An Overview of Mindfulness and Its Implications for Children and Adolescents

Mindfulness is focusing on the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's thoughts, feelings, and body sensations as they are. The use of mindfulness practices on children and adolescents is burgeoning. This chapter covers the meaning and elements of mindfulness, their measurement, the various techniques, and exercises exclusive for children. Such techniques are typically individualized, tailor-made, personalized, contextualized, play-based, activity-oriented, reward-oriented, and maintained at the child's developmental level. Mindfulness parenting is vital. A mindful parent is aware of one's thoughts and feelings; is responsive to the child's needs, thoughts, and feelings; is better at regulating own emotions; is less critical of oneself or the child; is better at standing back from situations and avoiding an impulsive reaction. Issues related to professionalism, formal institutions for training mindfulness, and ongoing research on this theme, their achievements, and setbacks are listed before providing future directions for work in this area.

On body and culture - medicine and embodiment.

Embodiment theory shows up in several fields of (clinical) medicine, it has been applied in studying various diseases, conditions, and treatments. The aim of this short review - due to its extent limitation - is to provide some insight into the diversity of interpretation and application of the embodiment paradigm within medicine.The question of embodiment was often discussed regarding diseases and conditions with physical modifications or lesions, as well as in case of those with notable changes in perception (e.gpregnancy, cancer or organ transplantation). However, studies were also performed in seemingly distant areas such as psychiatry (schizophrenia, dementia, depression, anorexia), pulmonology (asthma and COPD), or endocrinology (perimenopause). Meanwhile embodiment was most frequently explored in connection with the lived experience of femininity-masculinity, physical symptoms, movement limitations, altered body sensations, some of these articles discussed more general concerns such as therapeutic relationship, (disease) perceptions, compliance and therapeutic efficiency.

790 Adaptive Body Awareness Mediates the Relationship between Quality of Sleep and Symptoms of Central Sensitization

Introduction Sleep disturbance is associated with chronic pain. Central sensitization (CS), defined as the amplification of neural signaling within the central nervous system that results in pain hypersensitivity, may be one pathway through which sleep disturbance contributes to chronic pain. Sleep disturbance and CS are both associated with maladaptive body awareness, characterized by increased hypervigilance and catastrophizing in response to body sensations. Impaired sleep, increases maladaptive body awareness, which then contributes to CS. Less is known about the relationship between quality sleep, adaptive body awareness (i.e., increased attention to and awareness of body sensations, devoid of negative evaluations of sensations), and CS. Primary aims were to evaluate mediational pathways through which (1) sleep disturbance might be related to increased pain intensity via CS-related symptoms and (2) quality sleep might be related to lower CS-related symptoms via adaptive body awareness. Methods In a cross-sectional study, online surveys were administrated to 301 individuals with chronic pain. Pearson’s correlations characterized overall relationship between self-reported sleep quality (PROMIS-Sleep), adaptive body awareness (Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness; MAIA-2), and CS-related symptoms (Central Sensitization Inventory; CSI). Two path analyses using PROCESS were conducted. Results Results revealed that a one-unit increase in sleep disturbance was associated with a 1.7 unit increase in pain intensity, which was partially explained by CS-related symptoms [point estimate=.16; 95% bootstrap confident intervals (CI)=0.10 to 0.22]. In a separate path analysis, a one-unit decrease in sleep disturbance was associated with a 3.5 unit decrease in CS-related symptoms, which was partially explained via adaptive body awareness [point estimate=.25; 95% CI=0.03 to 0.52]. Conclusion Novel findings provide greater understanding into pathways through which sleep might contribute to chronic pain. Results support longitudinal studies to explore effects of sleep and adaptive body awareness on self-reported symptoms and biological markers of CS within chronic pain populations. Support (if any):

INTERDISCIPLINARY NEUROCOGNITIVE APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF MOTOR, COGNITIVE, AND EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS IN CHILDREN ENGAGED IN MUSIC: PRINCIPLES OF NEUROCORRECTION

The aim of the study was to investigate common complaints in children learning music related to the feeling of motor stiffness, muscle discomfort, painful postural tension, difficulties in self-control, difficulty in differentiating body sensations, as well as – emotional difficulties before the performance, and cognitive difficulties arising from the study of music notation.