Blog – Mind & Life Institute

Student Flourishing Initiative: Building Resiliency Among College Students

Sheila Kinkade — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 17:50:51 +0000

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 college—and in life?

Such is the idea behind the Student Flourishing Initiative (SFI). “We were looking for ways to address the mental health crisis among students and promote flourishing on campus,” says Robert Roeser, Bennett Pierce Professor of Care, Compassion, and Human Development at Pennsylvania State University.

Three years ago, Roeser teamed up with professional peers—mostly Mind & Life Fellows—including Mark Greenberg at Penn State University, Mind & Life Chief Scientific Advisor Richie Davidson and John Dunne at the University of Wisconsin, and David Germano and Karen Inkelas at the University of Virginia, to develop and launch the initiative.

SFI resulted in a course, the “Art and Science of Student Flourishing,” that combines scholarship on human flourishing from the sciences and humanities with training in contemplative practice. As Roeser explains, the course challenges students at the outset of college to explore a question posed by poet Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Students aren’t meant to necessarily to arrive at an answer, he says, but to begin a journey that moves them ever toward the goal of personal and social flourishing.

While social and emotional learning (SEL) programs typically target K-12 education, Roeser makes the point that college students not only struggle with stress and anxiety but bring more developed reasoning skills to SEL conversations. The Dalai Lama, too, affirmed the importance of training adolescents and young adults to manage complex emotions at Mind & Life’s 2018 Dialogue focused on the Education of the Heart. In order to bring about behavior change, “you need to internalize that knowledge and process it through sustained thinking and application,” the Dalai Lama told Roeser and other education experts during a robust exchange on the relevance of SEL interventions at various developmental stages.

Grounded in the science of neuroplasticity, SFI reinforces the notion that self-transformation is possible but requires practice, self-effort, and community. “We have to make an intentional effort and to befriend others who are interested in this path of flourishing,” says Roeser, “to cultivate mindful awareness of ourselves and the world with the support of a community.”

Far from promising freedom from suffering, the course explores how suffering is a part of life and, as such, a part of flourishing. “Suffering is here. Joy is here. We have to work with it all,” says Roeser. “To do that, we have to be awake and aware of ourselves and others.”

Suffering is here. Joy is here. We have to work with it all. To do that,
we have to be awake and aware of ourselves and others.

Over the course of a semester, SFI students explore 15 qualities associated with flourishing, among them compassion, interdependence, belonging, mindfulness, and courage. Poetry by the likes of Mary Oliver and Rumi features prominently, along with Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Instruction in contemplative practices ranges from mindful movement to focused attention to lovingkindness meditation.

The course makes clear that individual and collective flourishing are bound up with each other. You can’t have a good life without addressing issues of injustice and inequity, affirms Roeser, adding “myths, poems, and science are all trying to get us to wisdom, a wisdom based on love.”

To date, roughly a thousand students have participated in the class across the three universities. A recent evaluation of course graduates found them to be less anxious and depressed, with a greater experience of flourishing in the COVID-era, than control group members.

As for next steps, SFI partners are looking at how to scale the model, which is designed to be easily adapted. While each of the three universities currently delivering the curriculum have employed variations, studies show outcomes to be the same. This fall, all three universities will host the class virtually for the first time.

With first-year students in the COVID era facing a host of unknowns, SFI empowers them with the understanding and skills to find meaning and purpose amidst challenging circumstances. As the Jewish psychiatrist Viktor Frankl noted after surviving the Nazi death camps, what we have in this life is not freedom from conditions, but freedom in our attitude towards conditions. “When we are no longer able to change a situation,” he wrote, “we are challenged to change ourselves.”

To learn more, email: contact@studentflourishing.org.
Additional resources related to student flourishing can be found at Education of the Heart.

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Cultivating Compassion in Healthcare: One Researcher’s Journey

Sheila Kinkade — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 16:10:59 +0000

Image from Emory University.

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 benefit from compassion training? In search of an answer, Jennifer Mascaro, a biological anthropologist in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the Emory School of Medicine, and research partner Charles Raison, received a 2017 Mind & Life PEACE Grant. Their study sought to explore whether Emory’s Cognitively-based Compassion Training (CBCT®) could be used—not only to reduce anxiety and strengthen emotional resilience among chaplains—but to enhance the well-being of their patients.

Their research reflects a whole person approach to healthcare that views the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of patients as integrated, while also seeking to mitigate the stress and burnout experienced by caregivers.

While results from the Mind & Life-funded randomized trial are still being analyzed, in June, Jennifer’s research received a major boost in the form of a five-year K01 career development award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH funds will support the evaluation of a chaplain-delivered CBCT® meditation program for patients undergoing cancer treatment.

The award will provide Jennifer and her team with “protected time” to focus on their research without the pressure to fundraise. “The PEACE Grant allowed us to collect pilot data that we used for the NIH grant,” says Jennifer. Her experience is not uncommon. Since 2004, Mind & Life has awarded $5.2 million in grants, with grantees going on to generate more than $110 million in follow-on funding from other sources.

Jennifer’s interest in the benefits of contemplative practice was piqued when she began meditating in high school. The question of how such practices nurture caring for others would inform her academic path and subsequent research. Her current work falls within what is known as implementation science. Over the long-term, the team is looking at how to embed evidence-based contemplative approaches within the workflow of hospitals for the benefit of both providers and patients.

Over the long-term, the team is looking at how to embed evidence-based
contemplative approaches within the workflow of hospitals
for the benefit of both providers and patients.

“There’s lots of discussion around empathy and compassion in healthcare and specifically around burnout,” says Jennifer. “It’s clear that healthcare providers are struggling, which impacts their ability to maintain compassion and empathy for patients.”

With chaplains serving as natural purveyors of compassion in hospitals, it made sense to study how contemplative practice could strengthen their emotional resilience and clinical work with patients. According to one study, contemplative practice comprises less than one percent of the services chaplains provide. Such findings, “pointed to a place where we might be able to bring more tools to a chaplain’s toolbelt,” says Jennifer.

