This is a quick post for Michele. A sort of aggregated post. I’ll have to add more in the future regarding where this comes from. Essentially, I’ve been intrigued in the past few years by the work going in conjunction with the Mind and Life institute. This institute is trying to bring about collaboration between Buddhist practitioners and Science Researchers. I myself am not Buddhist, but appreciate some of their intellectual pursuits.
In particular, I came across the work of Matthieu Ricard (who’s called the Happiest Man On Earth- what a title… must have serious responsibilities!). Videos for you after the link…
I first heard Ricard give his presentation at TED (via their online presentation system) [20 mins.] (also can be found on Ted.com):
A longer discussion was to be had at Google’s Tech Talks [59 mins.]:
Eventually, this led me to Jon Kabat-Zinn, who has been credited with single-handedly bringing the practice of Meditation into modern Medicine in the US. He calls his program “Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).” Again, Google’s Tech Talks to the rescue: First, the primary discussion about the reasons for MBSR and some research [74 mins]…
Finally, a short meditation session actually led by Jon Kabat-Zinn for the Google Employees who attended his informal session [72 mins.]:
Quite a long post if you watch all the videos. For me the last was most useful, as I always wanted to attempt simple meditation, but I was making it too much of a cerebral event. This whole post started with a recent Migraine that Michele had, and my desire to help her relax and stop her pain.
I hope to have more links to actual research papers up soon.