idealawg

Can we reverse or slow the greying of the bar?

Is aging a state of mind? Do we age as we do because we are taught since birth that we must grow old, become infirm, and then die? Dr. Ellen Langer thinks our culture, and particularly supposedly knowledgeable professionals, are convincing us of things that are not true. For more about Langer and her research, read two past posts:

• Should we change our assumptions about elders? Do we know as much as we think we do? Should we say no to aging?
• Psychology of possibility: Interview of Ellen Langer about a book my dad just ordered at my recommendation

And here are some articles (all from examiner.com) to make you think about the role your beliefs about aging play in how you grow old.

• Will our thoughts and beliefs enable us to reverse the aging process?
• Can cult group mind control techniques reverse your aging process?
• Is old age our culture's voodoo curse of mental illness?

Take a few minutes to inventory your beliefs about the aging process. Consider your list of beliefs, and ask yourself, "Is that the way I want my growing-old process to be?" If not, you just may want to change what's in your mind.

An update on the Jazz Mindfulness Program

I have blogged before about the Jazz Mindfulness Program, a creative and valuable program for kids. Here's an update that was posted on the Mindfulness in Education Network listserv. I send it along with the permission of its author, Adam Bernstein.

I thought I'd chime in  about my new program, the Jazz Mindfulness Program and describe what we do. We started last OCT and have just begun our 2nd semester. We had a great first concert a few weeks ago, and the students ages 12 - 16, led with meditation instruction, then a short meditation with the all ages audience, and then an hour of structured jazz pieces and free improvisations.

We meet every Mon evening and the students engage in some sort of meditation to begin. Generally we sit for 5 to 10 minutes, but we have also tried walking and orange eating meditation. Sitting mediation is a great way to settle down everyone's mind, I would say, most of our rehearsals are very focused.

Our music practice is jazz-based and we play Mingus, Ellington, Monk, etc. Jazz music is all about mindfulness as resting in the present moment and listening to each other are essential. I strongly believe that jazz can help the students get in touch with their American roots and develop a deeper awareness for the diversity of our history and culture.

Jazz improvisation can present many challenges for the inexperienced player as chord changes, scales and song forms can inhibit freedom in their improvisations due to the amount of mental activity needed to navigate the standard repertoire. We work on understanding all of these

"Plaintiffs Lawyer's 'Reptile' Strategy Bites Back"

Because I am critical of the Reptile strategy (more about that another day [see post added May 21, 2010]), this article made me chuckle. From "Plaintiffs Lawyer's 'Reptile' Strategy Bites Back" (Fulton County Daily Report):

For $95, plaintiffs lawyers can buy a book that teaches them how to appeal to jurors' basic survival instincts, those that emanate from humans' "Reptilian" brains.

"When the Reptile sees a survival danger, she protects her genes by impelling the juror to protect himself and the community," write co-authors Don C. Keenan, an Atlanta plaintiffs lawyer, and David Ball, a North Carolina jury consultant.

But in a DeKalb County wrongful death trial last month, Keenan found that defense lawyers will also buy the book, "Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plaintiff's Revolution" -- and use it against him.

Representing a movie theater and a security company accused of not doing enough to prevent a fatal gang shooting in the theater parking lot, W. Winston Briggs and Matthew G. Moffett read from the book and referred to it during closing arguments.

One of their PowerPoint slides read, "Let's see if we can scare them/It could have been anyone killed out there ... because it's a public danger there ... but if you give us $ that will somehow eliminate this danger/They call this their 'reptile' strategy."

After two weeks of testimony and three-and-a-half hours of deliberation, the jury found for the defense.

"You've got to be careful what you put in writing," said Moffett. "We knew the arguments he was going to make, because the arguments were in print."

Keenan, who plans an appeal, disputed Moffett's assessment of the case and the defense's use of "Reptile."

Click to read the rest.

Blog Glob: "Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope"

Excerpt:

A new book on how the human brain interprets music has revealed that listeners rely upon finding patterns within the sounds they receive in order to make sense of it and interpret it as a musical composition.
 
While traditional classical music follows strict patterns and formula that allow the brain to make sense of the sound, modern symphonies by composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern simply confuse listeners' brains.

Philip Ball, author of The Music Instinct, has drawn on the latest scientific findings from neuroscientists to show structure and patterns in music are a fundamental part of musical enjoyment.

He said: "Many people still seem to find modern classical music challenging. If that is the case, then they can relax as it is challenging for a good reason and it is not because they are in some way too musically stupid to appreciate it.

"The brain is a pattern seeking organ, so it looks for patterns in music to make sense of what we hear. The music of Bach, for example, embodies a lot of the pattern forming process.

