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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Emily Vargas

Emily Vargas

How Mindfulness Can Mitigate the Cognitive Symptoms of Depression | Psych Central - 0 views

  • can be very helpful in improving the cognitive symptoms of depression.
  • Cognitive symptoms can impair all areas of a person’s life. For instance, poor concentratio
  • n can interfere with your job or schoolwork
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  • Focusing on the here and now helps individuals become aware of their negative thoughts, acknowledge them without judgment and realize they’re not accurate reflections of reality, writes author William Marchand, M.D.
  • Depression and Bipolar Disorder: Your Guide to Recovery
  • psychotherapeutic and pharmacological treatments.
  • individuals start to see their thoughts as less powerfu
  • Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)
  • It’s based on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)
  • MBCT teaches individuals to detach from distorted and negative thinking patterns, which can trigger the return of depression.
  • a program developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. MBSR includes mindfulness tools, such as meditation, a body scan and hatha yoga, along with education about stress and assertiveness, according to Marchand.
  • Getting professional treatment for depression is vital. But there are complementary mindfulness practices readers can try on their own
  • is essentially training one’s attention to maintain focus and avoid mind wandering
  • 10 to 15 minutes to meditate on most days.
  • Whether you’re eating, showering or getting dressed, you can practice mindfulness while doing any activity, according to Marchand, also a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah School of Medicine
  • Another option is to take a mindful walk, which also is helpful because it includes exercise, “an important component of healing.”
  • Mindfulness is a valuable practice for improving the cognitive symptoms of depression, such as distorted thinking and distractibility
  • realize that thoughts are not facts and refocus their attention to the present.
Emily Vargas

Yoga: Social work as Awareness:Mindfulness | What is a Social Worker? - 1 views

  • the more I am coming to realize that the qualities social workers embody are the same qualities that are required in yoga practice
  • Noting this, yoga appears to originate from the idea that yoga is a state of mind before it is a physical gesture.
  • A state of mind that is calm, mindful, accepting, non-judging and intentional.
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  • Are these not the same qualities to those that social workers and helping professionals exemplify and humanize?
  • We side with clients and teach them to come back to themselves, to regulate, to be mindful, to act with intention, to breath.
  • Social workers help clients to develop coping skills that ground them back into the reality of their perceived threat
  • We do this kindly, without judgment, and we ask them to do the same towards themselves.
  • Be mindful – follow the breath – feel your body and where it is heavy and where it is open. Experience the moments and watch them pass by. If you find a thought that doesn’t serve, just let it go. Watch your thoughts go by. Choose the thought that best serves you and let the other ones go.”
  • This idea brings us one step closer to knowing we can choose which thoughts to act upon
  • . It is the silence between the thoughts that is considered to awareness in yoga,
  • In work with clients it is important to get them to recognize that it is not their behavior but the thought guiding their behavior that needs attention
  • Just as in social work practice, yoga is first a state of mind
  • Social workers empower clients in an effort to help them learn to be mindful and aware so they can fold into themselves and introspect to find insights and create change
Emily Vargas

Cancer, anxiety and mindfulness | Telling Knots - 0 views

  • the anxiety tends to persist and may even become worse
  • I recently wrote about the things I do to (attain and) maintain mental health, and in an earlier post I wrote about my choice to live intentionally, to live an examined life:
  • It only requires pausing in your day, or even in your week or month, to be aware of your interior and exterior worlds.
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  • What am I doing? Is it what I want to be doing? Is there a change I’d like to see? Can I bring it about? What path am I on; is it likely to bring me to where I want to go?
  • By interior world I mean thoughts, feelings, wishes, desires, discomfort, contentment, hopes, satisfaction, anger, delight… a kind of mindfulne
  • I was very interested to see that my intuition about using mindfulness to cope with stress and anxiety was borne out in a small Danish study that was published this past April
  • The women participating in the study had been diagnosed with breast cancer at Stage I, II or III and had undergone surgery
  • In any case, the statistical results are far less important to me than my lived experience: mindfulness exercises and meditation and living an examined life help me to cope better with stress and anxiety, and that is all the proof I need
Emily Vargas

How Mindfulness Can Treat Anxiety - Carolyn Tucker MA, NCC, DCC, LAPC's Blog - Decatur-... - 1 views

