“Being distracted exacts a cost on our well-being,” Davidson tells Shriver. “If we become more mindful of our everyday activities, we can learn well-being and become happier.” Indeed, a recent study out of Davidson’s lab at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, U-W Madison, on compassion meditation demonstrated that just 30 minutes of practice a day over the course of two weeks was enough to produce a change in behavior and in brain function....

Turning driving into an opportunity for mindfulness can be done with a simple strategy we call Notice-Shift-Rewire. Noticing is the act of awareness – the moment we wake up to the distractions of the inner and outer world. Shifting is the act or redirecting the mind to the experience of the present moment. And Rewiring is staying with and savoring the experience. Through rewiring we have the opportunity to take advantage of the neuroplastic nature of our brains to our advantage....

1. Soothe your inner critic Sometimes, we get so caught up in the idea of the picture-perfect holiday that we forget to enjoy the beauty of the season. When we let go of expectations (and ruminations about our shortcomings) and simply appreciate the moments as they unfold (in all their imperfect glory), we open ourselves up to joy. Explore this simple practice to embrace self-compassion and quiet self-criticism. 2 Don’t just gather, connect Just getting together during the holidays isn’t enough to nourish authentic connection with your loved ones....

Mindfulness teacher Trudy Goodman and the folks at InsightLA are in the running for a $100,000 grant to expand their work to bring mindfulness to people from all walks of life in Los Angeles. But time is short, voting ends on Wednesday, April 17. To learn more, you can go the LA2050 website to read about InsightLA’s proposal, then hit the big blue VOTE button to support their effort. If you vote, you’ll also learn more about the wonderful work at GOOD, a very cool global community of, by, and for pragmatic idealists working towards individual and collective progress....

Led by the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families in partnership with University College London, a series of trials will see children from up to 370 schools learn mindfulness exercises, relaxation techniques and breathing exercises which aim to “to help them regulate their emotions”—alongside pupil sessions with mental health experts. The study will extend existing research into mindfulness and mental health education, comparing the effectiveness of different approaches, with the aim of establishing a robust evidence-base to help schools determine how best to promote students’ mental health and well-being....

In the now famous book Tuesdays with Morrie, Morrie points us in the direction of happiness: “So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning....

From the blog: There had been comparatively little work done on the lasting impacts of mindfulness training, especially under conditions of high stress—the equivalent of evaluating the impact of a week of training on the results of a two-hundred-yard dash versus examining the effects of months of training on a marathon time. “The bulk of my work looks at high-stress cohorts, to see how mindfulness training can be protective against long-term stress,” Jha told me....

1. Commit to Your Vision David and Goliath is a story of how one young man, with pluck, good aim, and timing discovered a DIY, low-cost method to use an Etsy-worthy slingshot to slay a giant. Mindfulness practice is how we develop pluck, good aim, and timing to aid in our springing up and overcoming the giants with gusto! One of my personal life mottos is that if anything can stop you, you will be stopped....

In this seven-minute video, Anu Gupta, founder and CEO of BE MORE with Anu, explores what we can collectively gain by facing our unconscious biases. What We Gain by Recognizing Our Biases 1. We can be truly present with one another. “There is nothing inherent about bias.” Gupta says. No one is born thinking that certain skin colors, social classes, or genders equate to attractiveness, worthiness, or success. It is, instead, the media we consume, the people and culture surrounding us, and the stereotypes we accept as true that wrongfully shape the ideas we have about other people....

When you begin to bring mindfulness to thoughts, one thing you notice is some kind of “self-talk” going on—you’re talking to yourself. As we bring a beginner’s mind to it, we can’t help but notice how unbelievably hard we are on ourselves so much of the time. We say things that we would never say to a friend: What is wrong with me? or I’m such an idiot or I’ll never get this right....

The good news is that you can bring your training into everyday moments without adding any more demands on your already too-packed schedule. I like to call these moments Purposeful Pauses. It isn’t just about stopping, it is about noticing what is here to be noticed when you stop. And it is about redirecting the attention when it takes off into the future or the past. This is a continuation of the attention training you experience when you are practicing meditation on your cushion or chair....

If we are too self-absorbed and caught up in our own experience in any moment, we will be unable to shift our perspective in this way and won’t even think to try. When we are self-preoccupied, there is virtually no awareness of whole domains of reality we may be living, immersed in every day but which nevertheless are continually impinging on and influencing our lives. Our emotions, and particularly the intensely afflictive emotions that “sweep us away,” such as anger, fear, and sadness, can all too easily blind us to the full picture of what is actually happening with others and within ourselves....

“Our program aims to help people find those moments of refuge,” says Amit Bernstein, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Haifa, Israel, and director of The Moments of Refuge Project. Bernstein and his team developed Mindfulness-SOS for Ukrainians in partnership with the Ukrainian refugee community, Global Empowerment Mission, Pandemic of Love, SmartAID, the Ukrainian Mindful Awareness Project, and Mindful.org. “It’s hard to recover and heal if you’re not in a state where you feel safe,” Bernstein says....

The bleakness doesn’t stop on the outside. The moment I walk through the heavy metal doors to the visiting area, I’m in another world, cheerless and severe. This Thursday evening, a few family and friends of inmates stare at the floor as they wait under a pastiche of “Call us first!” advertisements for bail bonds. Old newspapers and magazines litter the waiting room. “Men’s meditation, Room 322,” I say through the microphone to the woman sitting behind reinforced glass, trading my driver’s license for a visitor tag, to be worn at all times....

Ammi’s Adventures: Clouds Hi! I’m Ammi. My name means “the whole world is inside of me,” and I think it’s true: I carry the whole world in my mind and heart and body. I know you do, too! I like to play games, explore, and discover what makes me, me. I’m so glad we’re together on this journey! I love to sit and watch the clouds. I play the cloud game with my friends, my family, and I even play it by myself....

Zoë Nudell—even though she was taken from us in horrific and untimely way—lived 100% of her life and she lived it to the full. We want to honor that life here, as we have in the story in Mindful. I’ve asked Carsten Knox, the reporter who wrote this piece, to share something of his time spent with her researching his story on The Nova Scotia Sea School, which was a very big part of Zoë’s life and where she left a legacy of many young people lives changed for the better....

You gather your attention, inviting it to focus on the breath. You notice the subtle sensations at the belly—rising, falling. You remember your meditation teacher instructing you to think of your mind like a puppy, so you invite your untrained mind to sit and stay, to let go of its busy sniffing and wagging and practice being still, just for this breath. And then the puppy goes bananas. Unbidden, your mind suddenly notices everything that’s “wrong....