Doug Oman

University of California, Berkeley | UCB · School of Public Health

Book publisher has posted online (accessed 23 April 2015): https://www.novapublishers.com/web/web_files/Reviews/Book%20Review%20-%20Psychology%20of%20Meditation%20(Oman).pdf Reviews the book Psychology of Meditation, edited by Nirbhay N. Singh. In 14 chapters this book examines the research basis and recent applications of meditation. To a conside...

Spiritual modeling is proposed as an important but neglected component of traditional religious involvement, as well as of many spiritual practices. Religious and spiritual traditions often portray spirituality as primarily "caught, not taught," as transmitted through formal and informal observation of persons serving as exemplars of how to live a...

Relational caregiving skills remain seldom studied in health professionals. We evaluated effects on health professional relational caregiving self-efficacy from an eight-week, 16-hour training in self-management tools. Physicians, nurses, chaplains, and other health professionals were randomized after pretest to treatment (n = 30) or waiting list (...

The authors evaluated the effects on stress, rumination, forgiveness, and hope of two 8-week, 90-min/wk training programs for college undergraduates in meditation-based stress-management tools. After a pretest, the authors randomly allocated college undergraduates to training in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR; n = 15), Easwaran's Eight-Po...

This paper describes a technology program aimed at developing technical skills and confidence, reducing social isolation and loneliness, and increasing healthcare self-management and self-efficacy among older adults. We conducted a mixed-methods study using surveys collected at baseline and 12 months from 90 older adults. Focus group data ( n = 7)...

Reimagining public health's future should include explicitly considering spirituality as a social determinant of health that is linked to human goods and is deeply valued by people and their communities. Spirituality includes a sense of ultimate meaning, purpose, transcendence, and connectedness. With that end in mind, we assessed how recommendatio...

Mantras, sometimes called holy names or prayer words, are increasingly included and studied as components in health and human services interventions. In this emerging field, the term “mantra” has been implicitly defined over several decades in a way that has been useful, largely shared across research teams, and historically resonant. However, conf...

Objective The modern mindfulness movement and the public health field are aligned in many approaches, including recognizing psychosocial stress impacts and physical-mental health linkages, valuing “upstream” preventive approaches, and seeking to integrate health promotion activities across multiple social sectors. Yet mindfulness is conspicuously a...

Hinduism encompasses considerable heterogeneity within its many schools of thoughts and practice. However, the common thread that binds these multiple perspectives is this handbook’s main topic of inquiry—human well-being and happiness. Hindu thought has always deliberated on the process, nature, conditions, and practices that lead to a fulfilled l...

Objective Mantram or holy name repetition has long been practiced in every major religious tradition. Repetition of a mantram as a mindfulness practice is helpful for stress management and resilience building. The objective of this article is to provide an overview of the key features of mantram and the Mantram Repetition Program (MRP) developed in...

“Self-efficacy,” an individual or group’s self-confidence in possessing and exercising effective skills, as a practical contribution of modern psychology, provides effective interventions in education, management, health care, athletics, and more. We describe how skill in Gandhian nonviolence, whether individual assimilation of ahimsa and fearlessn...

Mindfulness is sometimes misunderstood as solely a Buddhist or secular practice. This chapter offers a toolkit for enhanced sensitivity and flexibility toward patients and populations of diverse spiritual and religious orientations and backgrounds. It explains a set of eight interrelated practices known as Passage Meditation (PM), and a subset know...

For anyone interested in how people see themselves as learning from spiritual models, the Spiritual Modeling Self-Efficacy scale, Stand-Alone version (SMSE-SA) is the clear “go-to” assessment instrument. As the first psychometrically validated brief stand-alone measure of spiritual modeling processes, the SMSE-SA possesses wide-ranging applications...

This is the most comprehensive volume to date on the science and history of meditation. Written in an accessible language by world-leading experts, it describes the various meditation practices employed to modify the self, such as concentration, recitation, breathing, and visualisation, and its effects on the mind and body. It includes debates and...

Mantram Repetition is a widespread and ancient practice that can foster mindfulness, manage stress, and cultivate resilience. This paper provides practical guidelines of how to choose a mantram, when to use a mantram, and how it works. It is a portable, practical, easily accessible means for promoting wellbeing and resilience.

This chapter presents an overview of Hindu religion, emphasizing perspectives within the tradition (indigenous), their implications for practice and Hindu beliefs and practices align or differ with perspectives from Abrahamic traditions that may be more familiar to many western psychologists. After describing global demographics of Hinduism, the ch...

