Richard Davidson of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds is a research pioneer on the benefits of meditation. One positive outcome of meditation that’s piqued his interest is happiness. Mirabai Bush spoke with Richard for the series Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations. Davidson talked about his research with long-time meditation practitioners. His findings helped him piece together what may be important ingredients for genuine or enduring happiness....

After years of watching the techniques Lowrance used to bring about better outcomes, her deputy and clerk encouraged her to write a book. Lowrance told me that The Good Karma Divorce, which will be published in January by HarperOne, teaches techniques that enable people to move through divorce “without cauterizing their wounds and putting difficult emotions into deep freeze. It helps them give forgiveness a chance.” Although some 40 percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce, it is still treated as an aberration....

The study was actually looking at how mindfulness might be connected to heart health, but in the process they found that people who are mindful are also more likely to have healthy glucose levels. The study authors make it clear that this research does not prove causation. In other words, we can’t say: meditate and your glucose levels will become healthy. They simply found an association between mindfulness and normal glucose levels....

As you have probably recognized, reducing this craving is not easy. Much of our mental energy is focused on getting what we want. Fortunately the path of mindfulness is built around recognizing, loosening, and eventually liberating ourselves from this constant craving and grasping. There are three components to overcoming the craving that leads to excessive consumption. The first is examining the “wanting mind,” the second is becoming more savvy about how your attention gets fixated on what you want, and the third is learning how to transform this fixation into an offering....

The good news is that we can learn how to step out of and stay out of these ruminative thought cycles. The first step is be mindful (aware), let go. Letting go means reducing your involvement in these routines, freeing yourself from the need for things to be different, as this is precisely what drives the thinking patterns—it is the continued attempts to escape or avoid unpleasant moments that keep the old negative cycles turning....

He recently sat down with Scott Barry Kaufman, cognitive psychologist, popular science writer, and scientific director of the Imagination Institute. Scott is also an author—In 2013, he published Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, which reviewed the latest science of intelligence and also detailed his experiences as a child growing up with a learning disability. Scott is primarily interested in using solid psychological science to help people in all walks of life to live a more creative fulfilling and meaningful life....

We’re figuring, “This has got to have some special meaning!” After all, it survived the transition from dream to waking state and now it’s at the top of the playlist in our head. We go online, print out the lyrics, and (wanting to take it to the next level) that night we go to our favorite bar and stay through last call. Just as the bartender is telling the patrons it’s time to go, we break into a dance, and sing: “Ah, we’re drinking and we’re dancing, and the band is really happening…” We’ve incubated this song from hazy memory to the dance floor....

Dragonflies rise from those dying tangles of swords, seemingly as infinite as the grass blades and sedges themselves, and they are the only movement out over the great plain of the marsh, swirling around in no ordered migration but merely each to his or her whirling, clattering own, stirred as if by the heat, and filling the air with the sunlit prism-glitter of their lace wings, each dragonfly illuminated in this manner as if from within, as if burning, and as if fueled by that beautiful jewel-fire....

When you sit in your car on the way to work, you might like to use that time to come home to yourself and touch the wonders of life. Instead of allowing yourself to think of the future, you might like to pay attention to your breath and come home to the present moment. We breathe in and out all day, but we are not aware that we are breathing in and breathing out....

S To begin, the “S” stands simply for stop. Literally. Just stop what you’re doing, whether it is typing or rushing out the door. Give yourself a moment to come to rest, pause, and collect yourself. T The “T” stands for take a conscious breath. Now that you’ve paused, take a deeper breath, or two, allowing yourself to feel the expansion of the belly as you breathe deeply. Notice the sensations of being here, now....

I’m not even sure what a pagan is exactly—perhaps I’m misusing the word—but yesterday, after I had dropped the girls off to play at a friend’s house over on the backside of the valley, just across the state line, in Idaho, I encountered a painted turtle crossing the gravel road, traveling from one marsh to another, and my spirits soared, at the life-affirming tenacity of her journey, her crossing, as well as at this most physical manifestation that indeed the back of winter was broken; for here, exhumed once again by the warm breath of the awakening earth, was the most primitive vertebrate still among us....

Can we thrive with less? Yes, seems to be the initial and emphatic answer from these six students (from Michigan State University). One female student looks into the camera and describes how she used to be a spontaneous person, but now, every moment of her life seems to be structured by plans. The next time we see her, she is happily shooing a heap of clothing into her car, as part of the household four-shirts-one-pair-of-pants rule....

The key difference between the two cohorts, the researchers found, was in the planning: vacationers who injected more relaxing experiences into their vacation time reported higher levels of post-trip happiness. Additionally, researchers saw vacationer pre-trip happiness as an “indication of vacationers looking forward to their holiday.” So it might not just be the holiday that counts — it’s how you plan the vacation. Consider incorporating these three mindfulness tips to maximize your next vacation (or weekend)....

Jonathan F.P. Rose, cofounder of the Garrison Institute, recently spoke with David Simas, CEO of the Obama Foundation, about how compassion can support change, how we can meet moments of suffering, and how to take strategic action. Simas holds a BA in political science from Stonehill College and a JD from Boston College Law School. He also serves on the national board of directors of OneGoal, an organization working to address barriers to college graduation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds....

Climbing can be really slow. There are moments when you’re just holding on. Maybe your arms are really tired, so you’re holding on with one hand while you shake the other one out. At the same time, you’re looking up and thinking, where am I going to go next? A little to the left, a little to the right? If it’s a climb you haven’t done before, you learn as you go....

Or if you’re unmoved by flights of fictional fancy, maybe it’s the moment when the bride takes her first steps down the aisle, or the choir launches into a hymn that speaks to your heart…or you stand beside the grave of someone who loved you more than anyone in the whole world ever has or will. You cry. Even when you’re not in danger, you’re not pleading for help, you’re not in physical pain—all situations where crying serves what scientists suspect is its primary purpose: signaling the need for comfort or rescue....

It’s no wonder all the hype surrounding mindfulness has spawned more than a few skeptics, who rightly think, “Nothing could be that good.” And yet, in spite of all the overblown rhetoric, there remains something innately appealing about the notion of being mindful. My email address has mindful in it, and when I’m asked for it by a salesperson, a pause often ensues. They might say, “Mindful. That’s really lovely....

PRACTICE: Learn a practice where you follow a simple object (like your breath). The repeated returning to a focal point trains your attention. BENEFIT: Focus. Your attention wavers less and you’re not as easily pulled away by external distractions or internal chatter. Annoyed by difficult colleagues, office politics, gossip PRACTICE: Let others talk about themselves. Listen and consider what might cause them pain. BENEFIT: Not as judgemental. You take more time to explore what might be causing other people pain and problems instead of assuming the worst....

Sometimes, however, journalists and even scientists (who should know better) have overstated the physical and mental health benefits, which has fed growing skepticism about mindfulness. Indeed, the science behind mindfulness meditation has often suffered from poor research designs and small effect sizes, as 15 psychologists and neuroscientists found after reviewing hundreds of mindfulness studies. Their paper, published by Perspectives on Psychological Science, argues that there is still much we don’t understand about mindfulness and meditation....