Welcome, by Sharon Theroux

After weeks of development, welcome to my first blog post on our brand new website, South Florida Center for Mindfulness!  I am hoping that this website will be informative, allowing you to learn more about mindfulness and how it can be applied in our daily lives.  I also hope this website will serve as a support for the South Florida mindful community, with updates of upcoming mindfulness classes and events.

As a neuropsychologist who has studied the effects of different types of brain injury on behavior, it has been very exciting over the past few years to see the abundance of research coming out that suggests the beneficial effects of mindfulness on the brain.  Not only is there evidence to suggest that an 8-week MBSR class can increase grey matter density in certain regions of the brain,

read article

but participation in an MBSR class can also boost your immune function!

read abstract

Although the evidence to suggest the benefits of mindfulness based meditation on cognitive abilities is mixed (e.g. some studies report significant improvements in attention and executive abilities, others do not), we are still in the infancy of this research, and more information will quickly be forthcoming.  What an exciting time to be practicing mindfulness!