Click to read the rest of "Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope" (Telegraph - UK)

Blog Glob: "Origins of Purpose in Life: Refining our Understanding of a Life Well Lived"

Abstract:

Purpose can be characterized as a central, self-organizing life aim. Central in that when present, purpose is a predominant theme of a person’s identity. Self- organizing in that it provides a framework for systematic behavior patterns in everyday life. As a life aim, a purpose generates continual goals and targets for efforts to be devoted. A purpose provides a bedrock foundation that allows a person to be more resilient to obstacles, stress, and strain. In this paper, we outline a theoretical model of purpose development. Besides outlining various essential ingredients to creating a purpose in life, we describe three broad pathways. The first process is proactive involving effort over time and only resulting in a purpose after gradual refinement and clarification. The second process is reactive involving a transformative life event where a purpose arises and adds clarity to the person's life. The third process is social learning - involving the formation of purpose through observation, imitation, and modeling. Our aim is to stimulate more research on this higher-level construct in the architecture of personality.

Click to read the rest of "Origins of Purpose in Life" (Psychological Topics) [pdf].

Pew Report - Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

Excerpt:

Generations, like people, have personalities, and Millennials -- the American teens and twenty-somethings who are making the passage into adulthood at the start of a new millennium -- have begun to forge theirs: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change.

...

Of the four generations, Millennials are the only one that doesn't cite "work ethic" as one of their principal claims to distinctiveness. A nationwide Pew Research Center survey taken in 2009 may help explain why. This one focused on differences between young and old rather than between specific age groups. Nonetheless, its findings are instructive.

Nearly six-in-ten respondents cited work ethic as one of the big sources of differences between young and old. Asked who has the better work ethic, about three-fourths of respondents said that older people do. By similar margins, survey respondents also found older adults have the upper hand when it comes to moral values and their respect for others.

It might be tempting to dismiss these findings as a typical older adult gripe about "kids today." But when it comes to each of these traits -- work ethic, moral values, respect for others -- young adults agree that older adults have the better of it. In short, Millennials may be a self-confident generation, but they display little appetite for claims of moral superiority.

Click to read the rest.

Interview: The Meditating Brain with Richard Davidson

Click to listen to the Shrink Rap Radio interview with Dr. Richard Davidson.

H/T: Integral Options Cafe.

Blog Glob: "Happy and Unhappy Competitors: What Makes the Difference?"

Abstract:

Interpersonal competition is present in all arenas of our life, i.e. within the family, in school, among peers, in the workplace, and in the sports ground. Competition can be an immensely joyful, exciting, and motivating experience that contributes to goal attainment, self-evaluation, development and improvement of the individual, the competing parties, the group and the society. However, it can also be an anxiety provoking, stressful, and exhausting negative experience that leads to interpersonal conflicts and has destructive consequences individually, to the group and ultimately to the society.

Competition can be a friendly process in which the competitive parties mutually motivate and improve each other, but can also be a desperate fight full of aggression among the competitors who consider each other enemy. The result of competition can be winning or losing. Winning typically evokes positive emotions like happiness, satisfaction, and pride, but sometimes negative emotions emerge like guilt or embarrassment. Losing, as a potential result of competition, may result in sadness, disappointment, frustration,

Neurorealism: Pictures of the brain are powerful persuaders

Now we know the area of the brain responsible for errors in neuroscience analysis. Take a look at what Vaughan at MindHacks has to say about this neuroanatomy "discovery." He is talking about neurorealism, people's tendency to believe assertions about psychology and human behavior if the assertions are supplemented by images of brain scans.

From "Neurorealism" (New York Times):

A paper published online in September by the journal Cognition shows that assertions about psychology — even implausible ones like “watching television improved math skills” — seem much more believable to laypeople when accompanied by images from brain scans. And a paper accepted for publication by The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience demonstrates that adding even an extraneous reference to the brain to a bad explanation of human behavior makes the explanation seem much more satisfying to nonexperts.

The purposes for a mindfulness curriculum in medical school echo the benefits of increased mindfulness in the law

With a little editing, the reasons why the University of Rochester's Mindful Practice program was created could be applied to the legal profession. From the Web page titled "Why the Mindful Practice program was developed":

There are numerous situations that we all encounter on a daily basis that make it difficult to function at our best. Strong emotions, conflict, medical errors, burnout, difficult decisions, dealing with dying or extremely ill patients and witnessing unimaginable suffering place stress on students, residents and practicing physicians. We all can recall situations in which we were providing the best care we could for patients, even in the face of difficulties. We can also recall situations when we ignored something that should have been obvious, failed to establish a trusting relationship with a patient at a critical time, and made decisions in which we subsequently asked ourselves, “What was I thinking?” or “Was I really paying attention?”. We all know that there are ways in which our own well-being has affected clinical care. The goal of this program is to help clinicians use their knowledge, skills and presence to provide the best for patients and for themselves.

Sound clinical reasoning, strong patient-physician relationships and excellent technical quality of care depend on physicians’ ability to understand themselves, their thoughts, their feelings and their own moment-to-moment level of attention. However, physicians generally have limited understanding of the way that they process information and their own limitations. ...

Click to read the rest.