The Dalai Lama Visits Ireland to Promote Action for Happiness

From NewsWhip.

Today NewsWhip reports on the Dalai Lama's trip to Ireland. He is visiting the economically depressed country to promote Action for Happiness, a British nonprofit organization that encourages people to value their emotional wellbeing over material consumption.

The Dalai Lama discussed wealth with a Kildare church, saying "The ultimate source of happiness, peace of mind, cannot be produced by money. Billionaires, they are, I notice, very unhappy people. Very powerful; but deep inside, too much anxiety, too much stress."

Even though His Holiness wakes up at 3:30 a.m. every day, he always gets eight or nine hours of sleep, which he attributes to the peace of mind afforded by meditation. He has previously written about happiness in his excellent book The Art of Happiness (which celebrated its tenth anniversary a few years ago), a fact which puts Action for Happiness right in his wheelhouse.

(Read more about what Action for Happiness is doing by clicking my Action for Happiness tag.)

New Mobile Phone App for Journaling Happy Thoughts

A look at the app. From
Shawn Achor.

Do you like journaling with your mobile phone, but need some help keeping things positive? Then maybe this app is for you! Business Wire reports on a free new iPhone and Android app called "I Journal" that prompts you to journal about things you are grateful for. It also lets you record voice memos and take photos relating to your daily experiences with meditation and acts of kindness.

The app comes from a partnership between positive psychologist Shawn Achor and software developer Catch.com. Shawn Achor says, "When you write down a list of three good things that happen per day, your brain will be forced to scan the last 24 hours for positives, boosting your happiness. Now, instead of dusting off an old journal, I am thrilled to team up with the experts at Catch.com to bring this proven practice into the new millennium. For the next twenty-one days, record three things you’re grateful for on your mobile device in I Journal. If you try to make at least one of them work-related, you’ll be training your brain to become more skilled at letting go of daily hassles and noticing the good things about your job."

Of course, you could probably do all of those things without a new app, but having them all in one package makes it that much easier to do them regularly. I don't have an Android phone or iPhone, but this app sounds pretty interesting, and the price is certainly right!

Loving-Kindness Meditation Shown to Produce Longterm Results

Just find a sittin' rock in the middle of a lake
and you're good to go! From Meditations Online.

A somewhat-new Journal of Positive Psychology study that may have slipped through the cracks shows that loving-kindness meditation produces longterm benefits, even when the subject stops meditating regularly. The study comes from Michael A. Cohn at the University of California San Francisco and Barbara L. Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While the short-term benefits of meditation are well documented, this may be the first time beginning meditation students were followed up on over the long term (as far as I know).

Cohn and Fredrickson conducted their initial loving-kindness meditation experiment on 202 beginning meditators over two months in 2008. Then, after 15 months without communication, the researchers contacted the subjects again and had them fill out a survey of their current emotional state.

The results show that people who continued regular meditation after the initial study felt the most positive emotions during the follow up. However, even those who stopped meditating felt more positive than the control group, who never started meditating in the first place. This is significant because while feelings of happiness from certain events (buying a new car, getting a job promotion, etc.) dissipate rather quickly, feelings of happiness from meditation apparently endure.

The actual paper goes into much more detail, so you should read that if you're interested.

Weekend Viewing: Matthieu Ricard

Wow, another TED Talk!? How original! Yes, TED is basically my go-to place for videos, but the collections are usually so interesting that I feel no shame in doing so.

Today's video is courtesy of Matthieu Ricard, a French Buddhist monk with an education in molecular genetics. He completed his doctoral thesis in 1972, but left the Institut Pasteur to move to the Himalayas. You may also recognize him from his work with Richard Davidson studying the neurological effects of meditation. He has also received the French Order of Merit for humanitarianism in the East.

Matthieu talks about desire, meditation, neuroplasticity, Richard Davidson, and more, so give it a look-see!

Casual Friday: Meditation

Hello and welcome to Friday! Today I'll give a brief introduction to the benefits of meditation using Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's The Joy of Living. Born in Nepal in 1975, Yongey is one of the many Tibetan Buddhists to embrace modern science. He is also a best-selling author that is remarkably good at explaining the marriage between the two traditions.

In The Joy of Living, Yongey recounts a study by the neuroscientist Richard Davidson that tested meditation's effect on the brain. Davidson recruited test subjects from a Midwest corporation, hooking them up to an EEG and fMRI to measure their brain activity. He then gave the test group a ten-week course in beginner's meditation (leaving the control group alone, of course). The results were astounding. Even this short experiment produced significant electrical increases in the pleasure centers of the test subjects' brains. They felt happier, calmer, and more compassionate toward others. In blood tests, they also had a higher number of antibodies in their immune system.

So how do you meditate? Well, it's pretty simple actually, but it might not be easy. It's simple because all you need to do is calm your mind. Unfortunately for most of us, that takes practice.

Here's a simple method to get you started:

1. Sit in a comfortable position.
2. Really notice what thoughts are going through your head, but don't get attached to any of them. Just let them pass through your mind.
3. If you want something to focus on, try counting your breaths without letting other thoughts come in. If you get distracted, that's okay. Gently remind yourself to keep counting.

That's pretty much all there is to it. As I said, this is a brief introduction, and other people are better at explaining it than me. The important thing is to PRACTICE. Like most things in life, meditation becomes easier and better the more you do it. Over time, it can actually change the physical structure of your brain for the better (see neuroplasticity).

Anyway, have a happy and calm Friday!