Yuval Hadash

University of Haifa | haifa · Department of Psychology

Emerging evidence suggests that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) may be one promising intervention approach within the global mental-health crisis of forced displacement. Little is known about the mechanisms of action of MBIs for trauma recovery or among diverse forcibly displaced people (FDP). Within a single-site randomized waitlist-control...

Objective: We sought to address a growing debate regarding the adverse and salutary impact of unusual, extraordinary, or intense subjective experiences during mindfulness interventions. To do so, we empirically characterized such peak experiences during an intensive mindfulness meditation intervention and their impact post-intervention. Method: We...

Training attention and awareness in mindfulness meditation is theorized to be essential for the cultivation of mindfulness and its salutary outcomes. Yet, the empirical foundation for this central premise in mindfulness science is surprisingly small due to a limited methodological capacity to measure attention and awareness during mindfulness medit...

Objectives Meta-awareness has been implicated in monitoring of and self-regulatory control over attentional processes implicated in internally directed cognition and mental health. Yet, research has focused on external sensory-perceptual attention. We therefore sought to quantify meta-awareness of difficulty disengaging internal attention from one’...

We sought to, first, better understand the role of emotional responding, and specifically shame and guilt, in trauma recovery among asylum-seekers following forced displacement; and, second, to explore whether therapeutic effects of a mindfulness- and compassion-based intervention on trauma recovery among asylum-seekers are mediated by therapeutic...

Objective: Mindfulness- and compassion-based interventions may represent a promising intervention approach to the global mental health crisis of forced displacement. Specifically, Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Refugees (MBTR-R)-a mindfulness- and compassion-based, trauma-sensitive, and socioculturally adapted intervention for refugees and...

Training attention and awareness in mindfulness meditation is theorized to be essential for the cultivation of mindfulness and its salutary outcomes. Yet, the empirical foundation for this central premise in mindfulness science is surprisingly small due to a limited methodological capacity to measure attention and awareness during mindfulness medit...

Buddhist thought and contemporary psychological science suggest that an important mechanism through which mindfulness contributes to well-being is by reducing self-referential processing of experience and cultivating selfless processing of experience. Self-referential processing of experience is implicated in prevalent forms of suffering and mental...

Refugees and asylum seekers often suffer from trauma- and stress-related mental health problems. We thus developed mindfulness-based trauma recovery for refugees (MBTR-R)—a 9-week, mindfulness-based, trauma-sensitive, and socioculturally adapted group intervention for refugees and asylum seekers. We conducted a randomized waitlist-control study to...

Objectives In contrast to theory, most extant research has not investigated mindfulness mechanisms as dynamic system(s) of processes nor via measurement with high temporal and contextual resolution in participants’ real-world environment. Methods Accordingly, as an initial proof of concept approach, we applied a network analysis methodology to exp...

The ability to decenter from internal experiences is important for mental health. Consequently, improving decentering is a common therapeutic target, particularly for mindfulness-based interventions. However, extant decentering measures are limited as they fail to directly assess all 3 metacognitive processes recently theorized to subserve decenter...

Refugees and asylum seekers often suffer from trauma- and stress-related mental health problems. We thus developed Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Refugees (MBTR-R) – a 9-week, mindfulness-based, trauma-sensitive and socio-culturally adapted, group intervention for refugees and asylum seekers. We conducted a randomized waitlist-control study...

The development and implementation of psychometrically sound behavioral measures of mindfulness are important to advancing the science of mindfulness. To help organize, conceptualize, and guide the development of behavioral measures of mindfulness, we propose defining features, and a four-domain framework, of the behavioral assessment of mindfulnes...

We previously proposed that three metacognitive processes – meta-awareness, disidentification from internal experience, and reduced reactivity to thought content – together constitute decentering. We review emerging methods to study these metacognitive processes and the novel insights they provide regarding the nature and salutary function(s) of de...

Rigorous study of the prevalence and functions of emotional responding to initial mindfulness training among meditation-naïve practitioners or clients is scarce, yet could be important for informing more personalized and effective delivery of mindfulness-based interventions. Accordingly, we modeled the function of emotional responding to initial mi...

The Satipatṭhāna Sutta describes mindfulness as a mental state characterized by the objects of mindful awareness (i.e., what experience a person attends to) and mental qualities of that mindful awareness (i.e., how a person attends to experience). In contemporary psychology, mindfulness is often similarly conceptualized as a trait or a state charac...

The development and implementation of psychometrically sound behavioral measures of mindfulness is important to advancing the science of mindfulness. To help organize, conceptualize, and guide the development of behavioral measures of mindfulness, we propose defining features, and a four-domain framework, of the behavioral assessment of mindfulness...

We previously proposed that three metacognitive processes – meta-awareness, disidentification from internal experience, and reduced reactivity to thought content – together constitute decentering. We review emerging methods to study these metacognitive processes and the novel insights they provide regarding the nature and salutary function(s) of de...

Although Buddhist thought and contemporary psychological science have theorized that equanimity may be a critical outcome and salutary mechanism of action of mindfulness, empirical evidence is limited. Eighty-two meditation-naive adults (52% female; Mage = 25.05 years, SD = 3.26 years) from the general community participated in a 3-week, six-sessio...

We explore the human capacity for and the function(s) of meta-awareness for biased attentional processing of emotional information (MAB) subserving mental (ill) health. We do so by integrating probe-caught sampling methods, signal detection theory, and multilevel modeling of cognitive-experimental laboratory data among daily smokers (N = 75) known...

Decentering and related constructs reflect the capacity to shift experiential perspective – from within one’s subjective experience onto that experience. According to the metacognitive processes model of decentering these constructs are subserved by three metacognitive processes – meta-awareness, disidentification from internal experience, and redu...

We integrate Buddhist thought and psychological science to propose a novel conceptual and operational definition of equanimity. First, we introduce the Decoupling Model of Equanimity—conceptualizing equanimity as the decoupling of desire (wanting and not wanting) from the hedonic tone of current or anticipated experience (pleasant and unpleasant)....

We propose that Experiential Self-Referential Processing (ESRP) – the cognitive association of present moment subjective experience (e.g., sensations, emotions, thoughts) with the self – underlies various forms of maladaptation. We theorize that mindfulness contributes to mental health by engendering Experiential Selfless Processing (ESLP) – proces...

The capacity to shift experiential perspective—from within one’s subjective experience onto that experience—is fundamental to being human. Scholars have long theorized that this metacognitive capacity—which we refer to as decentering—may play an important role in mental health. To help illuminate this mental phenomenon and its links to mental healt...

The capacity to shift experiential perspective – from within one’s subjective experience, onto that experience – is fundamental to being human. Scholars have long theorized that this metacognitive capacity – that we refer to as decentering – may play an important role in mental health. To help illuminate this mental phenomenon and its links to ment...