For 15 years, researchers at Emory have been studying the effects of CBCT®, which is derived from the Lojong tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Among its benefits, the program has demonstrated effectiveness in enhancing compassion among medical students, increasing hope among adolescents in foster care, and reducing rumination and depression among cancer survivors.

To explore its potential to benefit chaplains, Jennifer and her team incorporated CBCT® into Emory’s clinical pastoral education program. Over four years, 80 chaplains-in-residence have undergone the training. CBCT® begins with a foundational practice to cultivate feelings of safety and appreciation. Participants place their attention on a moment of nurturance, often a memory of when they felt cared for or secure. The program’s six training modules are then delivered over eight to ten weeks. Throughout, the goal is to cultivate impartiality, gratitude, and connection “through which compassion naturally arises,” Jennifer explains.

Ash, M., Harrison, T., Pinto, M., DiClemente, R., & Negi, L. T. (2019). A model for cognitively-based compassion training: theoretical underpinnings and proposed mechanisms. Social Theory & Health, 1-25. DOI 10.1057/s41285-019-00124-x

Preliminary analysis of study data suggests that CBCT® may reduce chaplains anxiety levels and contribute to enhanced well-being. “They feel more emotionally-grounded and less anxious before they see patients,” says Jennifer.

The researchers found that the CBCT®’s benefits also extend to the patients that chaplains support. One chaplain shared the story of a woman who felt abandoned and lonely. Drawing from his CBCT® experience, he suggested that she focus her attention on the various people who make life-saving interventions, such as her IV, possible. The patient’s perspective shifted as she realized the expansive circle of care around her.

As a next step, the Emory team developed a new patient-centered version of CBCT® called Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health (CCSH). CCSH begins with a set of exercises that a chaplain completes before meeting with a patient. The chaplain and patient then work together, through a process of attunement, to access compassion for the patient, along with warm-heartedness and resilience, that can be sustained.

A randomized study found patients who received CCSH reported higher levels of satisfaction, and lower levels of depression and anxiety, than those who received standard pastoral counseling. Yet questions remain. What attributes do chaplains bring that contribute to successful outcomes? What language is most effective?

With funding from NIH, Jennifer will further assess the effectiveness of CCSH. This time, CBCT®-trained chaplains will work with cancer patients receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplants. The researchers will study the effects of CCSH on patients who are hospitalized for two to three weeks, making them particularly vulnerable to feelings of loneliness and disconnection.

Over the long-term, the Emory researchers seek to explore what it takes to apply a new approach—in this case compassion-based contemplative training—within different domains. Jennifer frames it this way: “If you take contemplative science to a new place and deliver it, what does the process look like? How do you study it so that it’s acceptable and feasible?”

It’s a process that takes persistence over time, with the end goal being a more compassionate healthcare system that nurtures the well-being of patients and providers alike.

Image of Jennifer Mascaro’s SRI 2020 plenary lecture, painted by contemplative scribe Kelvy Bird.

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Can We Change Racial Bias?

Wendy Hasenkamp — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 14:56:10 +0000

In the four years since this piece was originally published, issues around race and systemic racism in the United States have only become more pressing. The list of names of Black victims of police violence has grown steadily. Now, in the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and so many others, daily protests and uprisings persist across the country in the name of racial justice. The roots of this nation with regard to the enslavement of Black people, and genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples, are being reckoned with once again—and for many Whites, perhaps for the first time in a serious way. It feels like we’re approaching a tipping point in consciousness, as an increasing number of people across races and identities work toward the promise of an America that “never has been yet.”

The role of implicit bias, as explored in this piece, is still a key construct to understand when it comes to race. This is part of a deeper understanding of how our minds work, and how they can both contribute to—and help solve—critical societal problems. The possibility for contemplative practices to reduce our automatic associations and biases has continued to be studied, with promising results beyond what was cited in the original piece (for a few examples, see these findings on how loving-kindness training persistently reduced implicit bias and how mindfulness training reduced automatic responding).

Even so, as described by civil rights expert john powell in a recent Mind & Life podcast episode, changing bias is deeply challenging and depends on more than the individual; we must also examine and shift our social and cultural environments. It’s clearer than ever that the work before us must happen at all levels—from shaping individual minds, to changing societal norms, to creating inclusive and just policies, structures, and institutions. I hope that the information in this essay might be a small drop in the rising tide toward true equality.

– Wendy Hasenkamp

Original post from July 19, 2016

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.

Most of us like to think that a person who is sensitive to racial issues—who believes firmly that all races should be treated equally—is a person who is not under the sway of racism. In other words, someone who is against racism is (by definition) not racist.

Unfortunately, this often isn’t true. Our consciously held beliefs don’t always agree with our long-held mental and behavioral patterns. As a result of our country’s history, our society, culture, media, and power structures continuously feed us subtle (and not sometimes not so subtle) racist messages. From systematic discrimination within police and legal systems, to biased portrayal of Blacks in the media, to the tacit implication when someone avoids a Black person by crossing to the other side of the street, negative stereotypes of Black people are constantly being reinforced, even as many work to change them.

These messages, especially when repeated over time, create associations in our minds that instill prejudice without us even knowing it. This is the insidious “implicit bias” that exists in much of American culture. Just by operating in our society, we develop and reinforce concepts in our minds—and our brains—that automatically link the category of “Black” with “bad,” “dangerous,” or generally “less than,” even if we don’t believe these ideas consciously. It’s nearly inescapable.

Re-writing policies and making other explicit societal changes in favor of racial equality is hugely important. But if we want to change the way race is perceived in our culture, we need to be aware of, and work to shift, our associations at the implicit level as well.

Probing Bias

Of course, if you ask someone whether they ascribe to racist beliefs, you can imagine their reply. Either they will be completely unaware of the implicit biases they hold, or they will be consciously biased but unlikely to admit it because of the social stigma against racism. In both cases, the person will probably claim not to be racially biased. Thus, this kind of explicit measurement just isn’t accurate.

