Dan Harris: The New Ambassadors of Mindfulness from Mindful Direct on Vimeo. From Public Meltdown to Meditation An on-air meltdown lead Harris to meditation. His panic-attack happened in 2004, during a routine newscast. Harris says it was spurred by anxiety (in part a result of cocaine and ecstasy use)—his response to feeling weak and adrift after returning from covering wars in the Middle-East. “My on-air meltdown was the direct result of an extended run of mindlessness,” Harris writes in 10% Happier, “a period of time during which I was focused on advancement and adventure, to the detriment of pretty much everything else in my life....

When asked to describe his background in practice and study, Dr Baime replied that he started officially to study at age 14, but he had begun meditating on his own even before that, “as a little kid.” In 1978, he connected to the Shambhala lineage, and became a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He has since studied with Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatso, and is currently a devoted student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche....

Sarah Bowen, a research scientist in the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at the University of Washington, invited smokers who wanted to quit to participate in a study. Each brought an unopened pack of their favorite brand of cigarettes. When the smokers were all there, Bowen seated them around a long table. Then the torture began. “Take out your pack and look at it,” Bowen instructed. They did. “Now remove the cellophane,” she commanded....

Alternatives therapies seem to provide both emotional and physical relief for many types of medical ailments, according to the findings, which were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Nearly 40 percent of Americans use some form of complementary and alternative medicine, according to the 2007 National Health Interview Survey. These practices include meditation, yoga, and acupuncture, among others. And now, many are receiving the support of conventional doctors who have seen apparent benefits in some of their patients....

Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, said he hoped some beginning farmers would graduate to midsize and large farms as older farmers retired. “I think there needs to be more work in this area,” he said. “It’s great to invest $18 million to reach out to several thousand to get them interested, but the need here is pretty significant. We need to be even more creative than we’ve been to create strategies so that young people can access operations of all sizes....

Here, Greenberg talks about his life work and the projects he’s involved in that promote well-being for families, children, teachers and students, including Penn State’s PEACE program (Program on Empathy, Awareness and Compassion in Education). Greenberg says he expects the interest in mindfulness and contemplative practices to grow, as more young scientists and more Americans in general become engaged and interested in being present and in the moment, especially in relation to others....

Ruth King: Being crybaby was like being a target. SB: That’s Ruth King. She’s one of this years’ powerful women of the mindfulness movement nominated by their peers and featured in the August issue of Mindful magazine. Ruth is a teacher, an author, and a clinical psychologist, and she’s our guest on this episode of Real Mindful. I spoke with her back in February before the leaves were on the trees and a time that felt deeply unsettled and unsettling....

As Goldstein writes in his post, Are You a Part of the Mindfulness Revolution?, “Mindfulness is now being talked about as a catalyst for emotional intelligence which has applications in politics, business, sports, education, healthcare and so many other places.” Edited by Mindful.org’s Barry Boyce, the book collects the best writing on these applications. Selections include : Jon Kabat-Zinn on the essence of mindfulness, stress reduction, and positive change Professor of psychiatry Daniel Siegel, MD, on how mindfulness benefits the brain Physician and meditation teacher Jan Chozen Bays, MD, on how and why to practice mindful eating Pioneering psychologist Ellen Langer on how mindfulness can change the understanding and treatment of disease...

The Best Mindfulness Books of 2022 1) Let Your Light Shine How Mindfulness Can Empower Children and Rebuild Communities Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez • TarcherPerigee In this book, the founders of the Holistic Life Foundation (HLF) offer a compelling and comprehensive blueprint for radical change that begins with each of us and uplifts all of us. We get to know the Smith brothers and Gonzalez, their best-friendship, and the ways the HLF grew organically from the Smiths’ roots in the rough neighborhood of West Baltimore where they were raised by adults with deep meditation and yoga practices....

If even elite athletes are feeling body shame, what about us mere mortals? Whether you’re a guy who isn’t loving his “dad bod,” or you’re one of the throngs of office workers whose commute is now to the couch, the connection between the shape we’re in and the way we experience the world, including our mental health, is clear. Sometimes dark or judgmental thoughts arise from the messages our culture gives us about who is considered healthy or attractive....

Dr. Almy invited a student to take part in an experiment where he used a sigmoidoscope to look inside the student’s rectum and colon. A bystander complicit in the experiment said something about cancer of the colon. Upon hearing this, the student concluded that he must have cancer, at which time his colon started to change color, tense up, and contract rapidly. When the student was reassured that cancer was not his diagnosis, his colon regained its natural color, and relaxed....

Where the rest of us might see empirical chaos, a growing number of personality researchers see opportunity. Rather than making sweeping statements about change and stability or dismissing conflicting studies as all somehow flawed, they are digging deeper to discover the aspects of personality that are most changeable. By identifying those traits, they can uncover why some people remain stuck in their wallflower past even as most of their peers become more extroverted, and how core personality traits can be influenced not only by unique life circumstances but also by volitional change—in other words, as the result of self-awareness and a desire to be other than how you are....

Here’s the real question: If we’ve done something that offends someone else—whether or not we feel we are to blame—should we apologize? I believe that it almost always serves our highest good to apologize if we’ve hurt or offended someone else—even if we think the offended person’s anger is unjustified, or if we have a perfectly good excuse for what happened. Or if our intentions were all good. Often, the impact of our action is not what we intended....

To answer this question, NPR has created a glossary that summarizes 7 key skills as well as the language around them. The confusion over what language to use—soft skills? 21st century skills? growth mindset?—comes from the fact that these skills are gaining recognition due to emerging evidence that non-academic, social, and emotional skills really make a difference in a child’s life. See the full glossary here. One key skill that we’d add to their list is “emotional intelligence”: the ability to understand your own emotions and recognize the emotions of others....

2) A Calming Quest Popular among educators, Minecraft provides endless possibilities for creativity and learning. In “The Mindful Knight,” designed for ages 8-13, a wizard teaches players to “cast a spell” by focusing on breathing and not getting distracted by thoughts. Sound familiar? There are further exercises for observing your sensory experience and labeling emotions, and players can record their responses for their teacher in a virtual journal. 3) One Thing at a Time In Animal Crossing, the mindfulness is more built-in than explicit....

A phrase that struck me during the retreat—and it is one I’ve heard many times as meditation-based approaches have spread across the helping professions —is “a bit of mindfulness.” People reading “a bit of mindfulness.” Therapists using “a bit of mindfulness.” Businesses bringing in “a bit of mindfulness” for their staff. Of course, it’s wonderful that practicing meditation is widely respected these days, rather than an implicit admission of borderline insanity, but there’s something about this phrase, and what it implies, that leaves me uneasy....

The word “mindful” in everyday language is not new. It is often used as a warning about something that may be dangerous, or unexpected. For example, one might be told to be mindful of the foreign traffic rules. But as it applies to leaders, being mindful is less about paying attention to external elements, and more about paying attention to what is happening “inside.” What is Mindful Leadership? The single most important factor in being a successful leader is to “know oneself....