All posts tagged: practice

Brief mindfulness practice accelerates visual processing speeds in adults

Brief mindfulness practice accelerates visual processing speeds in adults

Published by José Betancourt

Practicing mindfulness meditation using a mobile application for a month can help people process visual information and initiate localized eye movements faster. The visual attention benefits apply to young, middle-aged, and older adults alike, without distinct differences across age categories. These initial findings were published in the journal eNeuro and suggest that brief daily meditation can successfully alter basic cognitive functions. The human brain relies on a small region called the locus coeruleus to maintain mental focus and process incoming sensory information. This deep brain structure acts as the primary source of noradrenaline. Noradrenaline operates as a chemical messenger that helps regulate general attention, stress, and physical arousal states. Studies in animal models provide clues about how this part of the brain operates. When researchers artificially stimulate the locus coeruleus in monkeys, the animals show better visual attention. Blocking the release of noradrenaline has the opposite effect, leaving animals easily distracted. These findings confirm that this brain region directly dictates attention spans. As people age, the locus coeruleus often undergoes structural degradation and loses some …

SVA Is Shutting Down Its MFA in Curatorial Practice Program

SVA Is Shutting Down Its MFA in Curatorial Practice Program

Published by José Betancourt

On Thursday, the School of Visual Arts announced that starting next year, it will no longer offer a masters of arts degree in curatorial practice. The update was shared with faculty via an email from Steven Henry Madoff, who founded the department in 2013 and has been chair of the two-year program for the past 14 years. The sudden announcement follows years of financial difficulty for the New York art school. And, earlier this month, David A. Ross, chair of the MFA art practice program at SVA, abruptly resigned after ARTnews revealed that he had a friendly relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and appears a number of times in newly-released emails. Source link

Mia Westerlund Roosen’s Decades-Long Practice Is Fueled by Endurance

Mia Westerlund Roosen’s Decades-Long Practice Is Fueled by Endurance

Published by Jenni Sidey

When artist Mia Westerlund Roosen debuted her conical sculptures, which unmistakably recall phalluses, at the “25th Anniversary Exhibition of Leo Castelli” in 1982, she did so as a form of feminist protest. The exhibition, celebrating one of the postwar era’s most important galleries, had assembled together a pantheon of postwar American artists, the majority of them men. Westerlund Roosen was one of four women featured in the 29-artist exhibition. Inclusion, however, didn’t translate into sustained recognition and attention. Rather than provoking debate, Westerlund Roosen’s work was quietly sidelined. “They just sort of ignored me,” she recently told ARTnews, recalling her sculptures being dismissed as “reductive” or “eccentric.” What was read as deviation was, in fact, a form of refusal, a refusal to remove the body from sculpture at a moment when the dominant sculptural language prized hard edges, industrial finish, and emotional distance. Source link

How to Practice Mentalization in Parenting

How to Practice Mentalization in Parenting

Published by Jenni Sidey

Two British psychologists, Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman, began writing about mentalization in the late 1980s. They introduced the term to describe the process of understanding our own behavior and that of others in terms of underlying feelings, desires, and intentions. Clinicians describe it as “holding mind in mind” or “thinking about thinking.” This skill is crucial for understanding other people as well as being helpful in understanding and regulating our own emotions. Mentalization allows us to reflect on our own behavior and that of those around us and to interpret the meaning of behavior rather than just seeing it as reactionary. This sort of reflection is the core of mentalization. Fonagy states that it is an important skill for use in everyday life as well as in parenting. He says that for the optimal development of children, it is helpful for parents to imagine what their children are thinking and feeling and to keep these feelings in mind in their interactions with their children. This is different from “gentle parenting,” where parents meet all …

How to Practice Loving-Kindness

How to Practice Loving-Kindness

Published by Jenni Sidey

In Buddhism, the loving-kindness practice, also called metta, consists of sending/intending love and happiness to ourselves and others. Metta is a Pali word meaning goodwill, friendliness, or loving-kindness. A loving-kindness practice may look like this: We send love and happiness first to ourselves, then to those close to us, then to those toward whom we are neutral, then to marginalized people—that is, those who are “othered,” looked down on, or oppressed by society—then to those we don’t like or who don’t like us, even enemies and those who have been hostile, aggressive, or vengeful toward us, and finally to all beings. We can engage in the practice with daily aspirations of goodwill that we send to, feel for, and show to all those circles of people in our lives and in the world. We can do this each day and in challenging relationship moments throughout the day as well. We are also aware in this practice that if we are sending love and happiness, we must already and always have them inside us. What a …

What is hara hachi bu? The practice followed by some of longest-living people

What is hara hachi bu? The practice followed by some of longest-living people

Published by Daniella Wilson

Some of the world’s healthiest and longest-living people follow the practice of “hara hachi bu” — an eating philosophy rooted in moderation. This practice comes from a Japanese Confucian teaching which instructs people to only eat until they’re around 80 per cent full. More recently, it’s been gaining attention as a strategy for weight loss. But while hara hachi bu might emphasise eating in moderation and stopping before you’re full, it shouldn’t really be as seen as a method of dietary restriction. Rather, it represents a way of eating that can help us learn to have awareness and gratitude while slowing down at mealtimes. Research on hara hachi bu is limited. Previous studies have evaluated the overall dietary patterns of those living in regions where this eating philosophy is more commonplace, not the “80 per cent rule” in isolation. However, the available evidence does suggest hara hachi bu can reduce total daily calorie intake. It’s also associated with lower long-term weight gain and lower average body mass index (BMI). The practice also aligns with healthier …