Psychological and cognitive benefits of yoga among UK prisoners
Prison Service Journal, 2014
This paper reports a recent pioneering study conducted in 7 West Midlands prisons on the effects ... more This paper reports a recent pioneering study conducted in 7 West Midlands prisons on the effects of a 10-week yoga course on mood, wellbeing, and cognition. The main findings will be discussed, as well as potential implications for yoga as a rehabilitative intervention for incarcerated individuals.
The alchemy of meditation
THE MINDFUL ELITE: MOBILIZING FROM THE INSIDE OUT. By Jaime‐Kucinskas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 233 pp. $34.26 hardcover
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Jun 1, 2020
Objectives The beliefs and expectations people bring into mindfulness practice can affect the mea... more Objectives The beliefs and expectations people bring into mindfulness practice can affect the measurement outcomes of interventions. The aim of this mixed-method study was to examine the key beliefs in the powers of mindfulness—understood as non-judgmental awareness of the present moment—to transform the individual and the society, and to develop and validate the Belief in the Powers of Mindfulness Scale (BPMS). Method In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with mindfulness meditators (n = 32), including follow-up interviews (n = 22). Qualitative data were analysed through a thematic narrative approach. Participants (n = 458) completed a questionnaire that included the new scale. Results Participants’ key beliefs were thematically analysed in three transformation themes: interpersonal relationships and compassion, peace and violence, and the inner world—themes were encapsulated in the BPMS. Ideas presented in each theme were undergirded by a host of ideologies, epistemi...
We examine conceptual and methodological problems that arise in the course of the scientific stud... more We examine conceptual and methodological problems that arise in the course of the scientific study of possible influences of religious belief on the experience of physical pain. We start by attempting to identify a notion of religious belief that might enter into interesting psychological generalizations involving both religious belief and pain. We argue that it may be useful to think of religious belief as a complex dispositional property that relates believers to a sufficiently thick belief system that encompasses both cognitive and non-cognitive elements. Such a conception of religious belief is more likely to correlate with psychological properties of believers that are both sufficiently shared and sufficiently unique to distinguish their psychology from believers in another religion or from non-believers. If the dispositional psychological property that constitutes religious belief does influence pain, then our analysis suggests that it doesn't do so directly but rather through one of its occurrent manifestations. We offer a taxonomy of the different ways in which occurrent states of belief or experience may interact with physical pain, and we try to identify those that are more interesting or promising. We then proceed to employ the conceptual framework we developed to some of the existing evidence about the neural and psychological correlates of religious belief and experience, and about the cognitive modulation of physical pain. Finally we turn to analyse two experiments that directly investigated the relation between religious belief and pain. We draw attention to the limitations of existing evidence and end by suggesting directions for future conceptual and empirical inquiry.
ObjectiveMeditation techniques are widely used as therapy and wellbeing practices, but there are ... more ObjectiveMeditation techniques are widely used as therapy and wellbeing practices, but there are growing concerns about its potential for harm. The aim of the present study is to systematically review meditation adverse events (MAEs), investigating its major clinical categories and its prevalence.MethodWe searched PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, Embase and AMED up to October 2019. Eligible studies included original reports of meditation practices (excluding related physical practices such as Yoga postures) with adult samples across experimental, observational and case studies. We identified a total of 6742 citations, 83 of which met the inclusion criteria for MAEs with a total of 6703 participants who undertook meditation practice.ResultsOf the 83 studies analysed, 55 (65%) included reports of at least one type of MAE. The total prevalence of adverse events was 8.3% (95% CI 0.05–0.12), though this varied considerably across types of studies – 3.7% (95% CI 0.02–0.05) for experimental and 3...
