She’s now leading the way for the Harvard Longwood Community with reBoot, a weekly, 60-minute breath and meditation workshop that she established last year at HMS.
“I feel like everyone has something to get from meditation, whether it's for mental health or just to recharge yourself,” Pomerantz said. She points to one of 36 peer-reviewed articles she’s come across that states, “ there is mounting evidence to suggest that SKY can be a beneficial, low-risk, low-cost adjunct to the treatment of stress, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, stress-related medical illnesses, substance abuse and rehabilitation of criminal offenders. Pomerantz backs up her personal experiences with research to make the case for integrating meditation into daily routines. “So many,” she said with a broad smile, zipping through a list of the following outcomes: alleviated anxiety, no more insomnia, more energy with fewer hours of sleep, a better ability to manage the blues and to pass through difficult emotions quicker, increased confidence, greater focus, improved relationships at work and at home, more acute skills as an active listener and, in general, just more happiness. What benefits has Pomerantz seen through her now twice-daily focused quiet time? It brings you, physiologically, into a calmer state…. “SKY helps you go into meditation a lot easier because you change the pattern of your breath. “ I tried to meditate for several years, but my mind was wandering a lot,” Pomerantz said. While attending a retreat at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health two years ago, Pomerantz said she discovered a cyclical breathing practice called Sudarshan Kriya yoga ( SKY). “I wanted to figure out ways to improve my lifestyle and feel better.” Managing the many complex aspects of an HMS/FAS cross-river PhD program-from recruitment to policy questions to finances-and supporting the needs of students-from admission to commencement-is mentally and physically taxing, she said.
“Fifty percent of our time, we're wandering or thinking about something else, so we're wasting 50 percent of the time we could be spending fully focused.” “Almost everyone in society is dealing with this incredibly short attention span problem,” Pomerantz said. How do we get back to a happy balance? Liz Pomerantz, administrator for the Systems, Synthetic and Quantitative Biology PhD program at Harvard Medical School, says for her the answer is simple: meditation. Left unchecked, stress wreaks havoc on our bodies, and it contributes to health issues from high blood pressure and heart disease to obesity and diabetes. With seemingly never-ending demands at work and home, conditions such as anxiety, distraction, fatigue and depression can become constant companions for many people. Celebrating 50 Years of Diversity and InclusionĪ new study from Harvard University and an international team of researchers suggests that high levels of Internet use could affect the brain’s structure as well as our attentional capacities, memory processes and social interactions.Īccording to another, less scientific report from Microsoft, our digital-age attention spans have dwindled to a second shorter than that of a goldfish -or l ess than the time it might take to read this paragraph.Research Departments, Centers, Initiatives and more.