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Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

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August 10, 2017 By Admin

Wise Mind and the Neuroscience of Mindfulness Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC

Wise Mind and the Neuroscience of Mindfulness Practice

What is wise mind? Marsha M. Linehan developed this clinical process in her work on dialectical behavior therapy. Wise mind is the middle way between rational/reasonable mind and emotional mind; it allows us to live with balanced reason and emotion in daily interactions. When practiced regularly, it may reduce suffering from excessive stress, shame, guilt, and traumatic life experiences. One key benefit is that wise mind’s effects on emotion regulation may reduce the need to self-medicate, a core cause for all addictions. Rather than simply depending on sensory pleasures for short-term escape from pain and/or a fleeting experiences of joy/happiness, wise mind may improve radical acceptance, sensory soothing, and responding inter-personally with wisdom (kindness, respect, compassion). A valued possible outcome is increased authentic, longer-term happiness.

More Details: Wise mind mindfulness practices, along with regular meditation and/or yoga, allow us to pursue personal aspirations and goals using both reason and emotion. Whereas emotion is the juice of life (both pleasant and unpleasant), reason gives us logical strategies and methods to meet personal goals and satisfy needs. This combination of mindfulness skills may also reduce emotion dysregulation and impulsivity. When such mindfulness practices are used in skilled psychotherapy with home practice, it may lead to improvements in depression, anxiety, the effects of trauma, addictions, and eating disorders.  Various well-constructed meta-analyses have demonstrated that mindfulness practice (mainly regular  meditation) produced positive effects on depression, anxiety, chronic pain and emotion regulation. It is important to note that all these conditions may become precursors for addictions, including smartphone addiction. By 2007 it was estimated that nearly ten percent of Americans (30,000,000 people) practiced meditation; add to this other mindfulness practices like yoga, qi gong, and tai chi and that number may double.  By 2015 mindfulness-based practices were well-integrated into various skilled therapies: mindfulness-based stress reduction (improves depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and emotion regulation), dialectical behavior therapy (improves emotion regulation, self-soothing, and impulsivity), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (50% eduction in relapse for repeated serious depressive episodes), mindfulness-based relapse prevention (for addictions), and acceptance and commitment therapy. The key variable was clear: if clients practiced regularly, they improved their clinical conditions, but if clients did not practice, they did not improve their clinical conditions. Therefore, two things are very important: doing regular practice in psychotherapy sessions, and the clinician being a regular mindfulness practitioner.

Mindfulness and the Brain:  Key neuroscience findings suggest that regular practice of meditation (and/or yoga) may result in profound brain changes. Some findings are that regular practice may weaken the limbic systems’s reactivity via lower firing rate and neuronal power, strengthen the frontal and prefrontal executive/emotional functions via better intention, attention, awareness, and concentration, and possibly improve right-left brain integration. It has been suggested that prefrontal activation increases levels of B-endorphin, a pain reducing opiate. Prefrontal activation may also improve experienced pleasure and reduce breathing rate so relaxation is experienced directly. When people pay close attention to positive stories they tell themselves and/or positive emotional memories, serotonin levels may increase. Thus mindfulness practices enhance the experience of happiness.  However, if people get stuck into paying attention to negative stories and negative emotional memories, the level of serotonin is reduced. Yes, being chronically stuck in the suffering of your past always makes emotional experience worse.

For more information refer to Aguirre, B. & Galen, G. (2017). Mindfulness for Borderline Personality Disorder…Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Filed Under: Benefits of Mindfulness, Featured, Marsha Linehan, MBSR, Meditation, Mindful Awareness, MIndfulness, Mindfulness Training Tagged With: MARSHA LINEHAN, MBSR, MINDFUL BASED STRESS REDUCTION, NEUROSCIENCE, PRACTICE

March 6, 2017 By Admin

What is Interoception and Why is it Important?

