In the face of this global crisis—and a sudden, desperate need to get back to my home in Canada—I found myself relying more and more on practicing mindfulness. So, while I wait to hear if I get to go back home soon, I thought I’d share the five mindfulness lessons I learned recently while traveling during a pandemic. Five Mindfulness Lessons for COVID-19 Stress 1. Take it one step at a time My boyfriend and I were in a small town in Peru when the Peruvian government announced all borders out of the country would be shut in 24 hours....

3 Mindfulness Apps That Offer Mental Health Support 1) Sanvello Based on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness meditation, Sanvello offers personalized strategies to help you find relief from anxiety, stress, and depression. You can track your mood and choose exercises tailored to your result—including meditations, videos, articles, and prompts. Users can also connect with a coach or therapist via message, and with other users through discussion boards and chat groups....

We all thought that technology would make our lives easier. But instead we are inundated with packets of data, much of it irrelevant. Facebook tells us what our long-lost friends are doing on vacation. Google reminds us of a holiday potluck we are supposed to attend. We can endorse professionals on LinkedIn so they will endorse us. Twitter truncates the day’s news into tidy sentences, and a device on our wrist reports that last night, we had 45 minutes of “restless sleep....

Her first installment—on the difference between how we talk about mind and how we talk about brain—presents a bit of a sparring match between two different ways of seeing mental activity. In fact, these viewpoints are complexly intertwined. Malin Rosenqvist’s multi-colored chess match with opposing hands reaching onto the board caught both the opposition and the interplay beautifully. I loved it right away. See the full table of contents for Mindful’s April 2013 issue....

At the center of it all, in Jon’s view, is a very personal connection of one person with another and with another and another. If the person who introduces you to mindfulness does it out of love and care, because they have fallen in love with it, you will catch the fire, and if it’s in a class, you will notice that the other people are there for the same fundamental reasons as you....

For more information and to sign up for the event in the “virtual salon” (deadline is Dec.5), click here. For more about Hawn’s work with MindUP, see Celebrating Goldie Hawn and MindUP, Educators buying into the buzz of mindfulness, and From Laugh-In to MindUP: Goldie Hawn on Mindful.org. 11/29/11

According to a new study, it depends—on whether your partner is grateful, too. While gratitude has been shown to be a boon for individuals—making you happier, healthier, and more successful—less is known about how gratitude works in relationships, where personalities and habits collide to create complex, dynamic interactions. How Practicing Gratitude Helps Relationships To go deeper into whether gratitude helps relationships, Florida State University psychologist James K. McNulty and his coauthor Alexander Dugas recruited 120 newlywed couples to fill out surveys....

“It’s imperative that business leaders think about their communities. This is our time,” says Greyston’s President and CEO Mike Brady. “How are we ever going to close this income inequality gap if we’re not progressive?” The commercial brownie bakery pioneered Open Hiring, a system that guarantees a job to anyone willing and able to work. By answering two questions about their legal status and physical ability, an applicant’s name is added to a first-come-first-serve hiring list....

Fortunately, no one was killed that day, but three of the firefighters needed treatment for burns. One was in hospital for a week. “They got caught in tunnel vision,” says veteran firefighter Jim Saveland, who studied the 2008 fire as part of his work in risk management at the US Forest Service. For Saveland, who is a smokejumper himself, the incident raised an important, potentially life-or-death challenge: how to help firefighters maintain situational awareness, especially in the midst of dangerous, high-stress situations....

Of course, I want to stay informed, and it’s important to know what I can do to help prevent the spread of the infection. How can I do that without feeling overwhelmed? Is there a better way to consume the news? It turns out that there is, according to media experts and researchers. Taking in a constant stream of alarming news increases your stress and anxiety—and has long-term consequences for your physical health, too....

Those outside the Bay Area have the option of viewing the livestream and offering questions in real time. A video of the event will be posted on the initiative’s website at a later date. It was announced earlier this month that Charles Halpern will be the first director of the new Mindfulness in Law initiative at Berkeley. For more information, click here. To read more about mindfulness and law practice, read The Law of Mindfulness by Barry Boyce....

Kaplan is a clinical psychologist, Brooklyn-based dad, and author of the book, Urban Mindfulness: Cultivating Peace, Presence, and Purpose in the Middle of It All. He has been teaching mindfulness and meditation for more than a decade. For more information about the class, click here. 09/06/11

The Greater Good Science Center, in partnership with Mindful, presents this one-day conference that bridges the growing movement around mindfulness and compassion with scientific research. This day-long conference supports the mindfulness movement by fuelling it with science. Researchers studying mindfulness—including keynote Jon Kabat-Zinn—will talk about how to apply the latest findings to daily life, and mindfulness practitioners will practice research-tested mindfulness and compassion techniques. The conference takes place March 8, 2013 at the Craneway Pavilion Center or via live webcast....

Racism on college campuses received increasing attention in recent years. Studies show that students of color often feel the effects of race-related stress the most, with many experiencing depression and anxiety as well as difficulties keeping up with their studies. To address this problem, researchers at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, conducted a pilot study to see if an intervention that included compassionate meditation might make a difference. Ten undergraduate students of Asian heritage, who reported high levels of race-related stress, attended the program....

What are your thoughts on President Obama’s use of language of caring and compassion for the purpose of his political message? What happens to the meaning of these terms when they are co-opted by a politician? Share your comments.

Sobriety Support for Moms Sober Mom Squad was born when Emily Lynn Paulson, a recovery coach and mother of five, realized in the early days of the pandemic that “there wasn’t a specific support for moms who also happened to be navigating an alcohol-free life.” Welcoming all moms at any stage in their sobriety, the Squad dispels the idea that “mommy juice” is required to unwind: “Daily gratitude journaling, meditation, exercise, listening to music or shutting down technology are solid ways to regroup without alcohol,” says Paulson....