Still Peckish

Researchers in the Netherlands asked one group of adults to perform a 4-minute body scan, and a second group to listen to an audio recording about tourism. People in both groups then drank water through a straw, and identified their first sign of feeling that they’d had enough to drink. They then continued drinking until their stomachs were completely full. Both groups reported having had enough and feeling full at about the same time, suggesting that such a brief mindfulness intervention did not increase eating-related body awareness.

Mindfulness for Latinx Communities

To date, few mindfulness interventions have focused on the needs of Latinx children and their parents. A recent pilot study examined whether 27 families with 10- to 16-year-old youth who engaged in a community-derived mindfulness intervention would experience less stress and greater mindfulness, emotion regulation, and social support than a non-intervention control group. In response to community feedback, the intervention was delivered to groups of parents and children in seven weekly 1-hour sessions in both English and Spanish. It included instruction on mindfulness, stress reduction, and other life and relationship skills. Following the intervention, parents in the mindfulness group reported significantly less stress, and their children noted feeling greater social support from family members than those in the control group.

Breath Under Pressure

Researchers wanted to know whether a brief mindfulness training could improve participants’ working memory (WM) performance under stress. They randomly assigned 162 undergraduate students to one of four training groups: a breath-awareness group, a loving-kindness meditation group, a gratitude reflection group, or an attention task group. All trainings were delivered in 12-minute audio instructions. Before and right after training, all participants completed a questionnaire about their mood, and solved simple math problems while simultaneously memorizing a set of letters to assess their memory capacity under stress. No differences in WM were found between the loving-kindness, gratitude, or attentional control groups. Those who did breath-awareness training had the poorest memory performance. The take-home: Not all mindfulness practices have the same effect.

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Barry Boyce, Sona Dimidjian, and Zindel Segal June 17, 2021

B Grace Bullock PhD June 3, 2021

Mindful Staff April 20, 2021