Neuroscience & Psychology of Meditation: Mindfulness & Negative Emotions
Anthony King, PhD
Meditation can allow us to become more aware of the contents and habits of our minds, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world we live in. Cultivation of metacognitive awareness and equanimity helps us to recognize and work positively with afflictive emotions and the effects have on our bodies and our minds, find ways to expand our perspective and self-compassion, and help to avoid getting stuck in cycles of anxiety, fear, self-criticism, and depressive rumination. Programs such as Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) show efficacy in clinical trials for preventing relapse of clinical depression, and for helping people struggling with active depression, anxiety, and psychological trauma.
This day-long experiential workshop will provide instruction and guided practice in mindfulness and mind-body-emotion practices for working with aversive, afflictive emotions commonly used in programs like Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. It will also provide a contemporary yet accessible explanation of the psychology and neuroscience of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and cutting-edge neuroimaging work about how mindfulness meditation and metacognitive practices for emotional regulation lead to changes in large-scale brain networks involved in executive, attentional, emotional, and self-related processing, including the clinical-translational neuroimaging work of Dr King.