  • From the poor economic climate, to traffic, to tragedy in the news, our culture contributes as well.
  • Mindfulness causes you to be fully presen
  • Mindfulness is defined as a state of active, open attention on the present
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  • . When you're mindful, you exist solely in the moment, noticing what is going on right then to the fullest. The practice of acceptance goes along with mindfulness
  • In acceptance you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad
  • Instead of saying "I am anxious," notice the physical sensation and acknowledge that it is there
  • help clients daily learn skills to help them better cope with the effects of anxiety on their mind and bodies.
  • Mindfulness is most frequently associated with a practice of meditation. Even five minutes of meditation daily has been proven to show benefit.
  • Some of my clients report washing the dishes as being meditative for them, or gardening, or listening to music.
  • Any activity where you can be fully in the moment contributes to your ability to quiet that voice in the mind that causes anxiety.
  • By being mindful you are not denying your feelings, nor ignoring them. You are integrating them into your "whole self" and allowing your mind to get out of the way so that your body can naturally heal itself.
  • Even as our minds get busy, the physical sensations of anxiety such as muscle tension, tightness in the chest or stomach, fluttering heartbeat are still present. Every few moments our minds do a "check in" to be sure that all systems are functioning properly. When the mind locates the symptoms of anxiety it sends off a "code red" and all of the symptoms feel exacerbated.
Emily Vargas

17 Ways Mindfulness Meditation Can Cause You Emotional Harm - 4 views

  • “nonjudgmental” process, but what happens most of the time — judgment of negative emotions
  • When you really don’t judge a negative emotion, you let it run its natural course — without trying to step in and control the situation through cultivated mental discipline.
  • Many use it to avoid having to feel emotional pain. But of course they won’t tell you that.
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  • Who’s to say if you should experience “unwanted” thoughts and emotions” as you start to become aware of them? That’s your call. (We do emotion regulation all the time.) But it’s not the issue; it’s the deception.
  • Getting in touch with your true nature, de-stressing, and being happy are all possible without suppressing negative emotions.
  • Of course you’ll temporarily feel better if you don’t have to face your unwanted thoughts and emotions
  • But you’ll have to meditate again to get that high
  • You start to judge uncomfortable thoughts and feelings as inferior, unreal, or bad.
  • ou get good at stuffing anger and other negative emotions
  • If and when a traumatic or emotionally painful experience occurs, you don’t fully process it, and cut your grieving process dangerously short.
  • You expect meditation to fix your problems for you, resolve your relationship conflicts, and make you happy
  • xpecting that meditation will get rid of the negative emotions
  • You detach from your partner or loved one when they’re upset or experiencing an emotion you see as undesirable
  • Because you’ve trained yourself to avoid them
  • You struggle to empathize with others, or understand their pain. If you don’t feel your own pain — you can’t expect to have compassion for another’s pain.
  • You lose your ability to naturally feel upset, sad, or concerned when there’s an issue in your life that you need to address
  • Your ability to feel positive emotions is also affecte
  • d. Because you don’t allow experience of the negative.
  • You start to feel dissatisfied with your life, and alone
Emily Vargas

Does Mindfulness Stress You Out? | Psychology Today - 0 views

    • Emily Vargas
       
      This is a small contradiction to my other articles Mindfulness causes anxiety?
  • we shouldn't be stressed out if we're practicing mindfulness or meditation
  • Yet I hear over and over from clients that the whole concept of mindfulness provokes anxiety
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  • the experience varies by culture and personal experience
  • especially relating to its application in pain and stress reduction.
  • acceptance, non-striving, and non-judging awareness.
  • It can be practiced virtually anywhere, anytime, requires no tools, no money, and no formal training
  • Wait, what? If that's true then why is the market flooded with meditation classes, audio guides, books, fancy retreats, phone apps, expensive pillows, bracelets, bobbles, and gizmos
  • Mindfulness is not a modern spiritual movemen
  • It's simply you at your most natural state of being.
  • That was mindfulness. It required nothing of you other than to be there
  • internalized someone else's idea of what it means to be mindful.
  • Maybe you tried it a few times and determined that your experience didn't match up with their description of what it should feel like. So you got frustrated and you quit. "It's too hard." "I'm terrible at it."
Emily Vargas

Mindfulness: The Anxiety Cure You Ought to Know | Refine the Mind - 0 views

  • While washing dishes or sweeping, direct your attention to the rhythm of the action. Listen closely to the swishing or scratching noises, smell the soap suds, or concentrate on your contracting muscles.
    • Emily Vargas
       