Social psychologists have developed clever ways to “look under the hood” and probe unconscious systems. One of the tools scientists use to study this phenomenon is the implicit association test (IAT), which was designed to measure the strength of association between concepts in memory. In this computerized test, participants are asked to categorize two sets of stimuli as fast as possible according to the instructions. To probe racial bias, one must assign Black or White faces into positive or negative categories.

An example of the IAT, where a participant would have to sort the face into the left or right category.

The idea is that if someone has an implicit bias against Blacks (e.g., they associate “Black” with “Bad”), he or she will take longer to press a button to assign Black faces into a positive category. The delay is a result of the brain being slightly slower to process this association, because it runs counter to the existing concept. Along the same lines, he or she would be faster to categorize White faces as positive, because this agrees with the existing concept in their mind.

Implicit racial bias is well-known in the research world, and it’s pervasive. Using the IAT, Harvard’s Project Implicit reported that 88 percent of White Americans hold implicit bias against Black people. Perhaps more disturbingly, 48 percent of Black people hold the same bias against their own race. Notably, these biases are not strongly correlated with people’s explicit reports of their attitudes about race, suggesting the biases are operating without awareness.

But it’s not just beliefs that are biased. Even though these associations may be unconscious, they affect our decisions and behavior towards others. For example, research has shown that people with higher implicit positive bias toward Whites (measured through the IAT) make economic decisions that are more disadvantageous to Black people, deliver fewer treatments to Blacks seeking medical care, and have more negative social interactions with Blacks.

Evidence of racial bias is also reflected in our brains. An important early neuroimaging study scanned the brains of White Americans while they viewed unfamiliar Black vs. White faces. Researchers were specifically interested in the amygdala, a brain region associated with processing highly salient and/or threatening stimuli. They found not only that amygdala activity was higher for Black faces than for White faces, but the level of participants’ amygdala activation was correlated with their level of implicit bias against Black people. In other words, the more racially biased people were, the more their amygdala responded to Black faces. Importantly, brain activity was not correlated with explicit, self-reported measures of race attitudes. This and other studies finding similar results have been interpreted to mean that Black faces, (particularly males) are perceived by the brain as more threatening than White faces, reflecting culturally-learned associations.

Brain regions where activity levels correlated with implicit bias against Blacks; left and right amygdala are the lower areas (Phelps et al, 2000).

It would seem, then, that despite someone holding a conscious belief in racial equality, significant factors are operating under the surface—neurally, psychologically, culturally—to sway his or her perception and behavior toward inequality.

Is there anything we can do to reduce these implicit racial biases?

Shifting Bias

Very little research has examined this question, in part due to an assumption that racial attitudes are instilled at a young age and are resistant to change. But as we learn more about the brain’s incredible potential for plasticity over the lifespan, researchers are beginning to re-think the idea of fixed traits. In fact, several recent studies in London and Barcelona used elegant methods to investigate whether implicit racial bias can be changed, and found intriguing results.

In these studies, the experimenters induced various kinds of “bodily illusions,” giving White participants the sense that their bodies had a dark skin color. When they tested these participants with the IAT, they found reduced racial bias after the illusion. In addition, the more believable their experience of the bodyswapping illusion, the more positive their implicit bias toward Black faces became. The authors suggest:

This feeling of being a different person or a member of a different group allows us to understand that “we are more alike… than we are unalike,“ as Maya Angelou famously wrote.

This exciting work suggests that by viewing ourselves as similar to others, we may be able to shift our deeply held biases.

Even more promising is that we may not need virtual technology and body-swapping illusions to elicit this effect.

Mind Training in the Modern World

As various forms of meditation are becoming more widespread in our culture, people are starting to ask whether this kind of intentional mind training can be applied for more than just improving attention. In particular, contemplative practices that focus on the feeling realm may have their greatest effects by changing our deep emotional patterning.

For example, as we move through our lives, we often subtly categorize people into several groups based on their relationship to us: those who are close or important, those we don’t know (strangers), and those who we find difficult or we actively dislike. These unconscious patterns and reductive labels are the fuel for our implicit biases.

A major goal of some meditations, such as lovingkindness and compassion practices, is learning to move beyond these limited, reductive labels of others. These trainings emphasize an understanding of our common humanity—regardless of age, race, gender, religion, and so on, we all want to be happy and to avoid pain and suffering. Even those who act in harmful ways or seem to attract suffering have undoubtedly been the victim of unfortunate past circumstances, for which we can have compassion.

So, by engaging in repeated practices meant to help us become more aware of the similarities we all share and to develop care and kindness, might we also be combating implicit bias?

Recent research suggests this may be true. Two studies have used the IAT to measure bias before and after a lovingkindness meditation intervention. Lovingkindness practice involves first generating warm, caring feelings toward a loved person like a family member or close friend. Next, these positive thoughts are extended—first to oneself, then to a growing circle of others, and eventually to all sentient beings. This practice is intended to reduce the distinction we usually make between loved ones, strangers, and disliked people in terms of their value to us, and whether they deserve our care and compassion.

In the first study, conducted by Mind & Life Varela Grantee Yoona Kang at Yale University, volunteers were randomly assigned to one of three groups: practicing lovingkindness meditation in a 6-week class (practice group), discussing lovingkindness meditation in a 6-week class led by the same teacher but without practice (discussion group), and waitlist control group of people who had signed up but were not yet attending a class.

Before and after the 6 weeks of classes or waitlist, participants took IATs intended to measure bias against two stigmatized groups: Black people and homeless people. At the end of 6 weeks, the study found that implicit bias against both Black people and homeless people was reduced (compared to baseline levels) for those participants who had been practicing lovingkindness. Those in the discussion group and on the waitlist did not change in terms of their implicit bias.

Kang and her colleagues concluded that “lovingkindness meditation can improve automatically activated, implicit attitudes toward stigmatized social groups.” Importantly, the fact that the discussion group didn’t change suggests that merely learning, thinking about, and discussing ideas such as compassion and equality may not be enough to change deep-rooted biases.