Interest in religion and spirituality continues to grow among public health practitioners, researchers, and scholars. While there have been several recent landmark publications and efforts to understand the intersections of religion, spirituality, and public health, work remains to be done. In this commentary, we outline three challenges that imped...

This article introduces a special section on indigenous Indian religions, focusing on Hinduism, the world’s third largest and oldest major religious tradition. Although Hinduism has been the focus of less empirical study in psychology than other major traditions, this comparative neglect appears to be changing. The present introductory article brie...

We review the life and legacy of Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999) from the perspective of modern and Indian Psychology. A Kerala-born professor of English literature, Easwaran in 1959 travelled to the United States where he taught a system of eight spiritual practices known as Passage Meditation (PM). Its distinctive features include its meditative focu...

This chapter introduces the volume’s Part III, which contains chapter-length portraits of how seven top schools of public health are addressing religious/spiritual (R/S) factors in their educational offerings. This chapter also reports findings from national surveys of public health graduate students (n = 980) and public health school leaders (e.g....

This chapter reviews the more than 100 meta-analyses and systematic reviews of relations between religion/spirituality (R/S) and health that have been published in refereed journals, a far larger number than is generally recognized. The 118 published reviews identified by 2017 were categorized as quantitative meta-analyses (n = 33), qualitative met...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on the associations between religion and spirituality (R/S) and public health education, promotion, and intervention – the public health subfield concentrations of about one-sixth of public health students nationwide. We discuss literature related to health programming at R/S sites, spiritually t...

This chapter introduces the book Why Religion and Spirituality Matter for Public Health: Evidence, Implications, and Resources. More than 3000 empirical studies 100 systematic reviews have been published on relations of religion and/or spirituality (R/S) with health, but R/S factors remain neglected in public health teaching and research. R.S refle...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on relations between religion and spirituality (R/S) and environmental health, a public health subfield and field of concentration that draws slightly less than one-tenth of public health students nationwide.

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on relations between religion and spirituality (R/S) and infectious diseases, issues especially relevant to the laboratory-based field of concentration of 2%–3% of public health students nationwide. We discuss six lines of R/S-health evidence pertaining to immune competence , immunization, infect...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on relations between religion and spirituality (R/S), social identity, and discrimination by race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and religious tradition. We also examine health-supportive (salutogenic) processes arising from social identities linked to each characteristic. Religion and sp...

This chapter introduces a set of 13 empirical review chapters contained in Part I of this volume. Each review focuses on relations between religious and spiritual (R/S) factors and health variables. This present chapter explains the reviews’ collective purpose, distinctive public health focus, and common structure. The first of these reviews (chapt...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on religion and spirituality (R/S) as factors relevant to public health nutrition, the field of concentration of about 3% of public health students nationwide. We discuss R/S-health evidence pertaining to fruit, vegetable, and fat intake, overweight status, eating disorders , and fasting and chol...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on relations between religion and spirituality (R/S) and social factors. Religion and spirituality are conceived as evolving over time and residing at both collective and individual levels.

To date, most empirical research on religion/spirituality and health, like most other health research, has been conducted in the United States or other western countries. Earlier sections of this volume have explicated the public health releva nce of religion and spirituality with a corresponding western emphasis. But religion and spirituality are...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on religious and spiritual (R/S) factors in clinical medicine. Conducting spiritual assessments is required in some settings by The Joint Commission for accreditation of healthcare organizations. Available published literature suggests that several dimensions of R/S predict better adherence to HI...

This present chapter concludes a 28 chapter volume on the relevance of religion and spirituality (R/S) to the field of public health. The volume contains 13 empirical reviews of R/S-health relations (Part I), two chapters addressing practical implications of R/S for public health (Part II), and eight chapters on how R/S factors have been incorporat...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on relations between religion and spirituality (R/S), and mental health, a topic of increasing interest to public health.

This chapter is the first of thirteen reviews in this volume providing a public health perspective on the empirical evidence relating religion and spirituality (R/S) to physical and mental health. This chapter emphasizes an essentially epidemiologic perspective, reviewings evidence bearing on a “generic” model of how an individual’s engagement in r...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on relations between religion and spirituality (R/S) and variables of interest to health policy and management, a public health subfield of concentration for about one-fifth of public health students nationwide. R/S factors may affect health through pathways including health behaviors, social sup...