      Connect this back the article from the first project
  • We don’t often notice, but our senses of touch, smell, sight, and sound are constantly at work.
  • quiet your mind
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  • . The goal of mindful practices is to force us to be present, so we don’t waste precious days worrying.
  • Like most skills, it must be developed and refined
  • Try to quiet your mind and focus on your sensations for even 10 or 15 seconds at a tim
  • while walking, cleaning, and showering.
  • Mindfulness: A Wonderful Anxiety Cure You Ought to Know
  • Mindfulness is a practice that allows you to be content and alive in the present moment.
  •  irrational form of fear.
  • Anxieties try to tell you that something bad might happen, that you might not be good enough, or that someone might be thinking poorly of you.
  • Mindfulness is nearly infallible for helping to alleviate stress and worry
  • I’ve understood for years that anxiety is counterproductive, but knowing it is and actually stopping it from affecting me are two different things.
  • Anxiety stems from the evolutionary by-product of exaggerated fear
  • Mindfulness is a conscientious activity. It is an effort to do the opposite of what our brains naturally do.
  • When performing a task, mindfulness means directing our entire focus to that one task. No multi-tasking. No daydreaming.
Emily Vargas

Being mindful can help ease stress - Harvard Health Publications - 1 views

  • A healthier approach may be to tune in.
  • But paying more attention to what is going on around you, not les
  • an excellent technique to help you cope with a range of mental and physical problem
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  • s, including stress.
  • The idea is to focus attention on what is happening now and accepting it without judgment.
  • mindfulness is a powerful therapeutic tool
  • ease stress, prevent major depression from reappearing, alleviate anxiety, and even reduce physical symptoms such as pain or hot flashes
  • like sitting quietly, focusing on your breathing, becoming aware of your surroundings, and watching what comes and goes in your mind
  • But if you make the effort to become more mindful, you may find the results to be well worth it.
Emily Vargas

Ethical Considerations About Spirituality in Social Work: Insights From a National Qual... - 0 views

  • 2,069 National Association of Social Workers members examined ethical concerns regarding religious and nonreligious spiritual issues in clinical practice settings
  • Practitioners' insights provide a basis to extend ethical guidelines in practice and education.
  • they likely lack guidelines for systematic ethical decision making about the use of spiritually oriented activities in practice
Emily Vargas

Mindfulness helps against anxiety and depression | ScienceNordic - 0 views

  • oung adults with social phobia and anxiety,
  • Patients with social anxiety disorder benefit as much from a mindfulness programme as patie
  • nts who receive regular cognitive treatment
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  • The risk of relapse in people with recurrent major depressive disorder is significantly lower Cancer patients reduced their anxiety and depressive symptoms
  • women who in glossy magazines tell of how they achieved self-control and success because they practice mindfulness and are able to be attentive and live in the present.
  • Here, a group of young people with social anxiety was divided into two random groups. One group received regular cognitive behavioural therapy in which the participants were taught to overcome their anxiety by confronting it. The other group was treated with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.
  • British health authorities now recommend using mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for the prevention of relapse in recurrent depression.
  • was a meta-study of six randomised clinical trials of 593 people who had been affected by one or more depressive episodes.
  • A patient who has suffered from a single depressive episode has a 60-percent chance of relapse. With two depressive episodes, the risk of relapse increases to 70 percent, and with three episodes, the risk goes up to 90 percent
  • systematic mindfulness training can significantly reduce this risk of relapse
  • For those hit by one depressive episode, the risk of relapse is reduced by 34 percent, and with three episodes, the risk is reduced by 43 percent.
  • This indicates that mindfulness is a serious alternative to confrontational therapy in which patients for instance overcome their fear of spiders by having them walk on their hands.
  • which studied the effect of mindfulness on cancer patients, who often become anxious and depressed – even after the cancer treatment is actually completed.
Emily Vargas

Antisocial Social Worker: Mindfulness and Social Work - 0 views

  • In those retreats, the majority of the meditation was the kind where you simply sit there and come back to the breath if you stray
  • my senses would be sharpened and I would feel very peaceful.
  • Working with highly anxious children back then, I was able to utilize many of the techniques that I knew, as well as some of the ones that I was taught.
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  • our eye is always on the future. We are filled with wants and desires that we do not need, but that consume our time and money. As well, so much of our emotions are wrapped up in this future orientation. By using mindfulness, we are able to come back to the present and just be in the moment.
  • I will be working with some groups, and in at least one of them, we will be using mindfulness
  • I also know how much mindfulness can help the people that use it.
Emily Vargas

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy - 0 views

  • clients with various medical ailments, including hypertension, chronic pain, and cancer
    • Emily Vargas
       
