Category Archives: Research

Eat for Life – Mindful Eating Course starting in January

The holidays are beginning to wind down and now is the time you might start to wonder in a slightly agitated voice “how could I have eaten so much over the holidays?” or “why can’t fit into these pants anymore (did they shrink)?”   If that resonates with you or if you’re just looking to get the new year off to a good start with eating better and treating your body better,  Eat for Life might be just what you’re looking for. 

 Eat for Life is a 10 week class I developed which teaches you the skills of mindful and intuitive eating. The class is available in person (in Columbia, MO) and online (so you can take it anywhere in the world).  The online course is done from the luxury of your own home and you follow along with each week’s assignments on your own time schedule.  There is never a time you have to be “online” for a group discussion.   Plus, you’ll get little inspirational emails from me twice a week to keep you on task! 

This non-diet approach to eating uses a non-judgmental and compassionate approach to re-learning how to use your internal physical cues to guide what, when, how, and why you eat.  In other words, this is NOT an approach that shames you into losing weight fast like some reality TV shows you might have watched.  While that might work for some, it is not the recommended technique for long lasting change. 

 By the way, I’ve done some research on this program and the results indicate the class participants do learn to listen to their bodies messages about how to eat, they have a better appreciation for their bodies (which usually lends itself to treating it better), they engage in less binge eating, and they are more mindful (which is key in helping you change).    

 Here are the dates, times, and cost for the online class.  Let me know if you need any additional information or want to enroll.   If you are interested in the in-person class (in Columbia, MO) or are a faculty, staff, or retiree of the University of Missouri, please contact me for your cost information.   You get the class cheaper because it’s part of your benefit package.

 DATES FOR THE WINTER 2013 ONLINE CLASS:

Orientation – week of January 18                                                                                        10 Week Class – week of January 25 – week of April 5 (except spring break)Cost: $180 for members of the community (anywhere around the world)

Registration form must be received by January 14.   My email is RossyL@umsystem.edu

 

 

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Meditation Can Change Your Emotional Patterns and Your Brain

Three years ago I found myself traveling to Madison, Wisconsin, to be a part of the brain research being conducted by Richard Davidson, the neuroscientist who heads up the Center for Investigating Healthy. I had been identified as a “long term meditator” and asked to participate in some of the extensive research projects being conducted there to better understand what happens to the brain when you meditate.  Over the next year and a half I was examined on three separate occasions in a sleep lab and in a Functional MRI machine using neuroimaging techniques that show which brain areas are involved in a task, a process, or an emotion.  I was asked to respond to a wide variety of pictures and scenarios while being “stressed” by conditions such as heat applied to my arm and giving a speech or undergoing an interview with very stern looking people.

I just listened to a fascinating interview  where Richard Davidson talks about some of his findings in his new book co-authored by Sharon Begley called “The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live-and How You Can Change Them.” The book outlines six categories of Emotional Style:
1. Resilience: How slowly or quickly you recover from adversity.
2. Outlook: How long you are able to sustain positive emotion.
3. Social Intuition: How adept you are at picking up social signals from the people around you.
4. Self-Awareness: How well you perceive bodily feelings that reflect emotions.
5. Sensitivity to Context: How good you are at regulating your emotional responses to take into account the context you find yourself in.
6. Attention: How sharp and clear your focus is.


If you’re interested in emotion, how different emotions map onto the brain, and how you can change your emotions by changing the way your brain functions,  then this would be an interesting read (comes out December 24).  While the “what do you do once you know this information” part of the book might be a bit slim, we do know from Dr. Davidson’s and other research that meditation can change our brain structures.  Due to neuroplasticity of the brain, we can change.  We just need to work at it. 

The payoff for meditating?  More resilience, better outlook, more social intuitive, greater self- awareness, better regulation of your emotional responses, and better attention.  Those all sound pretty good to me.

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