Indeed, this mama raccoon, her teats distended and red, clearly ravenous after days of nursing her babies, had the audacity to forage side by side with the cats in view of us people. I imagined her exhausted, starving. Challenged to survive, she had felt compelled to leave her cubs in their nest in the shed of some overgrown yard and, without the protection of night, to brave this territory. Now, seemingly oblivious to the cats, she moved from bowl to bowl....

It’s very easy to villainize thought as some kind of enemy of practice. We get in our heads that if there were no thoughts we would be at peace, but even that’s just another thought. So, we’ll be using a noting practice, where we practice seeing thoughts clearly as they arise, gently noting them, and returning to the breath and body. If there is no mindfulness of mind, we live in a world completely defined by our thoughts....

Beyond the noble call to be compassionate, we know it’s in our best interest to get past these thoughts and feelings. The negativity. Two Befriending Practices The Befriending Meditation: from the authors of Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Dr. Mark Williams and Dr. Danny Penman present this 10-minute practice to bring us closer to ourselves and others. 2. Elisha Goldstein, a clinical psychologist and Mindful’s “On Mental Health” blogger, introduces us to the “Just Like Me” practice....

Peak Mind is one of those books written by a leader in the field that’s wrapped in the kind of self-help package publishers hold dear but that delivers so much more. It does offer help, but it also educates. It invites you to contemplate how something so innately part of who we are functions and malfunctions. In the early pages, I was taken by the explanatory power of this simple summation of ways attention breaks down: depleted attention, hijacked attention, fragmented attention, disconnected attention....

You may be surprised to learn that these names were given not to nail polish, paint colors, or candies but to diverse varieties of a single vegetable. Most radishes, once planted, mature in less than four weeks, yielding edible roots in the gentlest pastels and brightest jewel tones. White or black, fist-sized or pebble-shaped, mild or punishing, no vegetable springs from its seed so readily or in so many disguises as the radish....

Moving and breathing in rhythm for a few minutes makes you feel lighter, brighter, and more alert. A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that acute physical exercise enhances executive functioning. In other words, short spurts of exercise have the potential to snap you out of afternoon dullness and energize us for the rest of the workday. Mindful Movement to Beat the Afternoon Slump Come as you are—this energizing mini-retreat is work clothes friendly and can easily be done in front of your desk....

While that might not be the reality for all of us right now, a recent story in the Wall Street Journal reports on how meditation is increasingly being used in hospital rehabilitation programs. The article delves into studies that show meditation can help patients cope with chronic stress, illness, depression, and lower blood pressure. Aditi Nerurkar, a primary-care doctor and assistant medical director of the Cheng & Tsui Center for Integrative Care told the Wall Street Journal that she asks her patients to start with 5 minutes of meditation a day and gradually increase to 20 minutes....

Mindful: What made you decide to expand your center’s offerings from more run-of-the-mill mindfulness courses to branching out into photography, cooking, etc? Elisha Goldstein: I think people come to mindfulness because they are suffering from pain or stress. So what’s been offered up until this point really is classes in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)—classes pointing toward relief from something that’s aversive. Which is fantastic, but one of the things that is sometimes missed in the very approach to mindfulness is playfulness and creativity....

The offenders appear to be primarily “hippy types,” says a Sydney police officer, lost in “cloud cuckoo land,” who are a danger to both themselves and others on the road. If a convicted person is unable to afford the monetary fine, he or she retains the option of attending a community session intended to teach the proper technique for grounding oneself following any meditative exercise. This technique promises to return flighty individuals to a state of mind more suited to immersion into the general public....

Deep Listening: To really listen to others, say David Rome and Hope Martin, we must first learn to listen to ourselves. They teach us three techniques for tuning in to body, speech, and mind. Stop, Wait, Go: The hardest part of communicating well is knowing when to speak, when to be quiet and when to wait and see. Communication trainer Susan Chapman shows us how mindfulness can help. Wholehearted Listening—How we listen affects how we are heard: Mindful....

Singer and songwriter Jewel began a mindfulness practice when she was just a kid, long before she’d heard the word “mindful.” Self-taught meditations and visualizations, journaling, and the practice of observing her thoughts and choosing healthier ones, were survival tools she used to navigate a chaotic family life and then, later, the anxiety-filled teenage years living on her own. She still uses them today. Her digital platform, JewelNeverBroken.com, shares these and other easy-to-learn practices, like Counting Breath and Box Breathing meditations, to support others to help find calm, to build emotional fitness, and to create happiness in their own lives....

“I don’t like about my job.” “I don’t like about my body. “My life just isn’t what I want it to be.” As you stay on this negative thought train, you notice your body feeling tense and your overall enjoyment of the day going down. Research shows that obsessive thinking and rumination are associated with binge-eating, anxiety, depression, lack of self-esteem, and greater irritability and restlessness. Our ability to make judgements about our environment helped us survive when we were hunter-gatherers....

We can do daily short daily practices to help us manage the overwhelm and shift ourselves into a place of feeling more clear and awake yet also relaxed and at ease. Being mindful doesn’t mean being so chilled out all the time that nothing fazes you. This sense of “being mindful” is about being clear and alert in life and also calm and at ease so when we meet someone in the street in the hustle and bustle of December, you actually pause to look them in the eyes and ask, “How are you doing?...

While both groups who were offered a specific program reduced bingeing and eating concerns more than those subjects in the waitlisted group, study leaders found people in the CFT group did best. Once taught the CFT exercises, they were capable of increasing their self-compassion in a short period of time. Yet the study highlighted an interesting wrinkle: Fear of self-compassion could get in the way of results, and those people who expressed less fear about self-compassion gained significantly more benefit than those who were more fearful....

As a bedside hospice volunteer, I’ve found that the ideas and emotions people carry with them through life often determine the quality of their death. I remember my patient Joyce saying, “Dying is such hard work.” For months, her physical condition had been declining steadily, so I assumed she was referring to her pulmonary problems. But then she said, “I’m not talking about what’s happening to my body.” Pointing to her head, she continued, “The hard work is what’s happening here....

This conversation is part of Mindful’s free Leading Mindfully: Insights from Mindful Executives webinar series. Watch a recording of the conversation below. This Q&A shares highlights from the conversation, including a discussion on the commitment that Unilever has made to the well-being of their employees on a global scale. Bryan Welch: Are there mindfulness programs within Unilever? You’re a meditator, aren’t you? Diana Han: I am. So both individually and at an organization level, mindfulness and emotional well-being have been something we focused on for years....

Historically, people tend to be drawn to mindfulness practice during times of rapid change, which are accompanied by high levels of stress, volatility, and uncertainty; times much like those we live in right now. In addition, over the centuries, mindfulness has been adapted and integrated to meet the most vibrant and pressing needs of society — not only influencing spiritual traditions but seeping into many facets of daily life and culture, including the arts, food, education, work, and beyond....

Mindful’s publisher, James Gimian, and I were in that part of the world for a visit with the leaders and staff of the Holistic Life Foundation (HLF) in Baltimore—for an event celebrating 14 years of work in schools using mindfulness and yoga to improve the lives and opportunities of youth at risk. In April, in the midst of the public unrest following the death of Freddie Gray, HLF held a “group meditation to increase peace and unity,” and their event this September had the same feel....