“I often had to ask for help, which didn’t feel great,” my friend told me. “I felt apologetic, but I didn’t have much choice. It’s hard to give, but it’s also hard to ask.” Our close relationships are an important part of a meaningful life. But what happens when someone we love is sick or going through a very rough time, and we are called upon to be a helper over and over again?...
Still Peckish Researchers in the Netherlands asked one group of adults to perform a 4-minute body scan, and a second group to listen to an audio recording about tourism. People in both groups then drank water through a straw, and identified their first sign of feeling that they’d had enough to drink. They then continued drinking until their stomachs were completely full. Both groups reported having had enough and feeling full at about the same time, suggesting that such a brief mindfulness intervention did not increase eating-related body awareness....
This program is specifically designed to develop inner presence as a psychotherapist and teach specific skills and interventions to deepen and broaden the therapeutic encounter. The skills developed include strengthening moment-to-moment awareness, developing therapeutic presence, empathy, deep listening, and compassion. This course of study has a threefold focus: The curriculum includes a variety of internal mindfulness and compassion practices; the application of mindfulness to psychodynamic psychotherapy, to emotional regulation, and to specific populations such as clients with problems related to depression, anxiety, stress, or trauma; working with dreams, families and couples; and the application of mindfulness to eating disorders....
Helping people build healthy new habits that improve their lives is more important than ever. Arianna Huffington and her team at Thrive Global are on a mission to end the epidemic of stress and burnout and help people unlock their potential. Their latest effort comes in the form of a book called Time to Thrive: End Burnout, Increase Well-being, and Unlock Your Full Potential with the New Science of Microsteps....
The cushion was a gift from my husband, who found just the right thing. It’s now worn and a little discolored. But it still supports me—most days for 15 or 30 minutes. This well-worn cushion makes me recall questions I had when I started. How do I learn more about this? Who else is doing it? What’s the benefit? Am I doing it right? While a cushion is not required for practicing mindfulness, mine is a symbol for all those questions....
But are we actually powerless? Ultimately, there is great power in how we choose to handle the precious moments of our lives. The dream that you have, to make a meaningful impact with your life, is in your hands. It is in your choices. There is nothing unimportant about how you choose to use your energy, your time, your money. Surprisingly, you do have power beyond anything you might imagine....
“I remember the first time I ever sat down to meditate and I remember feeling so restless; It felt impossible to keep my eyes closed. I thought I was doing something wrong until I looked around the room and saw that no one else was closing their eyes,” Dr. Joyce says. “It’s really what motivated me to create MedMa.” MedMa, an abbreviation of “meditation mask,” is a device that consists of multiple, microscopic weights enclosed in silk fabric that provide a slight pressure on the eyelids when placed over the eyes....
4 Free Meditation Apps We’re Happy We Downloaded 1) Insight Timer Available for iOS, Android, and web Entry price: Free Insight Timer has a huge library of content: over 80,000 free guided meditations from over 10,000 teachers on topics like stress, relationships, healing, sleep, creativity, and more. Right from the beginning, the app feels like a global community—the world map on the home screen shows a collective of 18 million meditators, and announces, “741k today, 7k now....
Staying with Awareness of Difficult Emotions read more Mindful Staff February 2, 2022 Ava Whitney-Coulter October 3, 2022 Caren Osten Gerszberg October 13, 2022
Organizational scholars define trust as our willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of others because we believe they have good intentions and will behave well toward us. In other words, we let others have power over us because we don’t think they’ll hurt us; we think they’ll help us and have our backs. When the trust level is high within coworker relationships, it corresponds to trusting the company that employs us, and we feel confident it won’t deceive us or abuse its relationship with us....
I maintain a daily practice of what I call “seeing small”—I’m always on the lookout for an unexpected, small moment to uplift me. This practice, of concentrating on the small moments of beauty and joy I encounter each day dampens my anxiety and intensifies my connection with the world around me. But then Putin declared war on Ukraine. As the days turned to weeks, I felt more and more upset about this war I could do nothing about, but which was causing so much suffering and beginning to threaten world peace....
In a recent study, 63 participants who were addicted to stimulants received behavioral treatment for 12 weeks. Four weeks into the program they were randomly assigned to either one group who received mindfulness training targeted at cravings and urges or another group, who received health education. At the end of 12 weeks, researchers measured changes in participants use of stimulants and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Eighty seven percent of the participants with depressive and anxiety disorders were not using stimulants at the end of the 12 weeks versus 67% of the health education group....
Renowned illustrator and writer Maira Kalman has created many New Yorker covers and almost 30 books, including an illustrated version of The Elements of Style. She’s designed clocks, coats, coasters, and hats. Her latest book, My Favorite Things, is a catalog of what delights her. After a conversation about art in everyday life, she shares with us glimpses of ordinary things she finds extraordinary. Mindful: What is it about your love of objects?...
What does it mean to settle the mind? Pretend you have a snow globe that you are constantly shaking. If I ask you to settle the snow globe, what do you do? You put it on the table, or the floor, or any other stationary surface. One of the literal meanings of the word settle is “to come down onto a surface.” You literally settle the snow globe down, that is all....
Compassion can lead to very forceful action without any anger or aversion in it. When we see a small child reaching toward a hot burner on a stove, we instantly take action. Our response is born out of the compassion we feel; we move to pull the child back, away from harm. We do not reject or condemn the child. To be compassionate is to wish that a being or all beings be free from pain....
“When I meet with prospective clients, I listen not just for what they need—but what they perceive that they need. That helps me determine my approach. There are so many different ways to talk about mindfulness and its effects. For example, in the military, where we worked with caregivers, chaplains, and medics, they talk about mindfulness as situational awareness, and they refer to it as S.A. —it’s abbreviated. At Google they talk about searching inside yourself....
It’s when every day seems riddled with strife and anxiety until you reach that tipping point where all things seem futile and you find yourself at the point of giving up. To put it in simpler terms: Burnout is a bad day every day. Look, bad days happen to everyone, and they can certainly snowball. A bad day can become a bad week. A few bad weeks can lead to a bad month....
