But this critique—most strongly heard in Ron Purser’s recent book McMindfulness—is a classic straw man: It paints a vivid picture of people doing wrong in order to hurl brickbats at them, without saying exactly who’s being talked about and when and how they offended. It’s not supported by a lot of evidence of the work of actual mindfulness teachers. Yes, there are bad mindfulness teachers, and bad mindfulness apps, and probably there are a growing number of both....

Spring of 2007. My oncologist thought that it would be beneficial. Did you take a class? If so, what sort of a class did you take? Yes. It was an eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. How has mindfulness made a difference in your life? It smooths out, or controls, the side effects of my cancer therapies (depression, stress, anxiety, body pain, etc....

If you believe that stopping eating when you are comfortably full will help your health, then consider using the following hunger/fullness scale. This tool can be helpful to discover a comfortable level of fullness when eating. The rating scale below is divided into three sections. Numbers 10-7 is when either hunger or fullness is painful and unpleasant, 6-4 is when hunger or fullness is comfortable, and 3-1 is when hunger or fullness is slightly noticeable....

Mindfulness is the energy that helps us recognize the conditions of happiness that are already present in our lives. You don’t have to wait ten years to experience this happiness. It is present in every moment of your daily life. There are those of us who are alive but don’t know it. But when you breathe in, and you are aware of your in-breath, you touch the miracle of being alive....

Bauer-Wu is director of the Compassionate Care Initiative at the University of Virginia School of Nursing and the author of Leaves Falling Gently: Living Fully with Serious & Life Threatening Illness through Mindfulness, Compassion, & Connectedness. She researches chronic stress, pain, and how mindfulness and compassion can help. When she’s teaching mindfulness, she often sees people get frustrated about where to start and how to feel—unable just to be present in their own bodies....

Fast-forward a year, and I’m at the (partially) restored Eileen Fisher HQ, learning about the kind of care the company takes with its clothing: from helping a Chinese silk dyer use fewer chemicals and less water, to launching a recycled clothing program, where customers return garments they no longer use, with the proceeds going to an initiative that helps improve the lives of woman and girls. There is a yoga/meditation room....

At its worst, during my late twenties, I was caught in this anxious state for a number of years, despite the fact that outwardly my life looked safe, stable, and privileged. Since then, these episodes of inner hyper-restlessness have diminished, both in frequency and duration. In no small part, I think this is due to mindfulness practice—these days I’m more aware of the conditions that tend to trip the switch for anxiety for me (such as taking on more than I have resources to cope with, or personal, social and professional rejection)....

Now, it’s probably helpful at this point in the story to give you a little background. My husband dislikes talking on the phone so much that in 1999 when he proposed to me, a time when email was just starting to be a thing, he emailed his parents to tell them we were engaged. His parents still tease him about this, but joking aside, the fact that he did not call them doesn’t mean that he wasn’t eager to share the news, but it does mean that he does not like to talk on the phone....

It’s the same in life. Whether you’re faced with criti­cism at work, a partner whose feelings are hurt, an internal urge to lash out verbally, or an opportunity for some grati­fication that will cost you later, you’ve got to be able to put on the brakes for a moment—to pause. Otherwise, you’ll likely crash, one way or another. Your brain works through a combination of excitation and inhibition: gas pedals and brakes....

A. Let’s look at how the mind actually works when it comes to forming (and maintaining) habits. They have a simple, consistent formula: there’s a trigger, there’s an accompanying behavior, and there’s a result or reward. Being in habit mode is like being on autopilot. So, first gear is recognizing what our habits are. Paying attention is second gear—exploring and understanding the rewards that come from our behaviors. If we’re constantly checking our phones, for instance, we might compare the rewards of that behavior to how our live interactions with people feel....

Today we’re going to explore how we can build powerful communities of care. Throughout history, our greatest cultural shifts and positive leaps have been born from a place of collectivism. The idea that “united we are stronger” has been proven time and time again. But what about the idea that together we are “healthier”? What about the argument that bonding with our peers brings us comfort in trying times? What about the possibility that a strong community helps all its members achieve physical and mental wellbeing?...

Since my article on attention, several readers have told me that they never connected their frenetic days and frazzled feelings to their poor use of attention. But in retrospect, it seems an obvious relationship. We are largely an attention illiterate society. When I raise this to executive or professional audiences I’m speaking to, usually two distinct reactions emerge. The first is, “Yeah, this is nuts! What are we doing to ourselves?...

WholeSchool Mindfulness helps schools create, fill, and support the position of a Mindfulness Director—a permanent staff member who works at a school and teaches mindfulness to students, staff, and parents. “We strive to live out justice by partnering with communities to practice joy, equity, and inclusion, so community is woven throughout the way that we think about the work that we do,” says La’Chelle Collazo, who is responsible for outreach and recruitment of Mindfulness Directors....

In 2002, the principal at Windsor Hills Elementary, where Ali and Atman Smith’s mother worked, asked whether they would like to coach sports. “After we thought about it,” Ali told me, “we decided what we would really like to do with kids is yoga, because we saw the effect yoga was having on us. It makes you feel stronger and more limber, but, more than that, there is a meditative element....

Earlier this year I attended a talk by my favourite monk, Ajahn Brahm. He was speaking at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California—a cool place for a forest monk to hang out. Brahm expressed the problem of separating mindfulness and compassion—they work far better together. Mindfulness on it’s own is simply a present moment non-judgmental awareness, as researchers say. But to develop the beautiful peace, gentleness, and stillness of meditation, a kindly awareness is required....

The paradox is, when you’ve been wronged, forgiveness is the only thing that provides relief from the pain. Sound like a bitter pill to swallow? Read on to learn how forgiving others (and yourself) can help you release the heavy burden of resentment and experience more freedom. 1. Understand forgiveness Before you attempt to force forgiveness on your most tender hurts, consider what it is you’re asking of yourself: Forgiving doesn’t mean that you condone what happened or that the perpetrator is blameless....

Singer, comedian, and mindfulness teacher Elaine Smookler is hosting Mindful Martinis at the Gladstone Hotel on May 22, and invites you to learn new ways of eating, drinking, and enjoying ourselves…mindfully. Tickets are on sale now. While mixing booze and mindfulness might seem strange, Smookler is a connoiser of finding mindfulness in unexpected places. In Mindful‘s October issue, Smookler talks about how laughter was the best medicine to help her mindfully cope with her cancer diagnosis and surgery: The ability to find the funny pumps oxygen into adverse situations....

Challenging as it is, we are all capable of being mindful, such as staying fully aware of something unpleasant and pausing before responding. Your impulsive child is going to be impulsive today, even while you work on a longer-term plan for change. Avoiding the reality that you’d like something to be different without being proactive about it won’t change anything. But while you sort through the next best action to take (or perhaps decide not to say or do anything for a moment), your child will benefit when you drop the often unconscious assumption that life can be any different that it is right now....

The comment drew loud laughter, but Chris Sacca, one of the earliest investors in Twitter, immediately countered that the newer forms of technology “have brought the human back in”—for example, disillusioned Egyptians tweeted their grievances to the world in unison, unmediated. The exchange epitomized the dual nature of the Wisdom 2.0 phenomenon. The lords and leaders of high tech aren’t about to dismiss new technology as the beginning of the end of humankind—not only because they don’t want to work against their own economic interests, but because they believe in the innovative, interactive world fostered by new technologies....