes in two independent schools in the UK, were taught what is termed ‘mindful awareness’, or mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of consciously bringing attention and focus to the here and now, bringing awareness to our experience in the moment of experiencing it, but without passing judgement about it. This consisted of four 40-minute classes, one per week, which presented the principles and practice of mindfulness.

The classes covered awareness and acceptance of what they were experiencing, and taught the students how to practice bodily awareness by paying attention to their breathing, noticing all the sensations involved simply in walking, for example. They were also asked to practice in their own time, and were encouraged to listen to a series of exercises, designed to improve concentration and reduce stress, on a CD or mp3 file for eight minutes a day.

All students also completed a carefully compiled short series of online questionnaires before and after participating in the research. The questionnaires measured the effect of the training on changes in mindful awareness, resilience (the ability to modify responses to changing situations) and their sense of psychological wellbeing.

Researchers found that although it was a short programme, students who participated had increased levels of wellbeing as a consequence, and these were proportional to the amount of time they spent practicing their new skills.

“We believe that the effects of mindfulness training can enhance wellbeing in a number of ways,” said Professor Huppert. “If you practice being in the present, you can increase positive feelings by savouring pleasurable ongoing experiences. Additionally, calming the mind and observing experiences with curiosity and acceptance not only reduces stress but helps with attention control and emotion regulation – skills which are valuable both inside and outside the classroom.”

As the mother of two, teenage and older, I say - let's hear it for the boys!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/10/the-secret-life-of-britains-teenage-boys

The benefits of boredom...

It may sound a contradiction in terms, but boredom can actually have its benefits. Being bored can provide the opportunity for a creative hiatus, and even be the motivating factor behind your next great idea!

Boredom is said to fall into two categories, situational and repetitive. Situational boredom describes those occasions when hanging about with nothing to do is necessary: waiting for a bus, for example. Repetitive boredom occurs from doing the same routine task over and over again. This can include some activity you once enjoyed, but which now palls.

Sometimes we experience boredom because we have developed a need for instant gratification, part of our do-it-now/have-it-now mentality. Many activities, like surfing the Net, can play into this. How much time have you spent doing just that in a futile bid to avoid boredom? Maybe you would have been better off accepting you were bored, then used this stimulus to find something you really wanted to engage with.

But while it is often condemned - 'the Devil finds work for idle hands', as the old adage goes - being bored provides some useful 'time out', allowing us the opportunity to clear the mind and see what percolates up. To mull over, consider, reject and re-consider, ideas and possibilities.

For children especially, being kept relentlessly busy is counter-productive. Without the experience of boredom, how can you learn the self-motivation to alleviate it? It's an important and necessary stage of intellectual development.

Don't fight it, when boredom comes knocking, but succumb to it and see what it yields. Akin to daydreaming, which research has shown to be an active state of brain function, boredom can even be a great motivator. Instead of filling every minute of your day with activity that might prohibit the possibilities for boredom, take a risk on being bored, and see what happens.

Maybe we should see being bored as the transitional state it is - a brief period between completing one activity or process, and starting the next. A welcome pause. An opportunity for reflection. A moment to collect and re-focus our thoughts. No more nor less than that. And certainly not something that has to be fought against.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/rhodri-marsden-the-lost-art-of-boredom-2048870.html

Make the humble houseplant your friend

FACT: People working indoors with houseplants in their line of vision do tasks a staggering 12% faster and are able to concentrate better than people who don’t have plants in the room.

Read the full report @ Plants4Life

http://plants4life.org/

Breathe life back into concentration...

Although we do it automatically, breathing is something that we can also consciously control, making it one of the simplest methods of regaining physical and mental focus... and an aid to concentration.

Plus it's the single most useful tool we have for stress management, and immediately available to us all.

So how we breathe is very important.

But most of us breathe poorly: we tend to over-breathe, taking three or four breaths using only the upper part of our lung capacity, when one good breath using all would serve us better. This shallow breathing is very tiring, not only because we expend unnecessary energy to do so, but because we reduce our oxygen intake per breath. In its extreme form, over-breathing becomes hyperventilation, which can lead to panic attacks.

Breathing isn't just about taking oxygen in either, it's also about getting rid of carbon dioxide from our bodies. Shallow breathing alters the oxygen/carbon dioxide balance in the blood making it more acidic, and over time our muscles feel chronically tired and weakened from this acidic effect. Tired muscles also overcompensate by tensing up, increasing physical tension overall, which makes us feel emotionally tense and stressed.

Shallow breathing is also part of our 'fight or flight' response, causing the secretion of stress hormones. So in the same way that shallow breathing actually makes us more stressed than we might otherwise feel, so breathing more calmly will de-stress us, because the very act of consciously regulating our breathing sends a message from the body to the brain that everything is now OK, the emergency is over, and it can stop pumping out all that unnecessary adrenalin and cortisol!

Poor breathing patterns can set up their own vicious circle, for sure - and affect us both physically and emotionally. But the great news is that one simple change, how you breathe, can make one huge difference to how you feel.

