That’s why, in addition to cooking, I love watching cooking shows. One of my favorites is MasterChef, with its “Mystery Box Challenge.” The Mystery Box might hold durian or dogfish, Spam or spaghetti. All contestants start with the same raw materials, but they don’t know what they’ll get until the box is opened. Each chef draws upon the richness of their culture, their culinary training, and their unique take on life to dazzle the judges and win hearts and stomachs....

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) combines the tools of cognitive therapy with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) skills to teach individuals how to better regulate their emotions. Previous studies have found MBCT to be as effective as antidepressant medication in preventing depressive relapse. To date, however, access to the program has been limited largely to those living in large cities. Mindful Mood Balance (MMB) was created to fill the access gap by delivering MBCT online....

My five-month-old son, Theo, sat, still strapped into his stroller next to me and watched as I tapped out an email to my co-author on a new book project we’d begun. A book about mindfulness of all things. As my kids watched me quietly, my focus had gone down the two by four inch rabbit hole of my Iphone’s screen. A tap to my shoulder from behind brought me to attention, and I turned to see an elderly Asian woman smiling at me....

I began practicing several years ago as a means to cope with the acute and chronic stressors of police work, and life’s journey for that matter. I had been reading a lot about yoga and its efficacy for preventing and healing lower back injuries (many police officers have lower back problems). I then began researching mindfulness as a tool for stress management and situational awareness (officer safety) for police officers....

“It is the neuroscientific evidence particularly which shows us that the circuits in the brain that are important to underlying well-being exhibit plasticity—it changes as a consequence of experience and as a consequence of training. We know that the brain is constantly being changed, wittingly or unwittingly.” The brain keeps changing over its entire lifespan. The good news? We have some control over those changes. “We can all take responsibility for our own brains and we can shape our own brains in ways that are more positive and can lead to the cultivation of well-being....

HH: Can you share your thoughts on what is happening in Cape Cod? BB: The school board member who is opposing Calmer Choice being in the schools there, is a religious right Christian parenting author. And the organization, National Center for Law in Policy, is likewise a religious right organization. However, that doesn’t really matter. Whatever points they’re making to the extent that they are good and valid, aught to be taken into account....

Stammering (more commonly known as stuttering in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) is a disorder that affects the control and co-ordination of speech movements with the result that there is an interruption in the flow, that is, fluency, of speech. (I will use the word “stammering” in this blog in light of its usage in the British film The King’s Speech and in other quoted articles from the UK, but the terms stammering and stuttering both mean exactly the same thing....

There have been 7 teen-specific suicides since May of 2009. So I sat down with Paly High School Senior Meghan Byrd to ask her about teen life, the pressures of being a teen today and the epidemic of recent teen suicides in the local area. Meghan, a future teen panelist at the upcoming Wisdom 2.0 Youth Conference, is concerned about teen health and tragic stories like Clayton Carlson’s. She recalls checking her Facebook newsfeed after a student committed suicide at Paly in January of this year, and seeing dozens of statuses of friends on Facebook that show the letters, “R....

A woman friend accompanied me when I had to put my elderly dog down, even making sure I got ice cream afterwards (my particular emotional food). Many expressed solidarity and condolences in writing, having had that poignant and painful experience with a pet. A young woman friend, who’d also been through it, let me cry on the phone to her until I was spent. When the second, the companion dog died soon after, a male friend sat with me when my grief was most acute, waiting until I could again contain and function....

The Extent of the Lead Problem in Greater Flint Greater Flint has felt its share of strife. Once a booming center of auto manufacturing, the region of nearly 500,000 inhabitants, roughly 70 miles northwest of Detroit, has struggled mightily to overcome the economic depression, and high rates of unemployment, poverty, and crime that followed in the wake of the close of General Motors plants in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The once thriving city is now riddled with boarded up abandoned buildings, and its streets are devoid of grocery stores and safe public spaces....

The October issue of Mindful dives into the intersection of mindfulness and difficult emotions, illuminating the balance that can be found when we breathe and befriend. Pulmonologist and mindfulness teacher Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang shares the 4-7-8 breath for moments when you’re feeling anxious or stressed. Health writer Caren Osten Gerszberg interviews world-renowned meditation teachers and researchers steeped in the transformational (and research-backed) art of turning toward difficult emotions. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Katherine Ellison digs into the science of wanting and explores how we can take back our contentment....

The Top 10 Guided Meditations of 2022 1) A 12-Minute Meditation for Grief and Loss Our hearts break, but our hearts also heal. The thread that pulls us from heartbreak to healing is love, says Judy Lief in this practice for working with grief. We don’t want to let go of anything, but through grief, we learn to love and appreciate what we’ve had and lost—friends, family, a way of life, a job, our youth, we grieve it all....

The past few years have been marked by two major trends in the science of a meaningful life. One is that researchers continued to add sophistication and depth to our understanding of positive feelings and behaviors. Happiness is good for you, but not all the time; empathy ties us together, and can overwhelm you; humans are born with an innate sense of fairness and morality, that changes in response to context....

Many cultures have been drawn to this incredible bird. After spending an afternoon learning about them, it was easy to understand why this is so. These large, majestic raptors are incredibly impressive up close, with their earthy-colored bodies and heads adorned with the whiteness of experience. They seem to possess an inherent wisdom and a knowing gaze. They’re also fine with “being messy” from time to time. While in Red Wing, I also learned that spending an afternoon observing them in flight is a great way to share in their wisdom....

In exploring the ways that we can direct compassion to others, what better way than to consider children. Endeavoring to raise an empathic child who is attentive to others helps build a better community and counters the “me” culture that is so prevalent today. Further, considering how to make the children in our lives better people helps us reflect on how we ourselves can be more compassionate. Michelle Borba is an educational psychologist and expert in parenting, bullying, and empathy, and author of many books on character development in children, the most recent being UnSelfie: why empathic kids succeed in our all-about-me world (Simon & Schuster, 2016)....

2. The Spoilers You’re Looking For When choosing what to watch, it’s often good to look both ways, so to speak. The site doesthedogdie.com helps film and series buffs do just that: It’s an online database for content warnings. Users contribute info on what’s in a film or a show, from violence to strobe effects, ableism to clowns, and of course, dogs or other animals dying. Crowdsourcing lets viewers support each other in making informed decisions about their entertainment....

As you move through it, notice when your mind strays, and return to the sensation of the breath or any other physical sensation, such as stretching, quivering, or your muscles tiring. That’s how you’ll know when to push and when to back off. It’s particularly useful to do this sequence before meditation practice as it will create both strength, flexibility, and stamina that will support the physical effort required for sitting....

1. Make Mindfulness Fun “When we teach kids mindfulness, it helps to turn the lesson into a fun activity—through play, movement, visualization, and games,” writes Christopher Willard. One way to teach kids to follow the breath in difficult moments is with this breath ball practice. All you need is an expandable ball called a Hoberman sphere or your own ten fingers to create a DIY sphere with your hands. 2. Notice Positive Moments Mark Bertin says kids may feel stressed by a test, or a friend, or their parents and it can be hard to let go of that kind of thought....