Michael is dedicated to studying how mindfulness has the potential to transform both mind and medicine and create healthier, more connected communities. He first encountered the scientific approach to mindfulness as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, where he studied Psychology and Buddhism. After graduating, he joined a lab at Duke University Medical Center studying how mindfulness training reduces cardiovascular disease risk. In a separate study, his team also evaluated the effectiveness of a brief mindfulness training for students within a university setting, which won the Taylor & Francis Most Downloaded article for 2014. He would later join labs at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UC San Francisco, and formerly contributed to the Mind & Life Institute as a scientific writer and to the Zen Caregiving Project as a research consultant. He currently contributes to the International Society for Contemplative Research (ISCR) and the the Global Compassion Coalition. In his clinical work, he finds joy serving as a community-based pediatric therapist for Hawaii’s most disadvantaged youth.
His research interests are diverse, but he focuses on mindfulness and compassion-based interventions for clinical and at-risk populations. Lately, he has been exploring how these interventions might facilitate greater social connection and compassion.
In his free time, he enjoys exploring with his dog Liliko’i, surfing, woodworking with his crew, and foraging for wild fruits and flowers in the lush valleys of Hawai’i.
Michael finds a deep joy in leading an international team for this project and hopes that this platform will connect communities, raise scientific awareness, and nurture the development of contemplative sciences.
The research highlights the importance to encourage self-compassion and forgiveness to improve older people’s mental health
Recent studies investigating the relationship between loneliness and poor sleep quality in teenagers discovered a significant correlation between higher loneliness and poorer sleep quality.
Also known as MBRT, this intervention helps first responders navigate their work more mindfully
Dr. Linda Carlson holds the Enbridge Research Chair in Psychosocial Oncology, is Full Professor in Psychosocial Oncology in the Department of Oncology, Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology.
Dr. Khalsa is currently the Director of Clinical Operations at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research.
“…when mindfulness and self-compassion are in full bloom, they are nearly identical in a moment of suffering.”
Also known as MSC, this intervention teaches people to care for themselves as much as they care for others.
Self-compassion actually allows us to sustain our compassion for others because we’re being compassionate to ourselves as well.
My work, over the past fifteen years has had a core theme of social support running through it, and I’d like to create an online mindfulness meditation intervention that includes a group component, such that people who have experienced cancer can meet and practice mindfulness meditation together.
I didn’t want them to needlessly struggle and suffer as much as I did, and mindfulness is one of those tools that definitely helps us all during this time. I’m helping them in the way that I wish I would have been helped.
Ultimately, my intention is for it to be a service space to help students, faculty, staff, or anyone from the community to connect with themselves. Don’t we all need to pause?
Philippe Goldin, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at UC Davis and leads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience Laboratory.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, also known as MBCT, is a group-based treatment program … developed to prevent relapse in clinical populations with recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD).
Rather than proposing a single definition, mindfulness might be better understood in relation to the phenomenology of the various contemplative traditions and practices that intend to develop mindfulness.
Michael J. Tumminia is an avid meditator, researcher, and runner. He is currently a 3rd Year Applied Developmental Psychology PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh.
“Whether you call it liberation, theology, transformative justice, mindfulness- we cannot separate those components of practice, all of those things are integrated. Integration brings peace, and peace within is key to embracing the other.”
Grant Jones (he/him) is an artist, contemplative, researcher, and activist. Currently, he is a 3rd Year Clinical Psychology PhD candidate at Harvard University and Co-Founder of The Black Lotus Collective.
A research team from Valencia, Spain recently investigated the effects of a brief mindfulness-based intervention on both mood and biological markers on a sample of health professional students.
A new study by Kim and colleagues explored how compassion-based training can affect two self-regulatory styles and its relationship to neural, physiological, and behavioral responses.
Dr. Ilana Nankin—the Founder & CEO of Breathe For Change—is an award-winning entrepreneur, teacher educator, and former San Francisco pre-k teacher committed to using wellness as a vehicle for healing and social change.
A team of researchers based in the perceived epicenter of the virus, Wuhan, China, recently tested whether a brief mindfulness intervention delivered through an app could be effective for reducing anxiety and protecting nightly sleep during the unfolding pandemic.
Dr. Helen Weng is a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist who originally joined the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine in 2014 as a postdoctoral scholar in the Training in Research in Integrative Medicine (TRIM) fellowship. She is developing new ways to quantify meditation skills using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and machine learning to identify mental states of body awareness during meditation.
A new study investigated whether a brief mindfulness training designed to reduce physician burnout could be delivered through a smartphone app.
Dr. Eric Garland, PhD, LCSW is Presidential Scholar, Associate Dean for Research, and Professor in the University of Utah College of Social Work, Director of the Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development (C-MIIND), and Associate Director of Integrative Medicine in Supportive Oncology and Survivorship at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
David Vago is Research Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Jeffrey Brantley, MD, is one of the founding faculty members of Duke Integrative Medicine, where he started the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program in 1998.
Mindfulness and self-compassion are theorized to disrupt the maladaptive repetition of negative thoughts and emotions for patients with chronic or mental illnesses, who are particularly susceptible to psychosocial distress.
There is promising evidence that 70% of smokers would like to quit but less than 5% of unassisted attempts at quitting are actually successful.
In a recent pilot study by Suzette Glasner, Ph.D. and her team at the Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, they evaluated the effects of Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) on reducing relapse susceptibility among stimulant-dependent adults receiving a contingency management (CM) intervention.
A major implication of the study suggests the distal effects of intensive retreat practice on respiration rates, a benefit not necessarily conferred by a brief, but full-day meditation session.
Researchers are exploring mindfulness-based interventions as a long-term treatment options to address the multitude of symptoms after cancer has been treated.
While the scientific study of mindfulness has exponentially increased over the past few decades, only recently has the scientific community focused on the effects of meditation training on biological aging.
Tell us about your idea. Nearly any subject related to the science of mindfulness is fair game.
