Meditation and Psychotherapy
Posted in Meditation, Mindfulness, Wellness, youtube
Tagged meditation, Psychotherapy
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courage
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Anaïs Nin
Show me
Show me the suffering of the most miserable, so I will know my people’s plight. Free me to pray for others, for you are present in every person. Help me take responsibility for my own life, so that I can be free at last. Grant me courage to serve others, for in service there is true life. Give me honesty and patience, so that the Spirit will be alive among us. Let the Spirit flourish and grow, so that we will never tire of the struggle. Let us remember those who have died for justice, for they have given us life. Help us love even those who hate us, so we can change the world. Cesar Chavez
Meditation has Long-term Effects on the Brain
According to scientists from Harvard and Boston University, meditation produces enduring changes in emotional processing in the brain according to an article published in November of 2012 in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Researchers trained people with one of two different types of meditation, mindful meditation and compassionate meditation over an 8 week period. They measured activity in the brain using functional MRIs 3 weeks before the study and at 3 weeks after and noted what happened to areas of the brain related to compassion. They found the those people who learned compassionate meditation had a different and more loving response 3 weeks after the course even when not meditating.
Posted in Creativity, creativity, Emotions, Grounding, Health, Meditation, Mindfulness, Wellness, YouTube
Tagged brain, meditation, mindfulness
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Art used to connect with dementia patients
Something happened when Brant Kingman handed his mother a colored pencil.
In the three years since Polly Penney, 87, was diagnosed with dementia, she had lost much of her short-term memory and some of her language. So she would ask Kingman the same question again, then again. Out of “absolute out-of-my-mind frustration,” Kingman, an artist, decided to try drawing together.
Penney grew quiet. Her shoulders loosened. “It silenced her so we could sit together,” Kingman said. “And then every now and then, lucid thoughts would appear to her.”
Almost unintentionally, he tapped into a national trend: using art as therapy for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. There are now art workshops for Alzheimer’s patients. Painting, poetry and pottery classes are tailored to dementia’s tics. Giving Voice Chorus, a pair of Twin Cities choirs for people with dementia, has created a tool kit so other cities might start their own.
Neurological disorders that attack memory and verbal communication can spare creativity, some research shows. In special cases, Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia can even kick artistic ability into overdrive, said Dr. Bruce Miller, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco. If the disease attacks circuits on one side of the brain, he said, it might spark an interest or ability in the other side.
“It’s all about the geography,” said Miller, director of the university’s Memory and Aging Center. “It’s where the disease hits that is a determinant of what is lost — but sometimes what is gained.”
Partly because it offers another way to communicate, art therapy is “going to become, more and more, a regular part of how we look after people,” he said. MORE HERE
Posted in Art, Art Therapy, Wellness
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