The second study was done at the University of Sussex and examined the impact of a much shorter, yet more specific intervention. In this case, half the participants performed a 7-minute lovingkindness practice: listening to audio instructions, they spent 4 minutes generating and sending love to people who deeply cared for them, and the final 3 minutes directing those warm feelings toward a photograph of a Black person of the same gender as the participant. A control group performed a similarly structured task, spending 4 minutes imagining the physical characteristics of two acquaintances, followed by 3 minutes paying close attention to the physical characteristics of the same gender-matched Black person shown to the participants in the lovingkindness condition (but not generating any particular emotion).

At the end of this brief instruction, participants performed two racial IATs (probing bias against Black and Asian people), and completed a measure of positive emotions. Results showed that for the group who had practiced lovingkindness toward the Black person, implicit racial bias against Blacks got smaller. There was no change in bias toward Asian people, suggesting that the effects were specific to the racial group focused on during practice. In addition, further analysis showed that other-regarding positive emotions such as gratitude and love were a significant factor in the reduction of implicit bias.

This work suggests two conclusions: 1) that a very short emotional induction can change implicit bias toward a targeted group, and 2) that generating other-focused positive emotions is important to make this shift.

Finally, the utility of meditation in reducing bias may not be restricted to lovingkindness practices. A recent study found that people who engaged in 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation showed significantly less discrimination than controls in a “trust game” that involved exchanging money with partners of different races. And in a different group of participants, the same mindfulness intervention reduced racial bias on the IAT compared to controls, supporting the behavioral changes. Interestingly, additional analyses suggested that the reduction in implicit bias stemmed from a “weakening of automatic associations between these groups and negative constructs.” Other analyses from the Kang et al. study found that reductions in psychological stress were a major factor in reducing bias (although only for the homeless group in that case). Thus, its possible that a general stress-reduction effect of meditation may also play a role here. More work will need to further clarify the deeper mechanisms of these changes.

Future Directions

These kinds of studies will need to be extended to determine the potential long-term effects of various forms of meditation. For example, it’s still unknown whether a short-term intervention (of a few minutes or a few weeks) can change implicit bias in a lasting way. Given the decades of constant reinforcement of negative stereotypes, it could well be that when a person stops practicing, the old patterns will re-emerge. It will also be fascinating in future studies to see whether these changes are reflected on behavioral and neural levels.

While this research is still in its infancy, these studies point to an exciting possibility for change. As groups organize and work on societal and political levels to move toward racial equality, we should be encouraged and inspired to know that we can also take individual responsibility for our own minds. By engaging repeatedly in mental and emotional practices that are meant to foster attitudes of equality and compassion, we can change the unconscious associations that drive our behavior.

The situation in our culture may seem dire, but the more we learn, the more we see that change is always possible. And it is only by changing ourselves that we change society.

WENDY HASENKAMP, PhD, is the Science Director of the Mind & Life Institute. She is a neuroscientist, contemplative practitioner, teacher, and writer who is interested in understanding how the mind and brain can be transformed through experience and practice to enhance flourishing. Wendy’s latest project is the Mind & Life podcast, where she interviews leading experts in contemplative science to share different perspectives on how we investigate the mind, and how we might integrate contemplative wisdom to improve our lives and create a more connected society.

This essay has been modified from the original version published at courageofcare.org on March 24, 2016. Header image adapted from 123rf.com. Headphone image adapted from flickr user Nickolai Kashirin. Updated July 2020.

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Cultivating Pro-Sociality at a Time of Unprecedented Change

Mind and Life Institute — Sun, 12 Jul 2020 14:57:01 +0000

Image of Kamilah Majied’s SRI 2020 plenary lecture, painted by contemplative scribe Kelvy Bird.

Held against the backdrop of a global pandemic and worldwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism, Mind & Life’s 17th annual Summer Research Institute (SRI) offered participants in 22 countries a unique opportunity to reflect on recent events and their roles in contributing to individual and societal healing.

“This is a critical moment in history that will shape our society in ways we cannot imagine,” said Mind & Life President Susan Bauer-Wu in welcoming over 200 attendees to the June 8-13 online event. Entitled Cultivating Pro-Social Development Across the Lifespan: Context, Relationships, and Contemplative Practice, the event sought to explore how people can “engage with one another in ways that foster meaningful relationships and caring connections,” she added.

In response to COVID-19 restrictions, SRI 2020 was the first ever to be held virtually. Over five days, attendees tuned in to plenary talks spanning science and the humanities, engaged in vigorous dialogue, and explored ongoing research through small groups and poster presentations.

Punctuating the proceedings was a day of contemplative practice facilitated by Courage of Care, a nonprofit dedicated to building communities of truth-telling and transformative practice. The arts, too, held a special place at SRI 2020, from an evening concert by sitarist Srinivas Reddy and session renderings by internationally-recognized scribe Kelvy Bird to presentations reinforcing the role of self-expression in healing historical trauma.

Multi-disciplinary faculty shared insights on the cultivation of prosocial behaviors from infancy through adulthood and across sectors from education to healthcare. “How we think about development has changed dramatically over the last 20 years,” said Philip Zelazo, Professor at the Institute of Childhood Development at the University of Minnesota, adding that contemplative practices like mindfulness and reflection hold enormous promise for the cultivation of prosocial behaviors in childhood and beyond.

Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, Professor of Education at the University of British Columbia, shared how school-based programs are promoting the development of empathy, kindness, and altruism among students, stressing the importance of whole-system approaches that emphasize teacher well-being and the contexts in which children learn.

Faculty and participants alike grappled with how to nurture prosocial qualities like trust, compassion, and resilience in societies marked by historic inequality and systemic oppression. Indigenous scholar Ramona Beltrán, an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver, elaborated on the power of storytelling to interrupt and heal intergenerational trauma. “History is not linear,” she affirmed, but rather wounding is compounded over time by multiple exposures to structural and social inequality. Beltrán pointed to the “vast and transcendent” power of narrative to interrupt and heal historical traumas.