This chapter describes background and methods used in a set of 13 empirical review chapters contained in Part I of this volume (chapters “ Model of Individual Health Effects from Religion/Spirituality: Supporting Evidence”, “ Religious/Spiritual Effects on Physical Morbidity and Mortality”, Social and Community-Level Factors in Health Effects from...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on relations between individually measured religion and/or spirituality (R/S), and mortality, physical morbidity, and disability. Most studies have relied on frameworks that recognize a potential causative influence of R/S on health that is mediated through factors such as health behaviors, socia...

This chapter describes a compact (9 week, 18 hour) evidence-based course on religious/spiritual (R/S) factors and public health that has been offered with success for nearly a decade at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. We describe a logical sequence of topics and readings that convey the public health importance and...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on religion and spirituality (R/S) as factors relevant to maternal and child health, the field of concentration of about 3% of public health students nationwide.

This volume reviews the exploding religion/spirituality (R/S) and health literature from a population health perspective. It emphasizes the distinctive Public Health concern for promoting health and preventing disease in societies, nations, and communities, as well as individuals. Part I offers a rigorous review of mainstream biomedical and social...

The psychology of religion and spirituality is a topic of increasing interest in India as well as in the West. An internationally influential framework for defining religion and spirituality has been developed by US psychologist Kenneth Pargament, who conceptualizes spirituality and religion as search processes related to sacred realities. Pargamen...

This paper examines some of the contributions psychology is making to the study of the sacred and its role in human functioning. The focus here is not on the ontological reality of the sacred, but rather perceptions of the sacred. We suggest that psychological theory and research on this topic offers: a clarification of the meaning of the sacred; n...

We introduce the topic of Indian/US collaboration in studying religion and spirituality (R/S), providing both historical and philosophical context. A fully in-depth and comprehensive study of R/S will require taking into account three potential types and sources of knowledge: (1) theoretically and intellectually oriented knowledge as exemplified by...

This thoughtful book brings together some of the best psychological and spiritual thinkers to ponder evidence-based reflections about the development and nurturance of compassion. In an effort to alter behavior, scientists have conducted research to better understand the factors that contribute to both caring and cruel behavior among individuals an...

Background: Several evidence-based treatments are available to veterans diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, not all veterans benefit from these treatments or prefer to engage in them. Objectives: The current study explored whether (1) a mantram repetition program (MRP) increased mindful attention among veterans with PTS...

More than 3000 empirical studies have examined relations between religion, spirituality, and a variety of health outcomes. Religion and spirituality (R/S) have been theorized to causally influence health through mechanisms including social connections, health behaviors, mental health, and religious methods of coping. Yet many social scientists and...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental health condition that affects physical health. However, many military veterans with PTSD refuse or drop out of commonly used trauma-focused, evidence-based treatments. Growing research supports the value of spiritual components in diverse types of health care interventions. This study investi...

Reviews the book, The Healing Power of Meditation: Leading Experts on Buddhism, Psychology, and Medicine Explore the Health Benefits of Contemplative Practice edited by Andy Fraser (see record 2012-33552-000 ). In four parts, the book transports the reader to a 2010 conference on meditation and healing held at a Buddhist retreat center in France. T...

Among the most practical contributions of modern psychology is the concept of " self-efficacy, " an individual or group's self-confidence in possessing effective skills. Self-efficacy based approaches have produced effective interventions in practical fields ranging from education and management to healthcare and athletics (Bandura, 1997). We descr...

Religion and spirituality are topics of increasing interest in western culture, and in psychological research and practice. Searches in PsycINFO show that both terms are cited in the titles of an increasing proportion of professional publications in psychology. Increased citations of religion have been modest, a doubling from the 1970s to the 2000s...

Social learning must be considered among the major candidates for explaining why and how people become spiritual or religious, and why their spirituality or religion assumes a particular form. A social learning view of spiritual and religious engagement is also amenable to many practical applications. It may be used by people who seek to deepen the...

Reviews the book, The Mind's Own Physician: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama on the Healing Power of Meditation edited by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richard J. Davidson, and Zara Houshmand (see record 2012-00849-000 ). In eight readable sections, the book provides a front-row seat at dialogues in 2005 among the Dalai Lama, several Western-born Buddhi...

We report psychometric properties, correlates, and underlying theory of the Spiritual Modeling Self-Efficacy (SMSE) scale. The SMSE, the first spiritually oriented self-efficacy measure, is a 10-item self-report assessment of perceived efficacy for learning from spiritual models. Spiritual models are defined as community-based or prominent people w...

