I first heard the phrase Elimination Communication when my fourth baby Maia Rose was 3 months old, and a friend pointed me towards an EC website. I was very excited about it, and the timing was perfect, as I had read in a letter to Mothering magazine a few years earlier, that African women cue their babies to wee and poo with a ‘psss’ sound, and I had begun to do this with Maia from birth....
But, of course, forgiveness is a process, an admittedly difficult one that often can feel like a rigorous spiritual practice. We cannot instantaneously force ourselves to forgive—and forgiveness happens at a different pace for everyone and is dependent on the particulars of any given situation. What we can do is create space for ourselves to forgive—and, perhaps ironically, part of that involves allowing ourselves to wrestle with our feelings of anger and pain to begin with....
Usually, we think of giving as an act that we do for another person. But the fact is that generosity begins with oneself. If you have ever been on an airplane, then you are familiar with the safety drill that the flight attendants give before the plane takes off. When demonstrating how to use the oxygen masks, the attendants tell passengers to put their own masks on first, and only then to help children with their masks....
It’s endearing, isn’t it, when a child needs a stuffed toy to feel safe. Until the tantrums start and the kid can’t calm themselves without it. We adults are no different. Hey, we all want to feel safe and secure. That’s why we fall in love. Except sometimes falling in love makes us feel scared, not safe, and we act like a nutcase—wracked with insecurity and fears. Why? Well, our first real safe place was not with our bear, it was with our parent, and that early relationship exerts a giant influence on how we connect as grown-ups....
Uncertainty can bring feelings of distress and anxiety to the surface. When left unaddressed, these emotions can be detrimental to a young person’s life. Living in a constant state of anxiety can interfere with one’s ability to function effectively, making it impossible to self-soothe or challenge oneself. As adults, it’s all too easy for us to be dismissive, but whether these fears seem logical or real is truly beside the point....
A: Awareness of breath can provoke anxiety, and not just for the lung disease patients I see as a pulmonologist. The 4-7-8 breath can be used for situations where you’re feeling particularly anxious, stressed, or even if you have some difficulty falling asleep. The 4-7-8 Breath It’s a simple and portable practice: You inhale for a count of four, then you hold your breath for a count of seven, and then you exhale through your mouth through pursed lips for a count of eight....
Creating space in the day to stop, come down from the worried mind, and get back into the present moment has been shown to be enormously helpful in mitigating the negative effects of our stress response. When we drop into the present, we’re more likely to gain perspective and see that we have the power to regulate our response to pressure. Here’s a short practice you can weave into your day to step into that space between stimulus and response....
Researchers at Radboud University collected data from 901 Dutch families, using questionnaires to measure adolescents’ depression and anxiety, as well as parents’ well-being and approach to parenting. The results, published in the Journal of Child Family Studies, replicate past research suggesting that mindful parenting is associated with better well-being in parents. Mindful parenting involves integrating the principles of mindfulness into parenting: listening to the child with full attention, being emotionally aware of and non-judgmentally accepting of the self and the child’s feelings, and not being overly reactive to stressful situations....
For veterans adjusting to civilian life, a four-day whitewater rafting trip provides another chance to find peace. In this video from the Sierra Club Military Outdoors, veterans and 9/11 first responders share their experiences through the Gates of Lodore in the Green River in Utah. “When I came out of my second deployment, I was prescribed all of these medications that were supposed to do all these things—and weren’t,” says a veteran named Logan Demarcus....
You’re probably circling somewhere around the top of your head. What if someone responded to that question with: Where isn’t your mind? That person is Dan Siegel, UCLA psychiatry professor and author of Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human. In a recent video from Big Think, Siegel argues the mind can be in two places at once, existing within and between things. It is both within your body—in the skull—and “between you and other people and the planet....
read more Mindful Staff November 12, 2019 Claire Zimmerman August 20, 2019 Claire Zimmerman June 18, 2019
When people come together for a first session of mindfulness training, it’s usual to explore what brings each individual to the approach. Hearing others speak of the stress arising from common problems such as busy, uncontrolled thoughts, physical or emotional pain, the strain of personal and professional commitments, and the speed of a world that demands a dehumanizing degree of consumption and acquisition, there often dawns a first recognition that the real problem doesn’t just lie in me as an individual, but the common burden of living a human existence, with human frailties, in a human world....
The Science of Staying Present In a large trial of MBRP, mindfulness-trained patients drank and used drugs significantly less than those who were treated with cognitive-behavioural approaches, and a control group who attended twelve-step and psycho-education groups. The authors of the study conclude that mindfulness was the most successful approach, especially over the longer term, because it enabled patients to “monitor and skilfully cope with discomfort associated with craving or negative affect....
Deprivation curiosity is driven by a lack of information, often a specific piece of information. For example, if you are in a meeting or out to dinner, and you feel or hear a text come into your phone, you might notice that suddenly it is really hard to pay attention because not knowing what the text says makes you restless, causing your body temperature to rise. It’s as though your phone starts burning a hole in your purse or your pocket....
Perhaps your daughter got a D+ on the math test—and you regret some harsh words. Maybe you’re telling yourself that you bungled advice to your fifth-grader about how to handle an annoying classmate. You couldn’t keep your promise to attend your son’s music recital—and there’s a voice in your head telling you that you’re a terrible parent. But there’s an alternative to that harsh self-talk: self-compassion. According to researcher Kristin Neff, “self-compassion provides an island of calm, a refuge from the stormy seas of endless positive and negative self-judgment....
Any sound can be the object of our focus in mindfulness practice. Even the most annoying sounds, like a horn blaring outside, an alarm clock beeping, or people yelling, can be perceived differently when we bring mindfulness to them. The annoyance of those sounds doesn’t come from the sounds themselves; it comes from our interpretation of those sounds as “bad.” When we bring mindfulness to it, we shift our relationship from aversion to curiosity, allowing the sounds to rise and fall, lessening their negative impact....
Do you have two minutes? Try out Elisha Goldstein’s two-minute mindfulness check-in. Although a few minutes of mindfulness aren’t going to give you the benefits of a full practice, practicing for two minutes, a few times day, can add up. On his mindfulness and pyschotherapy blog, Elisha writes, “When can you practice? Look for the “in-between” moments. These are moments before you are about to take a break or while you’re waiting for someone....
Meditative visualisation is a helpful exercise that may give you an insight into what your true and deep intentions in practising mindfulness are. When I first used this meditation, I was surprised and fascinated by the insights into my own deep motives. You can read through these instructions and practise on your own or record them as an audio and listen to it as you practise. Alternatively, ask a friend to read out the meditation to you slowly....