      This may be good for medical based social workers to help with clients who are experiencing medical issues that are causing anxiety and depression
  • Clients gain an ability to realign themselves away from their thoughts and feelings and focus instead on the occurring changes in their body and mind through yoga, breathing, and meditation.
  • This insight affords the client the opportunity to heal themselves by interjecting positive thoughts and responses to the moods in order to disarm them.
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  • Participants are armed with knowledge regarding depression as an illness, and are given additional tools to combat their depressive symptoms as they arise
  • order to facilitate a complete and rapid progression to healing.
  • Clients who use this technique will often be able to revert to these methods in times of distress or when they are faced with situations that cause them to lose their sense of separation from their thoughts.
    • Emily Vargas
       
      You can work with clients in understanding how to use these techniques when they are feeling to anxious.
  • Training programs encompass a variety of activities, including role playing, lectures, yoga, meditation, group classes and sustained periods of silence.
  • . In addition, this method works equally as well to relieve the symptoms of various psychological issues including anxiety and panic.
  • The original platform was designed to address the needs of people who suffered from multiple events of depression
Emily Vargas

Haiku :: Translation and Calligraphy by Brother David Steindl-Rast - 0 views

    • Emily Vargas
       
      Butterflies come to a standstill because they are flying. they fly through without a worry. while others who do not fly are blocked by the goat.
Emily Vargas

JOHN GREEN: Make gifts for people - StumbleUpon - 0 views

    • Emily Vargas
       
      The moral was that you should not do something to make money. You should not make something for someone else make it to make it because you enjoy doing so.
Emily Vargas

ZEN PENCILS - 123. ERICA GOLDSON: Graduation speech - 0 views

    • Emily Vargas
       
      He is not a worker, but he is a robot.
    • Emily Vargas
       
      He was successful because he did what he was told and worked to the best of his advantage.
Emily Vargas

Five Classic Ways to Boost Your Note-Taking - 0 views

  • Divide your page into two columns. The left one
  • You're going to jot larger ideas in this column:
  • In the right column, you're going to take down as much information as possible
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  • Some versions of the Cornell system leave the last few lines on each page for summarizing the whole page
  • cover the detailed notes on the right and just examine the main points and new vocab
  • have pictures and tables—it's not necessarily organized
  • But unless you try it, you'll never know if it works better for you.
  • Color-code with different pens, pencils, and highlighters.
  • Trying some new shorthand is a really geeky way to slightly tweak your engravings and get you amped about taking notes again.
  • It's mostly based around removing unimportant letters and making complex letters easier to write quickly.P
  • you might try translating just some of your most-frequently used words into a shorthand "language" that takes less time to writ
  • Record your lectures
Emily Vargas

Seth's Blog: Ode: How to tell a great story - 0 views

  • Great stories succeed because they are able to capture the imagination of large or important audiences.
  • A great story is true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic
  • Great stories make a promise.
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  • People don’t trust the beautiful women ordering vodka at the corner bar
  • Great stories don’t always need eight-page color brochures or a face-to-face meeting. Either you are ready to listen or you aren’t.
  • Great stories are subtle
  • Great stories happen fast
  • no marketer succeeds in telling a story unless he has earned the credibility to tell that story.
  • Great stories don’t appeal to logic
  • Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone.
  • great stories agree with our world view.
  • Great stories don’t contradict themselves
Emily Vargas

How to Remember People's Names - Improve Your Memory with MindTools.com - 0 views

  • Try to find an unusual feature
  • Create an association between that characteristic, the face, and the name in your mind.
  • ask for the person to repeat their name. Use the name yourself as often as possible
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  • The methods suggested for remembering names are fairly simple and obvious, but are usefu
  • Repetition and review help to confirm your memory.
Emily Vargas

You're Bored? That's So AWESOME. - StumbleUpon - 0 views

    • Emily Vargas
       
      This article is hilarious and true. If your bored, its only your fault. Theres always something to do you just need to go do it.
Emily Vargas

Texting, Driving and Mindfulness | 21st Century Spirituality | Big Think - 0 views

  • save my Impreza,
    • Emily Vargas
       
      What does this mean?
  • So I was shocked when moving to Los Angeles nearly two years ago to find how many times I’ve spotted people at lights and stop signs, head down, typing away, or worse, on the highway attempting a one-handed text. 
  • mindfulness meditation is making remarkable clinical strides.
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  • the list can include making coffee, breathing, going to the bathroom and walking.
  • Mindfulness is an important component of yoga asana classes.
  • he one ‘rule’ I have is that no one peers at their phones
  • Putting away the phone during a class is a valuable tool in helping overcome cell phone addiction
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