idealawg

Are social and emotional competence or mindfulness important in the effectiveness of mediators?

There is not widespread agreement among mediators that mindfulness or self-awareness is an important factor in the effectiveness of a mediator. I think those qualities have a significant effect on the outcome of conflict resolution but I have no proof other than much anecdotal evidence from myself and many others. But, for example, see this article (mediate.com) for another opinion: "the advice that mediators need to meditate and center themselves before and during their mediations, is deluded."

We do know (see also) that mindfulness training can bring a person many benefits including increased emotion regulation, response flexibility, focus, and self-insight; and decreased reactivity, anxiety, and stress. All of those benefits would seem to support the effectiveness of a mediator but we have no direct research on mediator mindfulness or self-awareness—yet.

Until research is done on mediators, we will need to look for clues about factors of efficacy in other professions. At least one program for teachers is showing the benefits of mindfulness training. Go here to read some articles on the program. At that same link is a logic model that shows the influence of the social and emotional competence of the teacher on his or her classrooms and students. Wouldn't it be fun to draw an analogous diagram that shows the effects of mediators' social and emotional competence (I would add cognitive maturity) on the conflict resolution process and the parties? I just may do it; if you create one, let's compare models.

“Healthy Habits of Mind” – An Online Film About Integrating Secular Mindfulness Instruction into Schools

Press release from PRWeb:

Featuring neuroscience, in-class mindfulness instruction, training for educators by Mindful Schools, and interviews about why mindfulness belongs in education, "Healthy Habits of Mind" is a powerful resource for anyone making the case to use mindfulness in schools or at youth service providers.

A new online documentary film called “Healthy Habits of Mind” shows how secular mindfulness meditation practices can transform the educational landscape. The full film is freely available at http://www.mindfulschools.org/hhom.

MINDFULNESS & EDUCATION
Introduced in medical environments by Dr. Kabat-Zinn in 1979, secular mindfulness practice has since cascaded from hospitals to therapy, corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Genentech, government agencies, and now schools.

Backed by a rapidly growing volume of neuroscience and research, mindfulness training provides the essential practice-based complement to allow children to develop their social and emotional intelligence as well as their ability to regulate stress, attention and emotion. Cost-effective and easy to implement in public school environments, mindfulness programs are quickly gaining ground in schools across the United States.

HEALTHY HABITS OF MIND: AN ONLINE DOCUMENTARY FILM
Produced by Danish filmmaker Mette Bahnsen, “Healthy Habits of Mind” is an online film about integrating mindfulness into education, featuring:
NEUROSCIENCE: World-renowned neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson (founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds) explains the science behind mindfulness and how it can increase happiness and well-being in youth.
IN-CLASS INSTRUCTION: See kindergarten teacher Renee Harris (a Mindful Schools Curriculum

What's Create a Great Funeral Day? Listen in today to learn all about the holiday

Today is the 14th annual Create a Great Funeral Day. In an interview with Gail Rubin, I will talk about the history of the day and why I registered it as a holiday, the benefits of planning your own end-of-life event regardless of your age or state of health, how mindfulness can help with funeral planning (and will writing and estate planning), and other related topics. The program will air at 3 PM Pacific, 4 Mountain, 5 Central, and 6 Eastern; click here to listen.

If you are unable to tune in at that time, the interview will be available soon after as a podcast.

Some links related to the interview:

• Creating Your Own Funeral or Memorial Service: A Workbook
• The story of Procrustes which teaches us that a one-size-fits-all approach to funerals can have a serious downside
• Previous blog posts about creating your own funeral
• A method that can lessen anxiety when talking about matters related to death
• A method to increase self-awareness and mindfulness, both of which can make discussions about death-related topics easier
• An article titled "Mediation of Disputes Between Family Members Before, During and After Funeral Planning"
• A list of some of the benefits of planning your own funeral or memorial service

Note (added later in the day): The interview is now available for listening by clicking here (look to the top right for the October 30 show titled "Create a Great Funeral Day"). Or listen on iTunes.

Another look at cognitive reappraisal: When is it helpful? When perhaps not?

An interesting new study caught my eye this morning on emotion regulation, a topic about which I have blogged before (see, for example, here and here. Below are the press release and link to the abstract.

"Keeping Emotions in Check May Not Always Benefit Psychological Health" (Asociation for Psychological Science):

Being able to regulate your emotions is important for well-being, but new research suggests that a common emotion regulation strategy called “cognitive reappraisal” may actually be harmful when it comes to stressors that are under our control. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“Context is important,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Allison Troy of Franklin & Marshall College. “Our research is among the first to suggest that cognitive reappraisal may actually have negative effects on psychological health in certain contexts.”

Previous research has shown that cognitive reappraisal — a strategy that involves reframing one’s thoughts about a given situation in order to change its emotional impact — is especially beneficial for the psychological health of people who are highly stressed. But, as Troy and colleagues discovered, the controllability of a given situation seems to be the key in determining whether cognitive reappraisal helps or hurts:

“For someone facing a stressful situation in which they have little control, such as a loved one’s illness, the ability to use reappraisal should be extremely helpful — changing emotions may be one of the only things that he or she can exert some control over to try to cope,” Troy  notes.

