1. Know your body A simple body scan is a great way to tap into the power of your body. Lay down, close your eyes, and get curious about the sensations you’re feeling—like tingling, warmth, coolness, tension—and become intimate with them as they shift and change from your feet to your head. 2. Cut stress with regular check-ins Throughout the day our bodies tend to accumulate stress. Do hourly checkins, taking a deep breath and noticing where tension arises—maybe in the brow, jaw, shoulders, or abdomen....

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While smokers in the relaxation training group showed little change in their habit, smokers in the meditation group smoked 60 per cent less at the end of two weeks. To learn more about the study, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, click here. While the participant base for this study was small, the study’s results echo some of the research conducted by Dr. Judson Brewer at Yale University....

In this video for BigThink, Goleman explores how we can bring the beneficial effects of those “altered states” into the everyday. How Meditation Changes the Brain When we are able to concentrate wholly on something, we enter a heightened state of temporary awareness—what Goleman refers to as altered states. Through meditation, however, we can create what he calls altered traits—a permanent change in the way our minds work. “Altered traits […] are lasting changes or transformations of being, and they come classically through having cultivated an altered state through meditation, which then has a consequence for how you are day-to-day—and that’s different than how you were before you tried the meditation....

After twenty years of mindfulness practice and several years of teaching it, I was very aware that if I continued freaking out, I’d be banned from IKEA forever…and might never again get to sink my teeth into one of those lousy little meatballs. Living in the city, or living at all, seems to trigger stress in the calmest of souls. Sartre said hell is other people and who am I to disagree?...

It also balances mental and verbal engagement. “When people come to creative process, they have been spending a lot of time sitting in a chair, absorbing new theory, being in conversation. And then suddenly there comes a moment when they can let all that go. They can move into another part of themselves.” Improvisation also invites bravery and a willingness to engage in what Steve describes as “not knowing and using everything you have to go forward....

The team is led by head coach Steve Kerr—who played for the Chicago Bulls during the Michael Jordan era—and was taught meditation and how to refine the inner game, along with other teammates, by George Mumford, who recently put out the book The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance. At the time, Kerr, who has an ample sense of humor, coined the term “Mumfied” to describe the effect Mumford’s work could have on a player....

Here are 5 takeaways from the new school-based mindfulness intervention study: 1. The mindfulness training employed in this study did not help young people with their mental health or well-being The mindfulness curriculum was shown to be no more helpful than the standard social-emotional teaching in the schools. The training was developed by the Mindfulness in Schools Project and was taught by school teachers, after they had first learned mindfulness for themselves and then attended a four-day training to teach mindfulness to students in 10 sessions of 30-50 minutes....

Here are a few simple ways you can mindfully plan your holidays and spread feelings of kindness and compassion liberally this season: Have A Mindful Potluck Cutting down on cooking is not a cop out. Extending the invitation to family and friends to bring their favorite recipes into your home is a great conversation starter—we all have a few recipes passed down to us from our grandparents. Potlucks also cut down on worries you might have about guests not enjoying the food....

Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Mindful’s June 2013 cover story, spoke with Huffington Post Live about how he stays grounded in those more heated moments on the hill. “It’s easy to be good when times are good, it’s sometimes harder to maintain a connection to your values and your integrity when times are tough or someone is in your face,” says Ryan. “[Mindfulness] has helped me stay calm in those situations, stay respectful, be compassionate, because you have taught yourself, you’ve practiced, how to de-escalate your own emotional state....

Interestingly, three-quarters of the students have parents a with high-tech connection. Pierre Laurent, who works at a high-tech start-up, and who formerly worked at Intel and Microsoft, has three children in Waldorf schools. His wife also teaches for one. “Engagement is about human contact, the contact with the teacher, the contact with their peers,” he says. Click here to read the full story in The New York Times. 10/24/11

While the alfalfa and corn are not intended for human consumption, they’ll still likely impact people-food. They’re extremely likely to cross-pollinate with their organic or non-GE relatives. The sugar beets have yet to pass an environmental safety test, but were given the go-ahead for planting this season in order to avoid a shortage of sugar. On top of gene drift concerns, it’s looking like corn-based ethanol isn’t the green energy solution it was meant to be....

S – Stop T – Take a breath O – Observe what’s going on P – Proceed This can be done any time during the day when you remember. You become aware of what’s going on around you or inside of you, you ground yourself with some conscious breaths, and then you proceed with more clarity and from a place of choice. Here are three wonderful ways to practice STOP in more depth: The ABCs of STOP—or practicing STOP for Awareness, Beauty, and Compassion:...

But the current political situation here in the U.S. is putting my practice to the test and I could really use the support of my friends and colleagues in the field to support me through what I am experiencing. This is not about who to vote for, or who not to vote for, but something even bigger and more timeless than that. It is about how to have compassion for the people we find truly, profoundly, deeply repugnant and fearful....

This is a story about what happens when other people have the gall to not follow through on the plans we make for them—and how to see that no one takes our power from us unless we give it away. Like so many others, our relationship started on the internet. I answered an ad…for cheap software. I needed it. He had it—or so he said. All I had to do was give him $48....

Once again I was confronted by the silliness of how upset I was by losing some little possession. It’s not a crime to love a hat. But it’s doubly annoying to lose a trifling thing and be annoyed by losing it. It’s like Russian nesting dolls of annoyance. When does it stop? Why is it so hard to let go of the smallest things? We seem so attuned to gaining and getting....

There are many ways to foster engagement, of course. But one may surprise you: holding classes outside. Findings from a new study show that learning outdoors is not just a fun, novel experience for kids, but also helps them focus once they return to the classroom. In this study, third-grade students from two classrooms were assigned to conduct about half of their biology lessons outside (on a nearby patch of grass) and half inside the classroom during an academic year....

These nuances are clearly reflected in this year’s list of our Top 10 Insights from the Science of a Meaningful Life—the fourth such list compiled by Greater Good’s editors. Indeed, many of this year’s entries could be described as “Yes, but” insights: Yes, as prior findings suggest, being wealthy seems to make people less generous, but only when they reside in places with high inequality. Yes, pursuing happiness makes you unhappy, but only if you live in an individualistic culture....

This is the question tackled in a growing number of studies. Here are three benefits to mindfulness on the job. 1. Mindfulness can build self-confidence in leaders A.D. Amar and colleagues at the University of Westminster measured the self-perception of leadership skills among a sample of senior managers in the London area—and then put them through a 12-week secular meditation-training program. Their results, published in the Academy of Management Proceedings, revealed that training significantly enhanced their overall self-confidence, as well as the individual skills like inspiring a shared vision and demonstrating moral intelligence....