“Systemic racism is in place because of our inability to deal with it, talk about it, and do it in a way that is reparative,” said education consultant Angel Acosta. He went on to describe a persistent “ecology of inequality” in the U.S., and around the world, and the need for education systems to better prepare students to “process and metabolize” the truth of the past.

Systemic racism is in place because of our inability to deal with it,
talk about it, and do it in a way that is reparative.
-Angel Acosta

Acosta shared his work through the 400 Years of Inequality project, which marked the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans to the U.S. through the creation of a 4×20-foot, interactive timeline. “The timeline is a contemplative tool that brings communities together to engage in mindfulness practice for the purpose of elevating and increasing consciousness,” he explained.

The current moment was viewed by several presenters as a turning point, calling for new ways of being in achieving deeper structural shifts. “The planet cannot say it any more clearly that business can’t go on as usual,” said Juan Santoyo, Co-founder of the Black Lotus Collective. In response to societal fragmentation, Santoyo stressed the importance of integrating fields, a defining characteristic of SRI since its inception.

Current unprecedented events were seen by many as an invitation to use contemplative practice as a springboard for social action. “I see such a role for contemplative practitioners in this moment and also a chance to show up more and go for broke,” said Brooke Lavelle, Co-founder and President of Courage of Care. “Spiritual practice is inherently political,” she added. For many traditions, “it’s about helping us grow beyond our sense of ‘me’ to a bigger sense of ‘we.’”

Kamilah Majied, a Professor in the Department of Social Work at California State University, referred to the collective pause brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic as a potentially “beautiful disruption,” and an opportunity to move toward more pro-social engagement. She encouraged participants to explore how their research and educational endeavors could reflect what she refers to as cultural humility and fierce compassion.

After SRI, attendees reported feeling connected, inspired, and part of something larger. Said one, “the collective processing of the current cultural moment as it relates to our work was invaluable.” Wrote another, “I appreciated the interconnectedness in the community and have many ideas for collaboration with those I met. Together, through mindfulness, we can stand for social change.”

Video excerpts of SRI 2020 presentations are being made available through Mind & Life social media channels.

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Message from the Dalai Lama in a Time of Crisis: “We Have to Think of One Humanity”

Mind and Life Institute — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 18:33:44 +0000

In a world besieged by the COVID-19 pandemic and rocked by anti-racism protests, more than 1.3 million people tuned-in to a livestream event, simultaneously translated into 14 languages, to hear the Dalai Lama offer insights on the way forward.

Hosted by the Mind & Life Institute, the June 19 “Conversation with the Dalai Lama on Resilience, Compassion, and Healing for Today,” coincided with the Juneteenth holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. Over 90 minutes, the global leader spoke to the urgency of managing destructive emotions, the primacy of recognizing our essential oneness, and the role of education in equipping emerging generations to do both.

Pointing to the Institute’s 33-year history of Dialogues with the Dalai Lama, Mind & Life President Susan Bauer-Wu kicked-off the conversation. “You have inspired us to be curious and ask big questions,” she said, reflecting on Mind & Life’s mission to bridge science and contemplative wisdom to bring “good into the world.” Joining her was Mind & Life Board Chair Thupten Jinpa, President of the Compassion Institute and the Dalai Lama’s long-time translator.

Moderator Carolyn Jacobs, Dean Emerita of the Smith College School of Social Work, anchored the conversation by first asking the global leader for advice on how to cope with the fear and uncertainty brought about by recent unprecedented events.

Seated before two large screens displaying the faces of Conversation participants and special guests, the Dalai Lama began by offering his appreciation to the healthcare workers who have faced “risk and danger in their own life” in caring for people during the pandemic. He then cautioned against the overwhelming pull of fear and anxiety at a time of profound loss and uncertainty.

“Fear makes us more vulnerable,” said the Dalai Lama, who has long spoken to the impact of negative emotions like fear and anger, which can distort our ability to think clearly. The topic was the focus of a 2000 Mind & Life Dialogue as chronicled in Daniel Goleman’s book, Destructive Emotions.

The Dalai Lama also reinforced the connection between mental attitudes and racial injustice. “Thinking ‘my group,’ ‘their group’ on the basis of religion, on the basis of color, on the basis of social status—all this is old thinking,” he said. “We have to think [in terms] of one humanity… That’s my number one commitment: to promote a sense of oneness of seven billion human beings.”

“That’s my number one commitment: to promote
a sense of oneness of seven billion human beings.”
– The Dalai Lama

Discussant Richie Davidson, Founder and Director of the Center for Healthy Minds, elaborated on the impact of fear and uncertainty on both mental and physical health. “One of the problems people face is uncertainty, uncertainty about how this will end, uncertainty about whether they’re infected,” he said. Living amid pervasive fear and anxiety also has biological effects, he added, citing that among those ages 35 to 45 in the United States, black people are ten times more likely to die from the coronavirus than white people—a legacy of systemic racism.

“How can we control our minds and not be so influenced by messages of fear?” he posed.

Our mental states can be affected by meditation and exercises to control our breathing, responded the Dalai Lama. “Through training, through reason, we can develop positive emotions,” he said.

Davidson then acknowledged the Dalai Lama’s role in catalyzing the scientific study of meditation and compassion training through early Mind & Life Dialogues and subsequent research now constituting the field of contemplative science. He went on to cite one finding “that relatively short amounts of compassion practice can reduce implicit bias, [a form of] prejudice that is subtle, non-conscious, and present in our demeanor and behavior to members, for example, of racial outgroups.” Davidson then asked how such knowledge and practices, especially the cultivation of compassion, can be disseminated more broadly to achieve greater impact in today’s world.

In response, the Dalai Lama returned to a familiar refrain: education. “Education about our inner world is very much lacking,” he said, speaking to the importance of teaching students about their minds and emotions. What the Dalai Lama has long referred to as educating the heart, includes equipping students to manage difficult emotions, build positive relationships, and understand their role in an interconnected world.

“Through education we can change,” he emphasized, and evolve into a more compassionate society. “Ultimately, this is the source of individual happiness, the happiness of the community, and the happiness of [the world’s] seven billion human beings.

