Mindful Parenting: Perspectives on the Heart of the Matter

Introduction: When we were writing our book, Everyday blessings: The inner work of mindful parenting (Kabat-Zinn & Kabat-Zinn 1997/2014), an alternative title we very much had in mind was Mindful parenting: Nurturing our children, growing ourselves. The “growing ourselves” element, although it was surrendered in favor of the first title and subtitle, was, is, and always will be an essential element of the entire endeavor. This theme and evidence in support of it can be found throughout this Special Issue. Mindful parenting is not a project to create “better” or “optimal” children (whatever that might mean), or to be “better” or “optimal” parents, but to embrace in moment-to-moment awareness as best we might the entire enterprise of parenting our children in a mutuality of love and discovery and not-knowing. We were saying as clearly and as invitingly as we could that such an intentional approach to family and relationality has the potential to catalyze a natural flowering of everybody’s capacity to grow into our full range of possibilities in the sheltering embrace of family—however it is defined and constrained in the actuality of our specific and singular situations

Meditation practice in a Hospital Setting

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the development of imanagecancer the experience of a personalised ehealth platform for cancer patients empowerment

Advances in cancer research led to more cancer patients being cured and many more being enabled to live with their cancer. There is an increasing need for cancer patients to take an active, leading role in their healthcare, thus resulting in a better quality of life. Identification of self-management processes for cancer can help to guide future research and clinical practice to improve patient's outcome. In the present chapter, we discuss the development of iManageCancer, a cancer-specific self-management and patient empowerment platform designed according to the needs of patient groups while focusing, in parallel, on the wellbeing of the cancer patients and their families. A Personal Health Record platform (iPHR) is developed, featuring self-management tools including serious games. Emphasis was put on psychoemotional evaluation and self-motivated goals. The use-case requirements and the corresponding system architecture are presented, and the main technological components of the designed platform are described

An overview of treatment approaches for chronic pain management

Pain which persists after healing is expected to have taken place, or which exists in the absence of tissue damage, is termed chronic pain. By definition chronic pain cannot be treated and cured in the conventional biomedical sense; rather, the patient who is suffering from the pain must be given the tools with which their long-term pain can be managed to an acceptable level. This article will provide an overview of treatment approaches available for the management of persistent non-malignant pain. As well as attempting to provide relief from the physical aspects of pain through the judicious use of analgesics, interventions, stimulations, and irritations, it is important to pay equal attention to the psychosocial complaints which almost always accompany long-term pain. The pain clinic offers a biopsychosocial approach to treatment with the multidisciplinary pain management programme; encouraging patients to take control of their pain problem and lead a fulfilling life in spite of the pain. © 2016 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelber

Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges-Ethical and Otherwise-Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World

Excerpt: What I intend to do in this paper is offer a non-exhaustive perspective on the original core aspirations, as I experienced them, behind introducing mindfulness as a practice and as a way of being into the mainstream world, initially through medicine and health care in the form of MBSR, and then—as the meme and practice took root and interest spread with increasing evidence of its multifaceted efficacy—to varying degrees into education, business, social justice, politics, and the more global domain of acknowledging a moral and exceedingly practical responsibility for the planet on the part of our species as a whole

Sur les Pas de Jon Kabat-Zinn

La pleine conscience chez le sportif

Becoming conscious: the science of mindfulness

Many of us go through our daily lives on autopilot, not fully aware of our conscious experiences. In a discussion moderated by Steve Paulson, executive producer and host of To the Best of Our Knowledge, neuroscientists Richard Davidson and Amishi Jha and clinical mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn explore the role of consciousness in mental and physical health, how we can train our minds to be more flexible and adaptable, and cutting-edge neuroscience findings about the transformation of consciousness through mindfulness and contemplative practice. The following is an edited transcript of the discussion that occurred February 6, 2013, 7:00-8:15 PM, at the New York Academy of Sciences in New York City