“But for someone experiencing trouble at work because of poor performance, for example,

New edition of NATIONAL POST has a multitude of death-related articles

Interested in planning your funeral? Leaving a legacy? Learning about longevity? Those topics and many more are covered in a special issue of the National Post titled "How We Die Now."

Just a reminder: On Wednesday, October 30, you may listen to an interview of me about planning your own funeral. Details here.

Perhaps your local bar association will show the new movie on mindfulness?

The many benefits of mindfulness to lawyers have been the topics of several articles and at least one conference. I hope at least some members of the profession will take the opportunity to see the new The Mindfulness Movie. It includes an impressive list of experts, many of whom I have heard speak and two with whom I have worked and given presentations.

I am looking forward to this movie with much anticipation. If more lawyers practice mindfulness, I think the benefits will accrue abundantly to them, their clients, and the profession as a whole.

However, as you can see at the Web site, the intended audience is not limited to any one profession or group. Let's hope the movie enjoys a large and broad audience.

"A Brief Definition of Mindfulness"

From "A Brief Definition of Mindfulness" (mindfulexperience.org):

[S]erious attention to mindfulness by the scientific community was not given until more recently when the concept was translated into measurable terms, or given an operational definition. Major strides have been made in just the last decade to provide a valid operational definition of mindfulness.

In the last decade, researchers have dedicated attention to an empirically based operational definition of mindfulness. For example, in the year 2003, a series of psychometric development studies provided the first valid and reliable measure of dispositional mindfulness called the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). Other measures of mindfulness have also been validated since that landmark study. ...

Click to read the rest.

Patience is a key ingredient in mediation: Lessons from art appreciation and photography

Professor of the history of art and architecture Jennifer Roberts could be talking about mediation when she says in an article titled "The Power of Patience" (Harvard Magazine):

[T]his lesson about art, vision, and time goes far beyond art history. It serves as a master lesson in the value of critical attention, patient investigation, and skepticism about immediate surface appearances. I can think of few skills that are more important in academic or civic life in the twenty-first century.

Click to read the rest of the article.

Because of the word "patience" in the title, I was drawn to read the article. Over the last several months I have been developing a list of traits and states that indicate the level of cognitive development at which a person is operating, both as a party and as a mediator. If there is a mismatch between the levels of a party or parties and the mediator, the quality and productiveness of the conflict resolution has a good chance of being low unless the mediator recognizes and works with the disparity. One of the factors on my list is patience.

Appreciation of photography—and being a photographer—also require patience. That's one reason I sometimes blog about contemplative photography and about receiving pictures, not taking or capturing them. The processes of art appreciation and photography can be valuable lessons in mediation (and meditation). As anthropologist Catherine Allerton says, "Photography...is the result of a patient, observant process." Isn't reflective and effective mediation, too?

Beyond ethical wills and life reviews: Re-membering the dead

The book Re-membering Lives  bears that title partly because it refers to the metaphor of membership in a club of significant others in a person's life. We each are born into our own club, adding and subtracting members as we move through life. The book looks at how to keep or reinstall a person as a member of your club, even if he or she is dead.

The novel approach of the book's authors intrigued me. In case you might find it of interest, too, I have posted below some book excerpts.

It is often assumed, within the modernist discourse of death, that death itself cancels membership. When people are expected to accept the finality and reality of death, this is often what is meant. People are asked to withdraw their investment in relationship with the deceased and to reinvest in other relationships. The metaphor invokes an economy of relationship that invites us to treat people like stocks that we invest in (presumably for own profit). When our relational investments are no longer yielding high returns, we are encouraged to cut our losses and move on. From our perspective, the idea that a relationship ends and that the bereaved need to cease to recognize a loved one as a member of the club of life is a mistake.

...

Remembering conversations are deliberate acts of membership construction. They keep a person's membered status close and current and constantly renew our loved one's presence in our club of life. To remember is to include them in our daily lives, in our conversations, in our celebrations, in our decision-making, and in our resources for living. To remember is to refuse to allow our loved one's memory to go by unnoticed. Remembering may involve keeping a person's voice alive through repeating their words in relation to new developments in life. It may involve consulting the deceased's opinion as a resource for dealing with a new challenge. It may involve keeping in place in family gatherings or rituals for someone who is no longer alive. It may involve telling young children stories about a dead grandparent's life. It may involve committing oneself to living for some value our purpose that a dead love held dear.

...

What is the opposite of remembering? The usual inclination would be to suggest forgetting. However, within the definition of membership that we are speaking about, that is this is too weak

Worried about cognitive decline in yourself or clients? Learn to take a picture

From a press release about new research looking at cognitive functioning of older adults (Association for Psychological Science):

Older adults are often encouraged to stay active and engaged to keep their minds sharp, that they have to “use it or lose it.” But new research indicates that only certain activities — learning a mentally demanding skill like photography, for instance — are likely to improve cognitive functioning.

These findings, forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that less demanding activities, such as listening to classical music or completing word puzzles, probably won’t bring noticeable benefits to an aging mind. 

“It seems it is not enough just to get out and do something—it is important to get out and do something that is unfamiliar and mentally challenging, and that provides broad stimulation mentally and socially,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Denise Park of the University of Texas at Dallas. “When you are inside your comfort zone you may be outside of the enhancement zone.”

Click to read the rest of "Learning New Skills Keeps an Aging Mind Sharp."

Abstract from the study: