In this article, we’ve distilled down a list of seven things that we have found that mindful families do differently to help inspire you and your family to live a loving, connected life. An embedded and essential component woven into each of these is the quality of our presence with one another. It is the foundation for everything. 7 Things Mindful Families Do Differently 1) Embrace Imperfection No matter how many books we read or how much we learn, we will never be “perfect” parents – none of us!...

In this guided meditation, Diana Winston leads us through a practice to find balance and cultivate equanimity. Cultivating Equanimity Find a position that’s comfortable and take a few breaths. Invite yourself to soften and connect. Coming into your body and mind, right here, right now. Imagine a time when you felt even-minded and balanced. It could be a time you were about to yell, but instead, took a pause. It could be anything....

Noticing puts us in the present, makes us sensitive to context, and aware of change and uncertainty. When we are mindless we hold our perspective still, allowing us to confuse the stability of our mindsets with the stability of the underlying phenomena. Hold it still if you want but it’s changing nonetheless. However visionary we consider our leaders, they cannot predict the future any more than anyone else. They may be able to predict what might happen much of the time if the situation stays constant — which of course is questionable — but can never predict individual occurrences, which is where we should be most concerned....

A Guided Meditation to Welcome Forgiveness READ MORE Christiane Wolf March 28, 2022 Kirra Dickinson April 21, 2016 Elisha Goldstein June 19, 2015

Location: Harvard Pilgrim Health Care 93 Worcester Street, Wellesley, MA Presenters: Judson Brewer, M.D., Ph.D., and Tara Healey, M.Ed. The presenters will discuss how training attention through mindfulness can improve productivity, boost creativity, and enhance health and well-being. This program will review recent clinical research and demonstrate a variety of mindfulness meditation techniques. Register for the conference. Live and web conference available.

A Guided Practice for Letting Thoughts Float by Like Bubbles Find a way to sit that feels good and grounded. Adjust your posture so that your spine is erect without being rigid or stiff. Allow the rest of the body to be relaxed around the upright spine, maybe resting your hands in your lap or on your legs. Allow your eyes to gently close if you haven’t done so already. Bring full attention to the physical sensations of your sitting....

This conference will be led by distinguished experts in the fields of healthcare, education, criminal justice, mental illness, and mindfulness. Speakers include Amishi Jha, one of the leading research psychologists investigating how attention and working memory can be enhanced, and George Mumford, mindfulness trainer for the Chicago Bulls, L.A. Lakers, and N.Y. Knicks. Register for A Mindful Miami Conference.

Adam Avin: No, he didn’t actually use the word mindfulness specifically, but we like to say he was a yogi at heart. He had a yogi mindset, and he had his positive mantras: “Think well to be well,” “Smile and the world will smile with you,” “Smile and say thank you.” So I kind of had those messages in my head from a very young age. My mom also had a yoga teacher, Erika, who was a big part of our lives for a long time....

The Age Man Suit, developed by German scientists, is custom-made to simulate old age. Suited-up students are left creaking around the room, fumbling with a blister pack of pills or wheezing for breath on a routine trip up the stairs. Rahel Eckhardt, a senior physician at Berlin’s Evangelical Geriatrics Centre (EGZB), admits that geriatrics is a rather lackluster field of medicine, yet doctors are needed as the elderly population grows in Germany....

Mindfulness and Learning: What’s the Connection?: The use of mindful awareness practices can make a real difference in students’ lives, says Patricia Jennings. Not just for individual children, but in educational reform. Parenting Happily: As parents, we experience stress at various times during the day—whether during a hectic morning routine, a hurried bedtime ritual, or a silent drive to school. But mindfulness can help in many ways, says psychologist Raelynn Maloney....

To outsiders looking in, this failure to notice something so evident may seem impossible. Can people really overlook such a dominant force? Research from Harvard University answers this question in the affirmative. Let’s go there now. It’s 1999, and in a large classroom located on the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, researchers are showing students a grainy VHS video. In it, six students are split into opposing teams of three: one team is dressed in white, the other in black....

But how does it feel to be Bill Murray? Instead of expounding on the sheer awesomeness of being Bill Murray, he takes a moment to direct the question to the audience and talks about mindfulness of the body—paying attention to the sensations in your body, and how that can feel good and grounding. Here’s Murray’s meditation: Think about how much each person here weighs and try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bottom right now....

Goleman mentions, for example, a 2008 study conducted by psychologists from the University of Amsterdam and the University of California-Berkeley, that shows how when two complete strangers are in conversation about difficulties they have been through—the death of a loved one, failure—the higher-status participants showed less attention to their partner’s pain. Other studies point to poor people being better attuned to interpersonal relations, and giving more. Among the higher-status individuals, Goleman says, there is a clear tuning out of the needs of those below....

A recent study out of Israel looked at the impact of Internet use among different age groups and found—no surprise here— higher levels of satisfac- tion among the younger set. We’ve known for years about the digital divide: Worldwide, people over60 participate least in the information society. But that’s not the whole story, the study’s authors con- clude: After controlling for socio-demographic variables, sociability, and health conditions, those in the older group who do use the Internet see an overall increase in life satisfaction....

In another experiment, participants were divided into three groups. One group practiced mindful breathing, the second let their minds wander, and the third browsed the internet. They were all then asked to write an apology letter to someone they’d wronged. Letters were rated by two independent evaluators on whether the individuals took responsibility for their actions, and Research gathered from University of Washington, Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and others....

The Meng-Wu lectures are sponsored by Stanford University’s Center for Compassion Altruism Research and Education. CCARE was founded on the inspiration that compassion is both a basic quality of the human mind and also necessary if our species is to survive. CCARE has been developing courses to train people to develop compassion while also funding research studies to make sure their training programs are based on hard science. The Meng-Wu lectures are named in part for Google’s Chade-Meng Tan, a valued colleague and supporter of the CCARE program from the start....

When she drank, she says, “I felt free, I felt good, I had confidence, and I had no worries.” Drinking soon became her obsession: when she could drink, how much she could drink, feeling remorse about something she’d done while drinking—that is, when she could remember what had happened. She tried to stop on occasion, including by attending AA meetings, but couldn’t admit she belonged there. As the years wore on, her “lows got lower,” she recalls....

One example of kindness that’s bound to warm your heart: an undercover investigation in Vancouver that took an amazing turn. After a series of robberies of people in wheelchairs in the downtown east side of Vancouver, a cop went undercover and posed in a wheelchair to investigate. Instead of finding exactly what he was looking for, the police officer discovered the daily compassion that was happening in the downtown east side, despite being known for street drugs, prostitution, and crime....

Recent research indicates that self-criticism predicts depression, avoidance behaviors (such as trying to avoid failure), loss of self-esteem, negative perfectionism (maladaptive perfectionism, the unhelpful perfectionism that doesn’t drive us toward better performance but, rather, toward shame and anxiety), procrastination, and rumination. Ultimately, self-criticism compromises your goals and undermines your pursuits, whether they are academic, health related, personal, or professional. Self-compassion engenders resilience; it empowers you to be nimble and flexible, and gives you the ability to identify problems, accept negative feedback from others, and change habits that no longer serve you....

There’s some evidence that gardening can help reduce stress, increase feelings of well-being, and build community. Here are three recent stories that reinforce those ideas. Community Gardening Communities like Sudbury, Ontario, just went ahead and got their hands dirty. The Home Garden Project helped distribute free soil and seeds to hundreds of local households. The goal was to support mental and physical health during a challenging time, increase food security, and let citizens contribute to community wellness....