From the Mindfulness Institute website: Mindfulness is a natural part of being human that involves present moment awareness and can be cultivated through formal and informal mindfulness exercises. Scientific research in this field demonstrates a multitude of positive outcomes in academic, psychological, and physical domains. Effects of mindfulness on the prefrontal cortex and interconnections involved in [...]
Category: Current Research
Five Skillful Habits – the heart of the OMC program
We're thrilled to share our first publication in a journal: Five Skillful Habits: An ethics-based mindfulness intervention has been published in Counseling and Spirituality, 2010. This is a culmination of 7 years of courses at the OMC. We've always been conerned about the ways in which the idea of mindfulness can be misunderstood in a teaching [...]
Neural pruning
Neural pruning is the process of removing neurons that are no longer used or useful in the brain. Don't try it at home! It's a natural process in the brain that happens at different developmental stages. Children's brains grow rapidly and in the flood of new learning, neural pathways are created that are useful in [...]
Resilience: Recovery & Sustainability
Resilience is defined as the successful adaptation to adversity. It is also considered the outcome of a successful adaptation to adversity. Bouncing back that leads to healthier end states and the ability to continue forward through adversity marks a healthy individual. Our biological, genetic, psychological, and social environment puts us at risk for various illnesses or [...]
Meditating helps psychological functioning
Recent research by Emily Lykin and Ruth Baer at the University of Kentucky (Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy: An International Quarterly, 2009, vol 23(3)) showed that the long term practice of meditation (over 7 years) has positive effects on psychological well-being. Long term meditators were compared to non-meditators on various tests and they reported better able to Observe Be nonjudgemental of [...]
Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic 