Of the small study group, mostly comprised of white women, those who maintained a daily exercise regiment and mindful meditation practices missed fewer days of work. At the beginning of the study, all participants had little to no exercise regiment and did not practice meditation. Researchers broke up participants into three groups: those who kept their habits unchanged, those who started an eight-week regiment of exercise (i.e. 45 minutes on a treadmill or in the water), and those who practiced mindfulness meditation with yoga, stretching, and walking....

Mental illness does not discriminate on the basis of identity or background. Why, then, are people of color often silenced, ignored, and excluded from the discussion? White-centricism not only takes over the narrative of mental health, it consumes media representation, access to services/resources, and even community support. People of color aren’t visible in this conversation, and that alone impacts our mental health by making it harder for us to believe and identify our struggles....

More than a decade later, fewer physicians feel the need to hide in the mind–body closet, and more medical centers around the country are embracing a holistic approach. Last year, more than six hundred health care professionals packed a standing-room only Summit on Integrative Medicine, held at the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. The first of its kind, the summit brought together a range of experts to explore the practice of integrative medicine, its scientific basis, and its economic and policy implications....

The answer to both those questions has to with the brain’s reward system, which gets excited by both perceived value (e.g. a deeply discounted designer dress) and mating opportunities, however remote (e.g., a photo of a half-naked hottie). And when the reward system gets activated, the brain starts to selectively focus on acquiring rewards, and ignoring costs (or, in the case of investments, risks). Knutson and I talked about how marketers uses this knowledge to make us more likely to binge-shop, gamble, or otherwise throw good money at bad investments....

This expansion seems to have happened quite organically. First I began to discover that my automatic patterns of reacting to events weren’t just happening in my inner space—the thoughts, emotions and body sensations I was having also impacted on how I operated in the world. When I felt angry with someone, I’d instinctively avoid them, amoeba-like, pulling out of connection and into isolation. In meditation, I began to see this pattern clearly....

But why? What’s happening in our brains that makes an isolated set of sounds resonate in these ways? A new neuroscience study aimed to find out. In the study, researchers scanned twenty college students’ brains using fMRI technology while they listened to very short clips of music—some familiar and some unfamiliar to them, and some they might like or dislike, according to what the researchers could gather about their musical tastes....

Kindness is a practice of inclining the mind, of intention. Rather than laying a veneer of idealism on top of reality, we want to see quite nakedly all the different things that we feel and want for what they are. Perhaps it is anger or fear or repulsion rather than the kindness we would so much more strongly prefer. The mistake that most of us make at one time or another with a practice like compassion or kindness is to try to deny what is actually going on: “I mustn’t feel resentment; I must only feel love....

I know that I am not the only one with this difficulty; work-life balance is really tough for many people. I think it’s time we start a conversation about balance, precisely because it is so hard for so many of us to find, and it is so integral to enhancing well-being. Below, based on my experiences, I illuminate four risk factors for poor work-life balance and eventual burnout. The 4 Risk Factors for Burnout 1....

We’ve all witnessed someone choke under pressure, and while it may seem like a high-profile phenomenon, it can also happen to us in everyday life—whether we’re trying to nail a job interview, pass an important exam, impress a new date, or give a successful presentation. So why do we panic under pressure? And what can we do to stop it? In this video from TED-Ed, educator Pen-Pen Chen explains why pressure causes us to panic, and how we can conquer it....

At the University of Miami, my research team and I study the impact of mindfulness training on high-demand groups like soldiers, first responders, and elite athletes. We research questions about their psychological and cognitive resilience, as well as their ability to perform at their best when circumstances are extraordinarily stressful. The bad news is that over high-stress intervals, their mood sours, cognition fails, and performance suffers as they go on autopilot....

The article discusses health studies as well: To read the entire article by neuroscience journalist Maia Szalavitz, click here. To read an excerpt from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s new book, Meditation for Beginners, click here. For more about Jon Kabat-Zinn himself, read Barry Boyce’s interview with him—“Toward a Mindful Society.” To see a video of Kabat-Zinn speaking at the groundbreaking Creating a Mindful Society conference, register here (it’s free). 01/18/12

There is also more rejection than ever before—that is, if you are lucky enough for someone to actually reject you. Most of the time you will be ignored. I have been writing seriously since the age of seventeen and I am about to turn thirty. Most of my twenties were spent trying to launch a career as a scriptwriter. “Tortured” is certainly a word I would use to describe my writing life, until recently....

If you’re a parent, you know how that went: poorly. She continued to cry, and I continued to feel irritated at her. I didn’t want to deal with any of the feelings in the room, not mine and certainly not hers. I’m not alone in this — few of us ever want to hang out in the muck of unpleasant emotions. Either the feelings are too intense, or the timing is inconvenient, or we just don’t have the energy to deal, so we stuff down, cover up, ignore, reject, or deny our emotions, only to later explode at our spouses, scream at our kids, indulge in one too many adult beverages, blow money we don’t have, or spend the night tossing and turning because we can’t stop thinking....

It’s a statement we can all relate to—that anxious thought loop: if I just work on myself a little bit more, I’ll make fewer mistakes, and everything will work out better. This short film, titled “Release” takes us into the minds of middle-schoolers, struggling with social queues (“the 7-th graders think they’re the best” and “do I wear makeup?”), texting habits (“there have been stupid arguments over text messages”), bullying, and balancing homework and activities....