About Interoception and It’s Importance

Interoception (some may also call it neuroception) is the conscious detection and perception of sensory signals in the body and on the skin. Most often these signals are processed as sensations.  Sensation, as the foundation of emotional experience, is always there in our bodies; however, we are not always fully conscious of its existence or its experiential range. Perceived interoceptive sensations may be extremely subtle, thus requiring considerable practice and mind training for conscious registering of these body-based “feeling.”  Sometimes, awareness of interoception can be highly dramatic like sharp crushing chest pain in heart attacks and severe autonomic reactivity in panic attacks.  Perceived interoceptive sensations are always evaluated cognitively.  Some interoceptive experiences may be evaluated autonomically via limbic system and stress response system activation.  Once we are aware, we evaluate consciously. Western neuroscience has strong interest in neuroception for embodied contemplative experience as well as for clinical applications. Self-sensed bodily sensations are coded as pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. These are the same categories used in Buddhism to evaluate personal sense-door experience in life: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.

There are neuro-anatomical pathways interacting between and among externally based sensory experiences (thalamic processing of external sensory perception regarding seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting) and internal “felt-sense” experiences of inner body sensations. This is highly complex processing. Afferent sensory signals communicate with higher order cognitive and affective brain regions and processes; these brain-body-mind-heart interactions provide direct understanding of self in context with environment, personal history, emotions, and goal-oriented behaviors. In times of extreme stress and/or personal danger, interoception may be an early warning signal for unsafe conditions and the possibility of physical harm or death. In substance use disorders, interoception may serve dual purposes: craving and strong discomfort signal the need to ingest mind-altering substances, or an early warning signal to modify your current
situation or condition to avoid relapse. In mindfulness training such as still and moving meditation or yoga practice, interoception can guide us in breathing, being still, and bodily movement and awareness. Key clinical conditions (anxiety, depression, trauma, substance misuse, and eating disorders) include subtle and not-so-subtle interoceptive experiences – often leading to a multitude of self-medication behaviors  to avoid unpleasant experiences. With training and personal experience, interoception may help us with bio-psycho-social-spiritual realities and self-regulated emotional balance. Even the human face plays a role in interoception. Facial emotions are powerful influencers (proprioceptive feedback) in brain-mind experiences of emotional life. These experiences are intrapersonal and interpersonal in nature, and their “felt-sense” tends to be quite subtle.

Neuroscience research tends to examine coherence between interoceptive awareness and self-reported experiences in the
body. Physiological measurement and cognitive self-report are examined. Narrowed focus of attention on soft signals
(threshold sensitivity to feelings of well-being, mood, heart rate, respiration rate and depth, body temperature, etc.) are
the subjects of various studies. Thus far most outcomes do not support the premise that experienced meditators and yogis have superior interoceptive detection skills.  Although these practitioners in their own experience believe that they do have stronger sensitivity to “picking up” interoceptive signals. Based on my own experience, I think their assumption is correct.  This question will remain in limbo; generally, experienced practitioners do perform better in detection here, but the differences between groups of subjects tends to be non-significant. Some studies note that with a greatly expanded number of subjects, the differences may well fall into the statistically significant range. This may be a measurement and target sensitivity issue. Or, mindfulness practice with its brain plasticity changes may not lead to superior neuroception.

In practical terms related to clinical interventions, such practices as Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Feldenkrais, Alexander Method, Focusing, Somatic Awareness, and Hakomi Breath Training all appear to produced heightened sensitivity to interoceptive awareness.  Practice makes perfect!

For more information refer to Khalsa, S. S. et al. (July, 2008). Interoceptive awareness in experienced meditators. Psychophysiology, 45 (4), 671-677.  Melloni, M. et al. (December, 2013). Preliminary evidence about the effects of meditation on interoceptive sensitivity and social cognition. Behavioral and Brain Functioning online, Biomedical Central, 1-10.brainfunctioning-biomedicalcentral.com… retrieved December 5, 2016. See also Farb, N. et al. (June, 2015). Interoception, contemplative practice and health. Frontal Psychology, 1-69. Journal.frontiersin.org/article…retrieved December 15, 2016.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

 

Filed Under: Brain, Featured, Interoception, Science Tagged With: INTEROCEPTION, MINDFUL HAPPINESS, NEUROCEPTION, NEUROSCIENCE, SENSATION

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