How Mindfulness Changes Our Brains

Mindfulness can improve well being and boost a healthy mind in terms of awareness, connection, insight, and purpose.

Richard Davidson has been investigating how mindfulness changes our brains.

He talks about the four pillars of a healthy mind:

1 / Awareness

2 / Connection

3 / Insight

4 / Purpose

Richard Davidson is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds.

His research is focused on the neural bases of emotion, emotional style and methods to promote human flourishing, including meditation and related contemplative practices.

He has published more than 400 articles and is the co-author of “The Emotional Life of Your Brain” and “Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body”,

In his co-authored book, Altered Traits, he unveils new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain.

In the last 20 years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made Daniel Goleman and Richard J Davidson giants in their fields, they show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.

Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open listeners’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change even if we continue for years without specific additions.

More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training.

The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice. Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.

#Neuroscience #Wellbeing #MentalHealth

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