Spirituality and religion are topics of increasing interest in U.S. society and popular culture as well for many health professions, including medicine, psychology, and public health. This article comments on Mark Graves’ (2008) synthesis of science and spirituality/religion, Mind, Brain, and the Elusive Soul from the perspective of a public health...

Psychological qualities of central interest to religion and spirituality, including virtues such as love, are drawing increasing scientific attention. One recent large-scale research initiative funded by Fetzer Institute focused on compassionate love (CL), an other-centred form of love with recognisable analogues in all major faith traditions. We r...

An emerging scientific literature is investigating the construct of “compassionate love,” love that is “centered on the good of the other,” a construct empirically linked to physical and mental health. We evaluated effects of an 8-week, 16-hour programme for physicians, nurses, chaplains, and other health professionals, using nonsectarian, spiritua...

This groundbreaking primer illuminates contemplative methods that can improve mental and physical health. Contemplative practices, from meditation to Zen, are growing in popularity as methods to inspire physical and mental health. Contemplative Practices in Action: Spirituality, Meditation, and Health offers readers an introduction to these practic...

This groundbreaking primer illuminates contemplative methods that can improve mental and physical health. Contemplative practices, from meditation to Zen, are growing in popularity as methods to inspire physical and mental health. Contemplative Practices in Action: Spirituality, Meditation, and Health offers readers an introduction to these practic...

This groundbreaking primer illuminates contemplative methods that can improve mental and physical health. Contemplative practices, from meditation to Zen, are growing in popularity as methods to inspire physical and mental health. Contemplative Practices in Action: Spirituality, Meditation, and Health offers readers an introduction to these practic...

This commentary describes a multidimensional approach that underlies much recent empirical research on religion and spirituality (RS) and health. Each faith tradition possesses its own particularities, and common facets shared with other traditions as a coherent resemblance. Taxonomies of RS dimensions vary from being coarse grained to fine grained...

We report the theoretical background, psychometric properties, and correlates of the Spiritual Modeling Inventory of Life Environments (SMILE), a measure of perceptions of spiritual models, defined as everyday and prominent people who have functioned for respondents as exemplars of spiritual qualities, such as compassion, self-control, or faith. De...

There has been great interest in determining if mindfulness can be cultivated and if this cultivation leads to well-being. The current study offers preliminary evidence that at least one aspect of mindfulness, measured by the Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale (MAAS; K. W. Brown & R. M. Ryan, 2003), can be cultivated and does mediate positive ou...

Educators from grade school to college have long taught about religion in fields such as history and social studies. By affirming the importance of religion and spirituality (RS) in the lives of people worldwide, such RS teaching may support and reinforce student assimilation of virtues and character strengths from their families or other committed...

This cross sectional study utilized convenience sampling to investigate the HIV testing intentions of 290 sexually active, male, migrant Latino day laborers, 18 years old or older. The findings indicate that day laborers are indeed at risk for HIV. Nearly two-thirds of the men intended to test for HIV in the next year. Men who were at higher risk o...

This chapter offers a scientific perspective and reviews available evidence on how volunteering affects health and longevity. It focuses on formal volunteer work - performed through a school, hospital, library, or environmental, political, or other organization. Formal volunteer work stands in contrast to more casual or unorganized helping activiti...

Effects of two meditation and mindfulness-based spiritual interventions were examined in college undergraduates (N=44). Compared to a control group, both interventions decreased negative religious coping (d=−0.80, p<.01) and images of God as mainly controlling (d=−.73, p<.01). One intervention provided more training in tools for learning from commu...

A penchant for storytelling is a striking feature of all cultures, especially of religious and spiritual traditions. A common concern of many traditional stories--whether historically derived or parables--is to transmit the words and deeds of spiritual models, persons who exemplify positive spiritual qualities. For example, 2,000 years ago, Jesus u...

The authors evaluated an 8-week, 2-hr per week training for physicians, nurses, chaplains, and other health professionals using nonsectarian, spiritually based self-management tools based on passage meditation (E. Easwaran, 1978/1991). Participants were randomized to intervention (n = 27) or waiting list (n = 31). Pretest, posttest, and 8- and 19-w...

White, Black, Latina, and Asian mothers (n = 6929) were compared on aspects of mother-daughter communication about sex. Non-Whites reported higher discomfort. Latinas and Asians were least likely to have discussed sex but most likely to know daughters' sexual status. The converse was observed for Black mothers. Research on the influence of ethnicit...