To view the full Conversation, watch the video.

The post Message from the Dalai Lama in a Time of Crisis: “We Have to Think of One Humanity” appeared first on Mind & Life Institute.

Mind & Life Speaks Out Against Racism

Susan Bauer-Wu — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 15:04:09 +0000

We sit with heavy hearts in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. This senseless loss has deepened wounds in the United States at a time when ongoing health and economic crises continue to disproportionately harm Black people. We are profoundly aware of the horrors of racism, reverberating with societal disconnection and continued fear and grief across our communities.

We have also witnessed the resilience, courage, and hope of the human spirit in the face of such pain. In this country and around the world many are working hard to alleviate suffering, to dismantle systems of oppression, and to better support, protect, and uplift the voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.

At the Mind & Life Institute, we solemnly acknowledge the generations of injustice and trauma experienced by people of color—whose each and every life matters. As an organization, we are committed to showing up fully to support the healing, humility, and open-heartedness required for antiracist work. Mind & Life does this work as a staff and as an expanding community, in recognition that we must take ownership and address our own biases. We know the ripple effect of our actions day-to-day contributes to greater collective flourishing.

We believe our work at the intersection of contemplative wisdom, science, and changemaking is a powerful place from which to inspire action toward a future that embraces our shared humanity and interconnection. In the words of Ruth King, we “must teach [our] children about racism, not from a distance, but from [our] own wise heart.”

Mind & Life is committed to a bold vision for shifting human consciousness and embracing compassion as a guiding principle in creating a safer, kinder, and a more equitable world.

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“It’s Helped Me Manage My Life Better:” How University Students Benefit from Mindfulness During the Pandemic

Sheila Kinkade — Mon, 18 May 2020 15:42:09 +0000

In mid-March, Cindy Ripoll-Martinez, a second-year student at the University of Miami, was alerted that campus would be closing for the remainder of the semester in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hastily, she moved 20 minutes away to her brother’s apartment, where she now lives by herself and attends classes virtually.

While Cindy talks regularly to her family in the Dominican Republic, she admits that being alone in the middle of a pandemic can be stressful. As part of her morning routine, she practices mindful sitting, followed by loving-kindness meditation.

Cindy began pursuing contemplative practice in earnest as part of a class she’s enrolled in, “Mindfulness, Attention, and the Brain,” taught by Amishi Jha, a cognitive neuroscientist and Associate Professor of Psychology at the University. A Mind & Life Institute Fellow, Amishi started teaching the course 15 years ago when little was known about the science of mindfulness.

“The fact that today I can point to a whole body of knowledge directly tied to contemplative neuroscience is in large part thanks to Mind & Life’s foundational support of this field,” she says, adding that researchers in her lab have gone on to attend Mind & Life’s Summer Research Institute and have received Francisco J. Varela Research Grants.

Students like Cindy in Amishi’s current class report that they’re now using the mindfulness practices they learned to cope with life in the COVID-19 world. “A lot of it has to do with mind wandering,” says Amishi. “They [the students] don’t know when they’ll be coming back to campus. They don’t know about their internships. They hope their parents won’t lose their jobs. They hope grandma is okay.”

They [the students] don’t know when they’ll be coming back to campus.
They don’t know about their internships. They hope their parents won’t lose their jobs. They hope grandma is okay.

“It’s helped me manage my life better,” says Cindy of her daily mindfulness practice. “It’s made me aware of my thoughts throughout the day, especially distracting thoughts when I try to do homework or pay attention to family members when they’re talking.”

Mindfulness also helps when fears arise. “Before I go to bed, I think to myself, someone could come in,” she says, referring to the prospect of an outside intruder. “Before the training, my brain would have loved those thoughts. Now, I realize it’s no benefit to me to think about all the possible things that could happen. It’s helped me focus on the present moment.”

In class, Amishi’s students learn about the effects of mindfulness and attention training on the brain. “We know attention is important and we’re exploring how mindfulness can improve that,” says Amishi. Students read peer reviewed journal articles and develop their own research questions. Their final paper is a grant proposal which describes how they will test out their research ideas.

Given students’ packed schedules, the course focuses on short-form, 15-minute mindfulness exercises. Every week, the class learns a new mindfulness practice, among them mindful breathing, body scan meditation, and loving-kindness meditation.

“Throughout the semester, we look at topics like the brain bases of mind wandering—which is when our attention strays from its intended object—and how mind wandering can decrease productivity and increase negative mood,” Amishi explains. Students learn to notice their own mind wandering by doing the meditation exercises. “It’s interesting to watch them shift their relationship to it,” she says, adding that students report not being as identified with the contents of their mind wandering by the end of the semester as compared to the beginning.

The course reflects Amishi’s research focus on the impact of short-form mindfulness training on individuals working in high stress environments, including first responders and military personnel.

Throughout the semester, we look at topics like the brain bases of mind wandering—which is when our attention strays from its intended object—and how mind wandering can decrease productivity and increase negative mood.

Meghana Chapalamadugu, a neuroscience major, is poised to graduate from UMiami this spring. She took Amishi’s class to learn about the science of mindfulness. She’s now finishing out the semester from her family’s home in Tampa.

“It’s kinda cramped,” says Meghana of daily life for a family of four working under one roof. While her virtual classes are manageable, she’s having to adjust her expectations around what’s next. “You work so hard for four years. A graduation with family and friends present would have been nice,” she says.

Meghana will begin medical school in the fall but is unclear whether classes will be held in person. “There are hands-on experiences you just can’t get through online media,” she says. “It’s kind of stressful not knowing what’s going to happen with that.”

To help cope with looming uncertainties, Meghana spends 15 minutes a day engaged in an open monitoring practice she learned in Amishi’s class. Sitting on a bench or cross legged on the ground, she focuses on stillness and letting her thoughts come and go without being judgmental or dismissive. If she starts to worry or get into a “ruminative headspace,” she labels what comes to mind as a thought and lets it go.

