Sacred Rivers has donated the space for these lessons. Fees are 100 dollars for six weekly sessions and all proceeds go directly to the organization. The 30-minute lessons are taught by Founder and Director Deborah McCarthy, MS, OTR/L. Visit their website to register or to learn more: www.youcanbemindful.org

Researchers studied the lateral habenula, “an evolutionarily ancient region deep in the brain.” Neurons in this region are activated by unexpected negative events—a reward is not granted, or unexpected punishment occurs. Researchers found that the balance of chemicals in this region controls the processing of negative events. From the article: The region is unusual because it lacks the standard equipment the brain uses to reduce overactivity: opposing sets of neurons that either increase activity by secreting the chemical glutamate or decrease activity by secreting the chemical GABA....

The demographics of this weekend’s conference were interesting. A fellow attendee told me on arrival there were ten women here for every man. Most were professionals working in the field (what’s the collective noun for mindfulness teachers? A presence? An inquiry? An invitation?) and there has been a strong sense of shared appreciation at feeling part of a growing community. Jon Kabat-Zinn once had a vision that skilled and committed meditators might make an ethical living sharing their practice for the benefit of others....

A Innate or B developed? If you answered: A Your mindset may more often be fixed—making you reluctant to take on new challenges. B You may approach things from a growth mindset more often—which helps in handling setbacks. Carol Dweck, a psychology professor and researcher at Stanford University, has been studying for decades how our mindsets influence our behavior. Her early studies showed that children start developing their mindset as a response to the praise they receive....

For information about mindful listening, read the following stories on Mindful.org. 12/12/11

I Wonder By Annaka Harris, illustrated byJohn Rowe • Four Elephants PressWe adults have created a world in which information is quite literally at our nger- tips—evidence, perhaps, of how highly we value “knowing” stu . So how do children learn to be comfortable with not knowing, not having an answer? Something bigger is at stake here: the less our children enjoy hanging out in the space between the question and the answer (if there is one), the less they’re likely to exercise their own curiosity and creativity....

Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, and is co-author, with Susan Smalley, of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness, and the CD “Mindful Meditations.” Here she talks with UCLA Today’s Judy Lin about dealing with gifts and consumption in a more mindful, saner way than some of us, at least, might be used to. So many of us tend to think that everything about the holidays and gift-giving has to be fantastic and fun....

Childhood trauma has been linked to smaller brain size, diminished IQ, anti-social behavior, aggression and emotional numbness. “Trauma is the residue of what those experiences leave in your body,” says Bessel van der Kolk, the president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. “People’s brains change because of trauma.” Yet recent studies show that mindfulness practice helps children connect with positive emotional and social experiences, often things that a traumatized brain struggles to do....

“As a healthcare professional you hold this identity of: I am the caregiver, not the caretaker. I’m meant to be the ‘strong one’—the one who’s got it all figured out,” she says. The Importance of Self-Care By chance, she met a woman who became her meditation teacher, and from there everything began to shift. “When I first sat down with her, I just cried for the first 20 minutes,” she recounts....

This sudden dizziness and nausea—food poisoning, I thought— arrived in the midst of a prolonged period of physical dismay. Months earlier, I’d become suddenly intimate with infirmity thanks to a stubborn and seemingly irresolvable pain in my knee. A sprain, my physiotherapist thought. One I got by sitting at my desk for too long and with not enough attention to my body, over the course of too many pandemic days made sedentary by circumstances and dread....

But the great thing about everyday household tasks is that they’re slow, repetitive, and physical, which makes them ideal for settling into mindfulness. In fact, a study at Florida State University found people who washed dishes while attending to awareness of their mind and body experienced a 27% reduction in nervousness and a 25% increase in feelings of inspiration (and those who washed the dishes like they normally would saw no such benefits)....

Stitching Together From tomato jam to embroidered handkerchiefs, The Craftivist Collective is adding a new tool to the activism toolbox—Craftivism. In 2008, Sarah Corbett, the collective’s founder, felt burned out by the confrontational nature of activism. Compelled to explore other ways she could make a difference, she stumbled upon craftivism, a form of activism that nudges people to stop, think, and act through the use of handcrafted objects. Since then the collective has hosted group stitch-ins, sent out handwritten notes to policymakers, and crafted solidarity banners that have been hung all over the world, all following the motto on their website that reads, “If we want our world to be more beautiful, kind, and just, then let’s make our activism beautiful, kind, and just....

The merger creates the largest and most comprehensive enterprise in the field, with more than 9,000 pieces of content, hundreds of courses, state-of-the-art technology and consumer media with a monthly audience of more than 2 million individuals. The new company was formed from the merger of the media enterprise founded and developed by the Foundation for a Mindful Society, including Mindful Magazine and mindful.org, with LifeXT, a corporate-training organization. The merger of the two companies brings together the world’s pre-eminent enterprise in the mindfulness field, including products in the consumer media; courses; corporate training; licensed content; business media; events; and directories focused on meditation and mindfulness....

Longacre’s director, Matt Smith, thought that the camp’s tech-free policy wasn’t helping kids in the long run. Instead, Smith and his colleagues thought giving campers a short break from their devices, and then allowing technology back, would help the kids reflect on their relationship with their devices. The result? Below is a short video of the “tech experiment.” Campers talk about what it was like to take a digital break, and how they felt when they got their devices back....

Island’s End trailer from Filmmaker John Bush on Vimeo. You can help the filmmaker finish the film by making a tax-deductible donation.

The kind of happiness I am referring to here goes beyond the happy faces that inevitably surface during birthday parties or the gleeful grins we see at Christmas. Genuine, underlying happiness runs deeper than the excitement displayed when our child gets the latest gadget, or the name brand clothes. This excitement offers our child a taste of happiness. A temporary happy or state of being that can often feel so good that if he (or she) gets enough of it they start mistaking it for the real thing....

Listen to the Full Conversation: BB: Let’s talk a little bit about how MBCT helps people—now that you’ve had decades of experience with how it’s been used and what the results have been. ZS: Our initial motivation was to try and establish a firm scientific basis for teaching people psychological skills for managing a mood disorder in the long-term. They could take these skills into their own lives when therapy was over—the exact time when someone needs to really look after themselves because of the risk of relapse....