This past April, during an early morning downpour, my junior college students and I drove South on Highway 101 to Valley Flora Farms near Langlois, to further plumb the meaning of this word, sustainability. Dressed in boots, slicker, and stocking cap, ready for soggy outdoor work, Zoë Bradbury met us at the entrance to her 40-acre farm and directed us to a small equipment and tack storage shed to wait out the rain and field our questions....
Mindful: What led you to study design theory? Ashanti Branch: Ever Forward Club started out as a small volunteer-run nonprofit. When we started, I was doing it after work and on weekends and holidays, while teaching math full time. I had this dream of it being bigger, and believed it was going to happen one day, but didn’t know how. How did Design School change that picture? Before D-school, it was like I was rowing a boat, always rowing and rowing....
A team of researchers were curious to see whether taking mindfulness outdoors might boost its benefits. To do so, they systematically reviewed the results of 25 existing studies that used nature-based mindfulness interventions. Studies involved in the review had to include either teens or adults, offer mindfulness instruction in a natural environment, and look at physical or psychological outcomes. The research that they reviewed included a diverse array of programs....
The leading initiative in this area is the Law Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, headquartered in Northampton, Massachusetts. The program sponsors annual retreats and other gatherings for lawyers, judges, professors, and students. It held its first retreat in 1998, for Yale Law School students and faculty, led by mindfulness luminary Joseph Goldstein. The program has held over twenty retreats and events since, including its flagship annual retreat for legal professionals at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County....
HH: Barry, how can people begin to carve out a little silent space for themselves? BB: You have this kind of language that people use sometimes of “leaving some space,” you need to “give it some space.” It sounds kind of woo woo and odd. But what it very simply refers to is loosening up a kind of mental claustrophobia that we have where we are trying to pack so much in....
Research has suggested that in a few short weeks, mindfulness meditation practice can bring about physiological, psychological, and social benefits in our lives. From increases in gray matter in the brain to alleviating physical ailments such as migraines and fibromyalgia, the benefits of mindfulness and meditation practice more generally have been touted for everyone ranging from executives to schoolchildren. While some have been critical of the science behind mindfulness meditation due to poor study designs and small effect sizes, this hasn’t curbed mainstream interest....
Personally, I haven’t found one all-purpose answer. But, what seems to ring true for most situations is that you have to challenge yourself to do things that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. For me, this approach helps me wake up, calm down, and extend myself. In the past ten years I’ve noticed that physically challenging tasks are the ones that cause the most visceral fear reactions for me: seeing my fears, my seeming limitations, and questioning how I can go beyond what I think I can do....
If you are a meditator and seek an environment that’s a bit more supportive of such a practice, I recommend talking to your current employer about it. You may be surprised. If you are leaving for certain, make sure to ask other potential employers about their wellness and mindfulness programs. If your values and passion don’t align with the work you’re currently doing or your organization, spend some time looking into this question....
There is a fundamental problem with organizations trying to be both efficient and generate innovate ideas. The corporate culture is biased toward rewarding an accelerated pace and greater cost-consciousness. However, more often than not, companies fall back on their fine-tuned “autopilot,” habitual ways of dealing with day-to-day issues. When asked for something new and creative, employees tend to tweak what has already been done. There is little time to germinate, to think of novel and clever ideas....
It can be tempting to come to mindfulness training and hope for lots of techniques to help us handle specific situations. What’s the right method for dealing with a parent or child, or for making the right career move, or for managing depression? Of course, there are ways to approach these situations artfully, but in mindfulness training, we focus first on becoming familiar with the workings of our internal processes, seeing parts and patterns with a precise, open eye....
A lot of us who were interested in it were trying to shoehorn it in, but the faculty wasn’t interested. They thought it was a crazy topic, and that there was no point in pursuing it. What I’ve seen now from Richard Davidson’s research, who I talked to extensively for the book, are really gold-standard studies: brain imaging of highly advanced meditators that shows something we all maybe suspected way back when....
In the workplace, so much of what we accomplish, particularly as leaders, comes in the form of conversations. And when those conversations can be more mindful, we can develop a kinder, more compassionate culture, while still maintaining high standards of excellence. We can all think of a conversation or two (or five or 10) that we wouldn’t describe as mindful. But what really makes a conversation mindful? The Benefits of Mindful Conversation For Starns, a mindful conversation is an opportunity to open people up to a broader view and take them to an unexpected place....
Marcus is part of the WholeSchool Mindfulness network, a non-profit which aims to make mindfulness an integral part of the curriculum in all schools. The group partners with schools to hire mindfulness directors and then helps facilitate and support the integration of mindfulness into the school community. Much of Marcus’ work this year has centered around students’ self-reflection. Through Google Classroom, Erica gives students mindfulness exercises and asks them to submit journal entries about the experience....
First, we practice a little self-compassion ourselves. This can start with just noting to ourselves the pain, shame and disappointment we feel, before connecting to the universal human experience that yes, all parents will experience this at some point. And then, heart a little more open, and head a bit more clear, we move toward action with our child. But what is the best action to take? Do we make them apologize on the playground?...
To find out which practice is best for you, ask yourself these three questions: What benefits are you looking for?Do you hope to relax? Focus better? Develop more equanimity? Improve your health? Consciously or not, each of us comes to a meditation practice with our own hopes or goals. Which Type of Meditation Do You Practice?Meditation comes in many forms, with mindfulness the best-known these days, but not the only one....
The roots of that raw emotional power are sunk deep within the brain, which seems to come pre-wired for music. Long before babies have any significant experience with music, they can detect changes in pitch, tempo, and melodic contour. They can even recognize a tune when it’s played in a different pitch or tempo. According to psychologist Sandra Trehub of the University of Toronto, infants also seem to have an innate preference for sounds, such as perfect fourths and fifths, that we label consonant, but recoil from dissonant sounds....
When did you start doing mindfulness practice? About seven years ago, I started experimenting with meditation. I would listen to CDs and lie down, things like that. I tried out a couple of different groups. I tried doing it on my own. But really, it all started to come together about three years ago. I really consider that my mindfulness practice began at that time, when I found my community at InsightLA....
The pace and intensity of our lives, now exacerbated by current levels of external changes and unknowns, leave many of us feeling like that person riding a frantically galloping horse. This can be the result of anxiety about the unknown, too much to do and not enough time; the pressure to produce and tick off items on our to-do list by each day’s end—seems to decide the direction and quality of our existence for us....