“I end up feeling better,” says Meghana, adding, “it’s a tool for managing stress and worry.” It’s also improved her relationships with family and friends. “I’ve become more willing to see another person’s perspective rather than being judgmental.”

Amishi sees short-form meditation as particularly useful given the stress people are experiencing as a result of the pandemic. Increased fear has a broader cognitive effect, she explains, and interferes with our ability to stay focused on the task at hand.

Striving to cultivate a positive mindset under such circumstances can be counter-productive, she adds. “You want to be careful with how you expend your cognitive resources. Trying to make yourself feel good is the wrong requirement,” she says. “Instead, notice how you’re feeling. Acknowledge it. Know that the prominence of those feelings will shift over time.”

One of the positives to arise from the pandemic, according to Amishi, is valuing simple pleasures we once took for granted. When asked what they wanted to be doing four months from now, her students responded with ease: to hug a friend, go out for breakfast, spend time at the beach.

As for Cindy, she’s now sharing the practices she learned with family and friends and wants to dig deeper into the research questions she’s generated in class, particularly related to binaural beats and mindfulness meditation. “It [mindfulness] has given me incredible benefits,” she says. “I just want everyone to be doing it.”

In June, Amishi Jha will share more about her research and its impact in a Mind & Life podcast interview.

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Could COVID-19 be the Catalyst Whole Student Education Needs?

Sheila Kinkade — Mon, 04 May 2020 14:56:20 +0000

No one quite knows where education is headed in the era of COVID-19. Students grapple with when, and if, they’ll return to school this year, while teachers struggle to master online instruction. Parents, too, stress over how to support kitchen table learning, while working from home.

And it’s not just about when and how schools will start back up. Members of Generation Z, young people between the ages of 11 and 25, and Generation Alpha, those born from 2010 to 2024, will experience a world profoundly transformed—economically and socially—by the virus.

How will educational systems respond in preparing students to navigate uncertainty, manage challenging emotions, and understand their roles and responsibilities in an interconnected world? What can schools do to help teachers manage stress? A new Mind & Life Institute resource, “Education of the Heart,” offers insights and inspiration from leading scientists, scholars, and educational practitioners on how to meet these and other pressing needs.

The multimedia site summarizes presentations and discussion from Mind & Life’s 33rd Dialogue with the Dalai Lama held in Dharamsala, India in 2018. The Dalai Lama has long advocated for educating the heart through social, emotional, and ethical learning that stresses inner values: compassion, kindness, forgiveness, peace.

As Robert Roeser, a developmental and educational psychologist at Pennsylvania State University notes in the site’s Afterword, the Dialogue “touched upon the profound need for a wider re-imagining of the aims and practices of education in ways that place human flourishing at its center, at its heart.”

The Dialogue “touched upon the profound need for a wider
re-imagining of the aims and practices of education in ways
that place human flourishing at its center, at its heart.”

Presenters underscored tremendous strides made in social and emotional learning (SEL) over two decades while exploring new generation programs and approaches designed to cultivate attentional skills, systems-thinking skills, and ethical virtues like kindness and compassion among students. Beyond student learning, presenters made clear that parents, teachers, and school systems were all integral to educating the heart.

Such “SEL 2.0” principles, as Roeser writes, aim “to prepare young people to succeed not only as workers in the global economy, but as engaged citizens wanting to be forces for good—working toward individual and collective flourishing in the face of serious global challenges: economic inequality, social division, and climate change.”

With COVID-19 causing massive disruption on a global scale, the Dialogue’s message is even more timely. “This crisis shows us that we are not separate from one another even when we are living apart,” the Dalai Lama recently shared. “We all have a responsibility to exercise compassion and help.”

Indeed, major crises often prompt more prosocial behaviors and can result in longer term changes in how people behave and relate to one another, wrote Max Fisher in a recent New York Times article.

Could the current environment both spur demand for and the adoption of educational approaches that reinforce social, emotional, and ethical learning among students? Much is left to be seen yet initiatives like “Education of the Heart” help reinforce what’s possible and already happening around the globe.

To amplify stories of positive change, Mind & Life invites visitors to the digital dialogue to email communications@mindandlife.org with how they are working to advance an education of the heart. We look forward to sharing these stories in the future.

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Cultivating a Compassionate and Connected Remote Work Culture

Susan Bauer-Wu — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 16:39:38 +0000

Amid this COVID-19 pandemic, we all find ourselves forced into physical isolation, necessitating what Time aptly called “the world’s largest work-from-home experiment.” As individuals and organizations, we are navigating this uncharted terrain without a roadmap, or clarity around how long it will last.

How do organizations skillfully move forward at this time of not knowing, while effectively carrying out their missions? How do individual team members maintain engagement and productivity while caring for those they live with, especially young children and elderly parents?

At Mind & Life, we first recognize that we are privileged to be employed, and we are deeply grateful to be able to maintain our full staff. We are also learning as we go, staying receptive and nimble, and exchanging ideas with one another on how to be resilient: personally and professionally. In that spirit, I’d like to share a bit about our journey in cultivating a compassionate and connected remote work culture, one that is responsive to and aligned with our values and mission.

At the core of Mind & Life’s work is bridging science and contemplative wisdom to promote flourishing, with an awareness of our interconnectedness with one another and the natural world. We recognize that in order for our organization to flourish, and have a positive impact in the world, our team must thrive. And for our team to thrive, each member needs to thrive. The web of interconnection within our team, and in relation to the world around us, is undeniable.

The web of interconnection within our team,
and in relation to the world around us, is undeniable.