Resumo: Este artigo descreve, de modo sumário e numa linguagem acessível, os resultados de um est... more Resumo: Este artigo descreve, de modo sumário e numa linguagem acessível, os resultados de um estudo pioneiro sobre os efeitos da crença religiosa na percepção da dor. Começa-se por abordar alguns problemas metodológicos decorrentes do trabalho numa equipe multidisciplinar e as condições experimentais deste estudo neuropsicológico realizado na Inglaterra com grupos de católicos praticantes e ateus ou agnósticos. Os resultados experimentais indicam uma influência da crença religiosa no alívio da dor, bem como a ativação de uma área do córtex pré-frontal conhecida de outros estudos pelo seu papel na reinterpretação de eventos. O artigo conclui abordando as implicações dos resultados experimentais, bem como questões em aberto acerca da influência da crença religiosa sobre a dor.
Three academic/practitioners from different disciplines (performance, medicine and psychology) de... more Three academic/practitioners from different disciplines (performance, medicine and psychology) describe the ways in which observing, and importantly, participating in the healing rituals of the French pilgrimage site of Lourdes challenged their ways of thinking about both their discipline ' s research approaches and their understandings of community, caring and healing. By positioning themselves as both fi rst-person and third-person researchers, they suggest that a new type of ' transdisciplinary ' , longitudinal, refl exively sensitive methodology is needed in order to investigate activities involving groups of people and spiritual practices as a whole system in order to better understand how they can positively affect our innate healing response.
Background: Yoga and meditation have been shown to be effective in alleviating symptoms of depres... more Background: Yoga and meditation have been shown to be effective in alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety in healthy volunteers and psychiatric populations. Recent work has also indicated that yoga can improve cognitive-behavioural performance and control. Although there have been no controlled studies of the effects of yoga in a prison population, we reasoned that yoga could have beneficial effects in a setting where psychosocial functioning is often low, and the frequency of impulsive behaviours is high. Methods: Participants were recruited from 7 British prisons and randomly allocated to either a 10-week yoga programme (yoga group; 1 class per week; N ¼ 45) or a control group (N ¼ 55). Self-report measures of mood, stress, and psychological distress were collected before and after the intervention period. Participants completed a cognitive-behavioural task (Go/No-Go) at the end of the study, which assessed behavioural response inhibition and sustained attention. Results: Participants in the yoga group showed increased self-reported positive affect, and reduced stress and psychological distress, compared to participants in the control group. Participants who completed the yoga course also showed better performance in the cognitive-behavioural task, making significantly fewer errors of omission in Go trials and fewer errors of commission on No-Go trials, compared to control participants. Conclusions: Yoga may be effective in improving subjective wellbeing, mental health, and executive functioning within prison populations. This is an important consideration given the consistently high rates of psychological morbidity in this group and the need for effective and economical intervention programmes.
Previous research has linked certain types of modern spirituality, including New Age and Pagan, w... more Previous research has linked certain types of modern spirituality, including New Age and Pagan, with either benign schizotypy or insecure attachment. While the first view emphasizes a positive aspect of spiritual believers' mental health (benign schizotypy), the second view emphasizes a negative aspect, namely the unhealthy emotional compensation associated with an insecure attachment style. This study addresses these two conflicting views by comparing a sample of modern spiritual individuals (N = 114) with a contrast group of traditional religious believers (N = 86). Measures of schizotypy and attachment style were combined with mental health scales of anxiety and depression. We further assessed death anxiety to determine whether modern spiritual beliefs fulfilled a similar function as traditional religious beliefs in the reduction of existential threat. Our results support a psychological contiguity between traditional and modern spiritual believers and reinforce the need to de-stigmatize spiritual ideas and experiences. Using hierarchical regression, we showed that unusual experiences and ideas are the major predictor of engagement in modern spiritual practices. Anxiety, depression variables, and insecure attachment were not significant predictors of spirituality or correlated with them; on the other hand, the results show that spiritual believers report high social support satisfaction and this variable predicts involvement in modern spirituality. Further, spiritual practices were negatively correlated with and negatively predicted by death anxiety scores. Overall, the results strengthen the association between modern spirituality, good mental health, and general well-being.
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Papers by Miguel Farias