Try the following exercise to get you started

• lie comfortably on the floor, knees bent, chin tucked in - what Alexander Technique teachers call the 'constructive rest position' - or sit upright in a chair, legs uncrossed, feet flat on the floor
• consciously relax your neck and drop your shoulders, rest your arms by your sides with your palms turned upwards
• breathe long and gently through your nose, into your belly until you see it gently rise, for a slow count of 5
• pause, and hold that breath for a count of 5, then gently exhale through your mouth for another count of 5
• while doing this, try to clear your mind of all other thoughts, or if this is difficult close your eyes and visualise a pebble dropping into a pool of water and gently sinking down
• repeat this breathing cycle 10 times, then see how your regular breathing adjusts
• you can also use this breathing technique at any time you feel tense or stressed, or as the basis of any meditation practice

Bear in mind that poor posture always cramps our breathing, while tension in the muscle with which we breathe, the diaphragm - the sheet of muscle that divides the chest from the abdominal cavity - will also create tension around the aorta, the main artery carrying blood through the centre of our bodies. Tension around the aorta can also elevate blood pressure.

So there are just too many good reasons why you should take a look at your breathing and change it for the better.

Many physical activities also help improve breathing techniques - singing, swimming, T'ai Chi, yoga, walking meditations, playing a musical (wind) instrument, for example - but improving your breathing will immediately improve your overall health and wellbeing, your mental focus... and your concentration!

Slow reading...

Unsurprisingly perhaps, our ability to concentrate long enough to read for much more than a minute (according to one professor's assessment of her students) is being eroded by our hyperactive online habits. So how can we regain the ability to concentrate on reading again? Slow reading is being advocated as the answer.

Thinking about this, I'm reminded of one 15 year old I coached who was aghast at having to read a whole book - Charles Dicken's Great Expectations - and was overwhelmed by the thought of this half term project set by his English teacher. This was someone who had never before read a book for pleasure, and I wasn't sure that reading Dickens was going to persuade him to do so either. We discussed how he might approach it and what goals he could set himself in order to achieve the task. He suggested a chapter a day, but the book had very short chapters - and 59 of them - so a chapter a day was only going to mean seven chapters over the week. Added to which, given the shortness of each, a chapter a day wouldn't allow him enough time to engage with the story, get into the language (which he wasn't used to) or start to enjoy the process of reading, which I felt was going to be key to his success.

Could you manage 30 minutes a day, reading? I asked. Without interruptions? Looking doubtful, he agreed he would try. I explained that he had to give himself a chance and however boring he found it initially, he had to try and persevere so that he could start to engage with it. 30 minutes is only the same length of time as an episode of EastEnders (a BBC TV programme he enjoyed) I said, and although he still wasn't entirely convinced, he agreed to give it a try.

When I saw him next I asked how it had gone. "I finished the whole book!" he told me, obviously really pleased with his achievement. I congratulated him and asked him if he had enjoyed the story. He pulled a bit of a face and said he thought he probably wouldn't choose to read another Dickens, but overall it had been OK and - here I was delighted - what else could he read? *

It wasn't just about the books, although my view is that reading opens up a whole new world you possibly couldn't access any other way, but it also allows people to practice their concentration skills in a meaningful and pleasurable way. For this young man, reading Great Expectations showed him that he was capable of concentrating when he chose, and he could apply this skill elsewhere to things that didn't immediately grab his attention - it was just a matter of practice.

Lesson learnt.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/15/slow-reading

* I gave him a copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, which he really enjoyed.

Take a walk... and boost your brain...

What goes on inside your brain when you exercise? That question has preoccupied a growing number of scientists in recent years, as well as many of us who exercise. In the late 1990s, Dr. Fred Gage and his colleagues at the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute in San Diego elegantly proved that human and animal brains produce new brain cells (a process called neurogenesis) and that exercise increases neurogenesis. The brains of mice and rats that were allowed to run on wheels pulsed with vigorous, newly born neurons, and those animals then breezed through mazes and other tests of rodent I.Q., showing that neurogenesis improves thinking.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/your-brain-on-exercise/?apage=2

New rules for office gossip…

Gossip can be a lot of fun and is often a feature of office politics - so it’s tempting to indulge - as long as it doesn’t backfire, because it can also make or break reputations. Plus it can seriously undermine your concentration at work!

Recent news of US company Bridgewater Associates' boss Ray Dalio issuing a ban on office gossip has given rise to speculation about the nature of office gossip, and whether a ban is either useful or enforceable.

If you’re the boss, and you want to keep gossip at a minimum, make sure your workforce is kept informed of events and changes. Insecurity at work ups the gossip quota – much of which can be unhelpful to office stability – as people speculate and speculation somehow becomes fact, however inaccurate, like a game of Chinese whispers.

What we also know is that office gossip – whether face-to-face at the water cooler, whispered at a desk, or via email, SMS and MSN – is distracting and time-wasting and can be extremely detrimental to both personal and workplace productivity.

Without being a goody-two-shoes, if you want to get ahead at work the cardinal rules for office gossip are:

1. Set boundaries – don’t share personal confidences you might later regret if they are used against you

2. Be discreet – getting a reputation as the office gossip will imply that you are not to be trusted

3. Keep any gossip upbeat – you don’t want to be seen as the office moaner

4. Never commit to paper, email or text something that could fall into the wrong hands and work against you

5. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you by slagging off your boss or anyone who might be responsible for any future promotion or reference

And if you’re going to be gossiped about, make sure it’s positive gossip that will enhance your reputation as a trusted, productive co-worker everyone wants to be associated with!