Forest bathing incorporates many of the benefits of meditation while getting us outdoors and in motion. In a study at the College of Landscape Architecture at Sichuan Agricultural University, 30 men and 30 women were given a route of the same length to walk in either a bamboo forest or an urban area. The researchers measured blood pressure as well as electrical activity in the brain using an EEG, and they found that, among those who walked the forest path, blood pressure was lowered significantly as attention and concentration improved....

Mindful: Last year the Cochin International Airport in Southern India became the world’s first fully solar-powered airport. When a woman contacted online retailer Zulily to return a winter coat, they refunded her money and told her to donate the coat instead of returning it. Ever heard of a “solidarity fridge?” No? That’s because the town of Galdakao, Spain, is the first to install one. To minimize food waste, citizens bring leftovers to an outdoor fridge and anyone can take from it....

Defining Mindfulness So what exactly is mindfulness? The simplest definition is “clear awareness.” It is the capacity to be present, consciously knowing what is happening in your experience moment by moment. You can apply that attention to your mind, body, or environment. It is both a state of mind and a quality that you can develop through practice. Although we all have access to this quality, it takes patience and perseverance for it to become part of the fabric of who you are....

Contemporary culture in the United States is marked by extraordinary advances in science and technology, yet coupled with these advances is an increasing sense of pressure, complexity and information overload. Individuals across the lifespan are feeling tremendous stress, which is contributing to a variety of mental and physical health problems and diseases. Mindful awareness is a practice that comes from a variety of contemplative traditions throughout history. It invites people to stop, breathe, observe, and connect with their inner experience....

Sipping on mindfulness What would you do for a cup of tea? San Francisco’s Samovar Teahouse offers “mindfulness tea” at no charge, if you agree to drink it mindfully. That means no using your phone and no chatting, and simply sipping for 60 whole minutes. Owner Jesse Jacobs, a longtime meditator, says he sees it sparking curiosity around mindfulness, though not all customers are eager to dive in and try it....

Those students who were instructed to commit three acts of kindness each week saw a bigger boost in their popularity from peers than those students who were instructed to visit three places each week. The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California-Berkeley puts the study in context: children have the capacity to act kindly and receive kindness positively, yet still have to be prompted to behave this way....

“We have a xenophobic focus on achievement and achievement-testing as the measure of how good our education systems are,” says Greenberg, “and very little focus on the whole child and the idea of nurturing of children’s full development to become an adult with full potential.” At the other end of the classroom, there are some exquisitely stressed-out teachers, says Greenberg. He notes how a recent study from Germany compared how teachers have similar stress profiles as Romanian orphans....

Research Roundup April 2015 issue of Mindful magazine Disrupting Our Brain’s Bias Racial bias in policing is at the forefront of the news. So it’s heartening to see a study that finds bias can be reduced through mindfulness training. Adam Lueke and Brian Gibson of Central Michigan University looked at how instructing white college students in mindfulness would affect their “implicit bias”—or unconscious negative reactions—to black faces and faces of older people....

Goerling tells a story from his policing experience in which he notes how judgmental he would have been in the situation if not for mindfulness, and because of that he was reminded to be empathic and non-judgmental, which was a tactic that was much more effective and rewarding.

Still grieving over the loss of my best friend Amy, I was not ready to “get” another dog. Friends asked; some suggested another dog would help me get over my loss. I knew I needed to let her go, but I was still imprinting on my memory all the details of Amy and the life we enjoyed together. A friend suggested I foster a dog through a local non-profit organization that focuses on finding homes for special needs and elderly dogs and cats, and also helps people keep their pets through education, behaviour training, and helping pet owners obtain the resources they need....

Yet we often fail to recognize the same signs of stress and overwhelm in ourselves. We take on work projects, make plans with friends, push ourselves to go to the gym, keep up with the news, and tackle new recipes, then question why it is we feel so frazzled and burnt out. As philosopher Alain de Botton explains, sometimes we just need to keep things simple. “What registers as anxiety is typically no freakish phenomenon; it is the mind’s logical enraged plea not to be continuously and exhaustingly overstimulated,” he says....

Psychologist Richard Balding, from the University of Worcester, presented the findings from this study on January 12 at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology Conference in Chester. Balding advised organisations to consider the problem seriously. “Smart phone use is increasing at a rapid rate and we are likely to see an associated increase in stress from social networking," he said. “Organisations will not flourish if their employees are stressed, irrespective of the source of stress, so it is in their interest to encourage their employees to switch their phones off; cut the number of work emails sent out of hours, reduce people’s temptation to check their devices....

But as the world speeds up, we’re forfeiting these wonderful human capacities. Do you have as much time to think as you did a year ago? When was the last time you spent time reflecting on something important to you? At work, do you have more or less time to think about what you’re doing, and are you encouraged to spend time thinking together with colleagues and co-workers? In this culture, we’ve begun to equate productivity with speed....

The Holistic Life Foundation (HLF), a nonprofit based in Baltimore, MD, expanded to two satellite locations: the Saint Regis Mohawk Reservation in Akwesasne, NY, and Miami, FL. The efforts to branch out and bring the benefits of wellness to underserved communities started this summer in Akwesasne. Senior HLF staff will spend a year in the community facilitating yoga and mindfulness classes in schools. They’ll also be training 15 community leaders to help grow their programming in the community....

At times it can seem like we are making little progress on environmental problems. Over and over I hear these questions: What can one person do? What should I do? My answers have come a long way from the early eco-enthusiasm of the 1960s. We felt sure we could save everything if people only knew how much was at stake. Today we face environmental concerns with more awareness, recognizing the political, economic, and social constraints that limit our actions....

As Tsai was treating him (successfully) for PTSD, however, something unexpected emerged. The vet still described his Vietnam experiences as horrific, but he said the painful memories remind him of who he is. His experience typifies research psychologists’ new understanding of trauma: When people are least resilient—in the sense that they are knocked for a loop, do not bounce back quickly or at all, and suffer emotionally for months, if not years—they can eventually emerge from trauma stronger, more appreciative of life, more sympathetic to the suffering of others, and with different (arguably more enlightened) values and priorities....

When John Teasdale, Mark Williams and I were developing MBCT, we positioned the practice of mindfulness meditation centrally and buttressed it with exercises from cognitive therapy. While these elements blended well, I remember us arriving at a point where we felt something was missing. Our experience as cognitive therapists taught us that therapeutic change depended on applying therapy skills between sessions and in real-world situations. Just as was the case for MBSR at that time, nearly every mindfulness practice we embedded in MBCT was formal and lengthy, with little guidance for calling on and employing these new ways to approach experience throughout the day....

Frank is a lifelong mindfulness meditator and the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project based in San Francisco. He has been at the bedside of thousands of people in the process of dying. I ran into Frank outside a hotel elevator at a mindfulness conference and mentioned to him we were starting to work on a story and would love his input. We were exploring how death can reveal what’s most important in life, perhaps pointing to what makes us happy while we’re still alive....