But according to Rhonda Magee, law professor at the University of San Francisco, you ought to find a lawyer who knows more than just how to win. A contemplative lawyer, perhaps. “That’s a lawyer with the capacity to support clients in developing their own self-awareness—recognizing that whatever is coming up in the moment is not necessarily the whole story,” says Magee. “There is more truth around any given issue than is manifest in our own experiences in the moment....

—Fully Present: The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness Sue Smalley, Ph.D. and Diana Winston, Da Capo Press In Fully Present, leading mindfulness researchers and educators Dr. Sue Smalley and Diana Winston provide an all-in-one guide for anyone interested in bringing mindfulness to daily life as a means of enhancing well-being. Fully Present provides both a scientific explanation for how mindfulness positively and powerfully affects the brain and the body as well as practical guidance to develop both a practice and mindfulness in daily living, not only through meditation but also during daily experiences, such as waiting in line at the supermarket, exercising, or facing difficult news....

A recent study looked at 38 participants at Kaiser Permanente, Colorado, who suffered mostly from back or joint pain or psychological distress. Patients were assessed at the beginning and end of the program and at one year after the baseline assessment. Changes in how they used the health-care system were compared for the six-month period before the first MBSR class and 18 months after completion of the class. During the class, participants were introduced to core MBSR practices, including a guided body scan, some yoga, and sitting and walking meditation....

Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Yet we so easily take this gift for granted. That is why so many spiritual traditions begin with thanksgiving, to remind us that for all our woes and worries, our existence itself is an unearned benefaction, which we could never of ourselves create. Before any period of meditative practice, we should pause and reflect on the preciousness of a human life....

How Can Mindfulness Help Shyness? Mindfulness is the awareness that grows from being present in the unfolding moments of our lives without judging or trying to change anything that we experience. It’s a friendly and curious awareness that we all have, though we may not experience it very often because we are so rarely present with and accepting of things as they are. Problematic shyness and social anxiety is inherently self-critical and rejecting, whereas the nature of mindful awareness is compassionate and accepting....

Ava Whitney-Coulter: To start off, not all movement is mindful, so what makes mindful movement different? Cara Bradley: What makes movement mindful is when we place all of our attention on movement and the body and what’s happening in the body as you move; the sensations that are arising, even the thoughts. A seated formal mindfulness practice would be, for the most part, paying attention to your body sensations, breath, thoughts, and emotions....

According to emotion scientist Barbara Fredrickson, these small moments are when love happens between parents and their children. Her research highlights that positive emotions like love, joy, and gratitude help us grow and become better versions of ourselves. While she used to think that all positive emotions were equally helpful, she has come to realize that love might be unique. She now calls out love as especially beneficial for our health and growth....

7 Things Mindful Families Do Differently 1. Embrace Imperfection Even in the best of times, none of us are perfect parents: We get triggered, overreact, and say and do things that we wished we hadn’t. During this strange time in the world, parenting probably feels different, and harder than ever before. Let’s be clear—you are going to make mistakes, you are going to hurt your children’s feelings, and you are not going to be able to show up in all the ways you want to or the ways your children want you to, but NONE of that makes you a bad parent—it only makes you a human one....

It is natural to want love. But sometimes, in spite of all the good things you are doing to keep it going, love falls apart. And you fall apart and everything around you seems to fall apart. And it feels rotten. Even if you have a regular mindfulness practice, at this gut-wrenching moment you might not want to focus on your breath or your body because it all feels so raw and horrible—and then you might feel guilty because you think you should be practicing, but you just can’t or don’t want to....

In the final year of my PhD program at Princeton, one warm September afternoon, my wife and I were riding our bikes side by side, lost in conversation. We didn’t notice as we veered toward each other—until our handlebars locked together at full speed. CRACK. I heard the spokes in my front wheel shatter as my handlebars twisted uncontrollably. I launched forward head first onto the gravel path. Five seconds later I lay on the ground, staring up at the blue sky, my head, neck, and jaw throbbing, my wife leaning over me....

Define the purpose and desired outcome Get clear why you want to create this community and what you hope to accomplish. For example, you might want to start a community to help people manage stress, or you might want to help build a culture of awareness by teaching people to find comfort in stillness, or you may want to connect with others who already practice mindfulness and share ideas. Find a champion A champion is a person in a senior role (or someone with influence) inside the company who can help you promote the group and deal with any potential legal or human resource issues....

But it’s not just a matter of each media outlet hoping we’ll absorb the latest information, says scholar and author Tim Wu. It’s about getting your eyeballs on the screen in order to sell your attention to advertisers—that’s been the business model for newspapers since the 1830s. You sell the minds of the audience to advertisers—that’s your product. In his new book The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, Wu highlights how this business model has permeated into so many areas of our life....

Remarkably, feelings about one situation rarely color our first impressions of new people or situations that we encounter soon afterward. We seem to have a built-in regulatory mechanism to protect us from this “emotional spillover,” and a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science explored a specific brain area that might be responsible. This region is known to be involved in controlling our impulsive urges, like when we choose healthier food over junk food....

Recipes Matter Staff at Bon Appétit and the home-cooking website Epicurious spoke out about racism in the workplace after a photo of then editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport in brownface circulated online. As a result, Epicurious launched the Repair Project, auditing 35,000 recipes dating back to 1965. They’re addressing issues relating to authorship, appropriation, and racial insensitivity, editing words like “exotic” and bringing honesty to the history of certain dishes. Hug a Cow While many spent quarantine in too close proximity to family members (taxing patience and internet connections), others experienced severe loneliness due to a lack of connection....

The skit was funny and wildly popular because, in its desperate plea to be convincing, it captured perfectly the trick and the trap of most self-help: there’s too much self. The genre invites you to be self-involved, self-serious and usually overly self-critical and ultimately self-defeating. The self-help aisle screams out for your attention with promises of a new and better version of yourself. You will be lighter, calmer, fitter, less stressed, less angry, smarter, and more prosperous....

Dealing with that onslaught of negative internal commentary (“My nose is too big/too small.” “I wish I had more hair/less hair!”) can actually help us be more compassionate overall. Try this mindfulness practice from Mindful magazine: “5 Steps to a Better Relationships with Yourself.”

I want to believe that regular mindfulness practice could make life easier for all of us. But in spite of my sincere efforts, I can still be reactive (ok, verrry reactive), I am not debt-free, and I can’t even find jeans that make my butt look good! Life presents us with obstacles, tragedies, death. How can mindfulness practice combat the injustices of the world when it can’t even prevent water retention?...

Mindful Cities Launches In May, Flint, Michigan, became the first city to adopt mindfulness programming to support the community. Civic leaders took part in Collective Wisdom, a two-day gathering featuring the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute mindfulness-training program, created at Google. Supported by the Foundation for a Mindful Society—the parent organization of Mindful—and The Crim Fitness Foundation, the initiative provides education and resources to city leaders and the public about the benefits of mindfulness meditation....

From Reuters: For the new report, the researchers searched several electronic databases that catalog medical research for trials that randomly assigned people with a certain condition—such as anxiety, pain or depression—to do meditation or another activity. These randomized controlled trials are considered the gold standard of medical research. The researchers found 47 studies with over 3,500 participants that met their criteria. After combining the data, Goyal said his team found between a 5 and 10 percent improvement in anxiety symptoms among people who took part in mindfulness meditation, compared to those who did another activity....