Saturday, May 23, 2015

Week 3 Assignment 2

Hello once again,

I gained a lot of knowledge about my topic, such as mindfulness fundamentally concerns consciousness. This sounds obvious, but this sparked my interest in conscious and unconscious behaviors that are effected by mindfulness. Also, reading that Buddhism and western science come together in text to clarify the understanding of mindfulness and how it is shown in cognitive expressions and its psychological effects, was exciting because it emphasizes the importance of utilizing the practice. The strategy that I found most significant was keywords and truncations. Utilizing these skills narrowed my search and I was able to find exactly what I was looking for.  One frustration I had was so many books came up if they just had mindful in the text. When Badke mentioned that keywords are flat he was definitely right. I had to piece together the right keywords in order to get the results I was looking for. I hope to continue to narrow my search as much as possible and have as much depth as I can. I say narrow relative to the topic’s expansive content and knowing my topic’s hierarchy.   

All in all this assignment, although extensive, was not done in vain but rather mindfully.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Week 2 Assignment 2


I gained knowledge of the psychological approach of mindfulness and the use of it to obtain and maintain a higher quality of life. Mindful meditation has to be consistent, just like anything worth evaluating the results of. Also, stress reduction was an effect of mindfulness. The most appalling information I found was that meditation is a “2500-year-old Buddhist meditation practice”.

               Using a familiar search engine, Google, I was able to access the Scholar engine to review articles. Using the CRAAP model I was able to bypass any information that didn’t seem legitimate and seemed to provide biased information. Making note of the year the articles were published was crucial because my topic is relatively recent in our western domain, therefore researching relevant articles is a must. Also, being aware of the authors and their credentials was important to determine if they were qualified to write on the topic.

Going more in depth of the stress reduction mindfulness meditation can provide, is an aspect of the topic I’d like to research further.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Introduction Blog LBSU 302

Hello Readers,

               My name is Raquel Estrada and Psychology is my major. This semester will be my first at Brandman. Ive been employed the with the same girl's group home for almost two years. I aspire to become an MFT.

                I have become fascinated with the effect of mindfulness and meditation; I plan to research the effects of this practice thoroughly. As emphasized in the text, my main goal is to become my own gatekeeper to seek information that has been peer reviewed by legitimate sources. Primary sources and first hand experiences of the effects of mindfulness and meditation is what I plan to research. I hope to improve on enhancing my evaluation skills to know what writers and works are highly regarded in the discipline I am researching, as suggested by Badke in the text. Thank you for reading, until next time!

Raquel Estrada