This qualitative study assesses the experience of an intervention that provided spiritually based self-management tools to hospital-based nurses. Drawing on wisdom traditions of the major world religions, the eight point program can be practiced by adherents to any religious faith, or those outside of all traditions. Five of eight program points we...

This paper reports a study assessing the usefulness of a mantram repetition programme. Complementary/alternative therapies are becoming commonplace, but more research is needed to assess their benefits. A 5-week programme teaching a 'mind-body-spiritual' technique of silently repeating a mantram - a word or phrase with spiritual meaning - to manage...

To compare the extent with which child-only and family coverage (child and parent insured) ensure health care access and use for low income children in California and discuss the policy implications of extending the State Children's Health Insurance Program (California's Healthy Families) to uninsured parents of child enrollees. We used secondary d...

(From the chapter) Scientific studies of physical and mental health effects from religious and spiritual factors, or "RS" factors, have gained prominence over the past decade. Previous reviews have either touched briefly on possible mechanisms that could explain health outcomes or have focused solely on adolescents. In this chapter, the authors rev...

To explore the extent to which, among working poor families, uninsured immigrant children experience more barriers to care than uninsured nonimmigrants, and compare these differences to those of insured children. We used data from the 2001 California Health Interview Survey, a randomized, population-based telephone survey conducted from November 20...

Children in working poor families are among the most disadvantaged, yet little is known about barriers to care for these children. We sought to compare health care access and use by children from working poor families with other poor and nonpoor children and consider the extent to which expansions in public health insurance have contributed to incr...

In this brief chapter, the authors, by necessity, will focus on effects in one major area: health. They also focus on four major religious practices: attendance at religious services, prayer, meditation, and forgiveness. Doing so in no way implies that other religious or spiritual practices, such as music, are deemed less worthy of consideration. R...

Background: Children in working poor families are among the most disadvantaged, yet little is known about barriers to care for these children. Objectives: We sought to compare health care access and use by children from working poor families with other poor and nonpoor children and consider the extent to which expansions in public health insurance...

From APA: An important development in the scientific study of religion over the past decade has been an increasing number of studies that have persuasively documented positive relationships between religious involvement and physical and mental health outcomes. In this chapter, we explore relationships between religion and health, with primary empha...

Background Psychosocial working conditions are likely to contribute to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSDs), but a lack of standardized measurement tools reflects both the theoretical and methodological limitations of current research.Methods An interdisciplinary team including biomedical, behavioral, and social science researchers used...

This study examined how training in a nonsectarian toolkit of spiritually based self-management techniques affected the caregiving self-efficacy (confidence) of health professionals, including physicians, nurses, psychologists, and chaplains. Before and after an 8-week, 2-hour per week training in the meditation-based Eight Point Program of Easwara...

We respond to and expand on comments by Bandura and by Silberman that have enlarged the discussion of spiritual modeling. Support is offered for the notion that God can be scientifically regarded as a spiritual model, but it is suggested there are no advantages to appending the term role to the term spiritual model. Negative spiritual models are im...

The question, 'Does religion (or spirituality) cause physical health benefits?' may be given at least four diverging interpretations in terms of causal path diagrams. In common usage, the question may be interpreted to indicate that religion causally influences health by: (1) any mechanism, including well-established factors such as social support...

Frequent attendance at religious services has been reported by several studies to be independently associated with lower all-cause mortality. The present study aimed to clarify relationships between religious attendance and mortality by examining how associations of religious attendance with several specific causes of death may be explained by demo...

We describe observations made on 76 low-income children with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Data were gathered on each child at clinic visits (average=7.6 per child) regarding medication status, and on measures of inattention and defiance. Parents of seventeen percent of children took a voluntary parenting skills co...

Studies show that people who volunteer are happier and healthier, perhaps due to enhanced social support, less self-focus, and fewer goal conflicts. Volunteering seems most beneficial for people whose social activities provide cognitive support for coping with major developmental challenges. (SK)

This study investigated whether the commonly observed higher prevalence of physical disability among women is due to higher incidence rates or to other factors such as selective mortality or poor recovery. Methods included observed measures of prevalent lower body physical disability and potential risk factors at baseline (1989-1991) and 4-year fol...

Older residents (N 5 1972) in California were investigated prospectively for association of volunteering service to others and all-cause mortality. Potential confounding factors were studied: demographics, health status, physical functioning, health habits, social support, religious involvement, and emotional states. Possible interaction effects of...