How our organization shows up to the world in fulfilling our mission is informed by the well-being and functioning of our team members. We are being intentional in fostering a sense of connectedness, while attending to team member needs. In addition to ensuring that everyone has the technology, supplies, and technical support needed to carry out their work from home, here are other virtual office strategies we’ve put in place:

Creating virtual meetings that foster meaningful connection—Each week begins with an all-team video huddle, starting with personal check-ins and followed by work priorities. Team members are encouraged to schedule more frequent check-ins to plan, troubleshoot, and connect person-to-person.
Prioritizing individual wellbeing—Team members now receive two hours of paid wellness time each week, along with two hours of paid social time with a colleague, whether going for a “six feet apart” walk or enjoying a virtual coffee break together. A carry-over from our in-person work, time is set aside daily for optional team contemplative practice time and bi-weekly group yoga via video call.
Being flexible; accommodating work-at-home needs—Flexible hours help team members, particularly those with children at home, schedule their days around other responsibilities. Staff also now have access to office Zoom accounts to connect with family and friends in the evenings.
Creating space for creativity and joy—Through a “Virtual Kitchen,” team members share recipes, music, poems, photos, video yoga classes, meditations, and uplifting news on the “silver lining” of this crisis. On Friday afternoons, a virtual happy hour offers a casual way to celebrate team accomplishments and connect as a group. A volunteer “culture crew” strategizes fun ways to nurture joy, such as “pet sharing moments” at staff meetings, and a lunchtime “quarantine photo share.”

The COVID-19 crisis has opened up new opportunities for us to “walk our talk” and values as an organization. It hasn’t been easy; yet we are each rising to the task, confident that how we show up for each other, especially in times of crisis, is integral to our work. In her recent essay in The Guardian, Rebecca Solnit, who has written extensively about life after disasters, shares that catastrophes have the power to change “the world and our view of it.” One of our main tasks now, she adds, “is to understand this moment, what it might require of us, and what it might make possible.”

The stay-at-home moment we are now experiencing is a profound time in-between two worlds that we will long remember. By creating spaces for team members to honor, process, and adapt to a new reality, we can better support them in navigating and finding meaning during this period of profound change.

The video below is a peek into how we are sharing compassion at Mind & Life. We invite you to watch and respond with your #MomentsofCompassion on social media!

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Mind & Life Impact Story: Bringing Mindfulness to Utah Public Schools

Brynn Pedrick — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 23:59:54 +0000

Students practicing a Learning to Breathe exercise.

While attending Mind & Life’s 33rd Dialogue with the Dalai Lama in 2018, Kirk and Gael Benson were inspired. The Dialogue, now available online as the “Education of the Heart,” explored new frontiers in youth education rooted in science and contemplative wisdom, expanding beyond Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). During the Dialogue, Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, a renowned expert in SEL at the University of British Columbia, showed a map of the United States indicating that in 2018 only 50% of states were integrating SEL into their education policies.

“We saw how mindfulness was spreading throughout the country, but were struck with how little was being done in Utah, our home state,” Kirk says, “my wife turned to me and said, we can do this at home.”

Kirk and Gael have been part of the expanding Mind & Life community since 2014. Throughout his life, Kirk has been driven by curiosity, leading him to explore a broad range of subjects. He says that the journey into contemplative wisdom has been exciting, full of insight gained from personal investigation and contemplative practice. Mind & Life’s work bridging science and contemplation led Kirk and Gael to become donors.

At the 2018 Dialogue, Kirk and Gael learned about the rising rates of anxiety and depression in adolescents, and the need to teach children how to survive and flourish in a complex world. They had already seen a high level of suicide among adolescents in their local school district in Utah and felt a need to relieve some of this suffering. From presentations and discussions at the Dialogue, Kirk understood that meditation offers a way to address emotional challenges and improve children’s lives. He wondered how he could apply this knowledge at home.

Kirk recalls that “the Dalai Lama was adamant that we need to do more to help our children, encouraging us to make a difference.”

In 2019, a year after Kirk and Gael returned home from the Dialogue, Kirk had an opportunity to do just that. A neighbor, who was also the chairperson of the English department at a local high school, sought insight from Kirk on how to support his students socially and emotionally. The interaction inspired Kirk to act on what he had learned from the Dialogue.

Building on his experiences with Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Kirk decided to pursue training in Learning to Breathe, an adaptation of MBSR for adolescents. Following his training, he began teaching the Learning to Breathe curriculum to a volunteer group of high school juniors and seniors.

“I laugh because the first time I taught it, my neighbor, who was in the classroom, spent his time grading papers while I taught. But the second time I taught it, he paid attention—he saw the positive effect it had on his students.”

In fact, the Learning to Breathe classes were so successful in helping students that Kirk’s neighbor decided to pursue Learning to Breathe training for use in his regular classes. His leadership and the positive change in his students inspired other English teachers in the school to implement mindfulness in their own classrooms. Now hundreds of high school students are being taught the basic principles of mindfulness.

Now, fourteen months since Kirk brought mindfulness into the school district, over 50 teachers and counselors have completed training and are incorporating mindfulness into their lives and profession. The impact appears consistent with schools across the country that have adopted mindfulness practices in the classroom: students seem to exhibit decreased anxiety, lower stress, better self-regulation, improved social interactions, and an overall improvement in academic performance.

Kirk’s impact is creating a ripple effect across the entire school district with its 85,000 students. Mind & Life is grateful to have played a part in this story and is humbled to see how our mission has come to life: the 2018 Mind & Life Dialogue provided Kirk the insights and inspiration to take action in his own community. Kirk is making a difference by reaching students, teachers, and schools in ways that can help address today’s challenges.

The 2018 Mind & Life Dialogue that inspired Kirk is now available as a multimedia site, the “Education of the Heart” Digital Dialogue. The second of our digital dialogues, “Education of the Heart” is a free collection of presentations and discussions, shared through video, images, and text, featuring the Dalai Lama and experts in the field. Those experts include Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, who will be joining us in 2020 as a presenter at both our Summer Research Institute and our Contemplative Research Conference. Parents, teachers, researchers, and anyone interested in youth well-being and education will benefit from the Dialogue content, as well as the extensive resource list, which includes books, articles, curricula, and at-home activities.

In his book Beyond Religion, the Dalai Lama says “it is down to the youth of today to make a better world than the one which has been bequeathed to them. Much rests on their shoulders.” At Mind & Life, we have deep appreciation for Kirk and the many others who work in their own communities to make a better world through the support and education of our youth.

Kirk Benson (far left) with a local school district MBSR class.

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