How Climate Change is Affecting Mental Health There’s a diverse set of mental health problems arising as the devastation caused by climate change increases. Superstorms, floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires and other extreme climate events have disastrous consequences on people’s lives. Individuals are being killed, injured, or forced to leave their homes, devastating families and communities. Mass migrations are disrupting lives at a larger scale. Post-Traumatic Stress following extreme climate events is becoming more common, as are spikes in fear, anxiety, depression, and irritability....

“It’s about how do you stay sane in our busy, desire-driven lives. Here you are in the middle of Times Square, all this advertising telling you all the things you desperately need, this is a chance to take care of one’s spirit and to practice staying serene in the midst of all the distractions of modern, busy, city life.” Thousands of New Yorkers participated in the event, called Mind Over Madness and led by a professional bikram yoga instructor....

Twelve women of the mindfulness movement share how their deep practice has shaped the world they see—and the one they’re working toward. Learn from powerful women leaders of mindfulness: Sebene Selassie, Cheryl Jones, Jenée Johnson, Diana Winston, Leslie Booker, Cara Bradley, and more. The ground beneath your feet may be shifting, but mindfulness can help you return to what is true and to have courage when there is no path....

Findings included the following: Luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at an intersection. Less affluent people are more likely to report feeling compassion towards others on a regular basis. Wealthier people are more likely to agree with statements that greed is justified, beneficial, and morally defensible. Why would wealth decrease compassion? Researchers had this to say: To read the entire article—How Wealth Reduces Compassion—click here....

There are some easy ways to maximize the value of gift giving, as well as support sustainability at the same time. With a little forethought and a few simple strategies, we can elevate the experience of both giving and receiving gifts to make gift giving more fulfilling and rewarding as a result. 4 Ways to Make Your Gifts Meaningful 1. Make Thoughtful Purchases Presents that are tied to an activity someone is passionate about are more likely to bring joy for months and years to come, especially when compared to fad gifts of the season....

My doctor said my body was in adrenal fatigue and that my career was killing me. His advice? Get a new job. I knew that wasn’t the “right” conversation—yet I didn’t know what was. I chose to stay on, but went deeper into my own mindfulness practice to try to understand what had happened. Over the next year, I discovered that the right conversation sits in the knowledge there is a choice regarding the type of relationship you want to create with your work....

What I want to offer is what I call more mindful eating, perhaps “informal” mindful eating as opposed to formal mindful eating. Especially during the stress and extra food of the holidays, that Halloween to New Year stretch when we are more likely to eat mindlessly than mindfully. Here are six simple guidelines to keep in mind to discern between mindless and (more) mindful eating, and bring our bodies and minds back together....

When I walked in to teach my first mindfulness class at a charter high school in Oakland, no one seemed interested. One student was sleeping in his chair; a few kids were messing around in the classroom. Everyone looked at me like I was in the wrong place. I was nervous and not really sure what I would do. So I just started talking about stress. I asked students if they ever felt stressed, what they do when they are stressed, and asked each of them to share an experience about the last time they were stressed and how they dealt with it....

A 12-Minute Meditation to Find Stability Amid Change read more Shelly Tygielski June 17, 2022 Jenée Johnson June 21, 2022 Amber Tucker, Ava Whitney-Coulter, Kylee Ross, Oyinda Lagunju, and Stephanie Domet July 16, 2022

In this TED Talk, Leticia Gasca, author and executive director of the Failure Institute, explains how approaching failure with mindfulness can help us become more resilient. Here are three lessons she shares on how to fail mindfully: 1. Everybody fails In her talk, Gasca recalls how after her first business failed, she didn’t talk about it for seven years. “I felt so guilty that I decided to hide this failure from my conversations and my resume for years....

As human beings, we are all affected by emotions. Most of us love to feel good and hate to feel bad. We want to be liked and accepted and despise or fear being disliked or discounted. There’s a beautiful saying that people will always remember how you made them feel. Human beings are feeling beings, and it may often appear that your emotions are affected first before your thoughts. You can walk into a room and get a feel of a person or situation before you start thinking and assessing the situation to determine whether you feel comfortable or not....

Our brains are wired to focus on fear as a method of ensuring our survival. As a caveman, this was a very important life skill. If our ancestors didn’t over-react to every rustle in the trees, they could be attacked and eaten by a lion. We, on the other hand, are not threatened by literal death on a daily basis. Instead, we are threatened by our email inbox, traffic, our boss’ approval, our children’s safety, and many other daily occurrences that create a strong sense of anxiety and fear....

Highlights from the ABC News blog included comments from top research centers and hospitals, including the University of Wisconsin, and key people in the mindfulness community, such as Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), author of A Mindful Nation: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit. Below are a few tweets we highlighted from the conversation. — Lori Rosenthal, RD (@LoRoRD) May 21, 2013 — CIHM at UW (@Wisc_CIHM) May 21, 2013...

Why is this important to us and what can we do about it? In this day and age where companies spend a lot of money to figure out how to get our brain to pay attention to them, we need to understand how to switch those off to reduce our overwhelm and keep our sanity. The way technology has been going and is headed is a result of some highly refined analyses on how to get our attention....

Intellectually, we were all on the same page. Almost every woman understands the airplane metaphor of needing to put on our own oxygen mask first before helping the ones who might be dependent on your care. But understanding the metaphor emotionally—feeling it at the gut level where wisdom lives—is another experience altogether. I asked the group to close their eyes and just pay attention to the feeling of busyness, rather than to their stories about it....

Speakers will include : Richard J. Davidson, David Eagleman, Paul Ekman, Anne Harrington, Jane Hirschfield, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Beau Lotto, Hazel Markus, Thomas Metzinger, V.S. Ramachandran, Gelek Rimpoche, Laurie Santos, Tami Simon and Tiffany Shlain. Livestreaming will begin this Saturday, March 24 (9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. PST). Click here to access the stream, or follow @beinghuman2012 on Twitter.

This isn’t about forgetting to load the dishwasher, but rather things like substance use, or dishonesty, or behavior that’s detached or cruel. Even when we come to terms with the fact that change is needed, and we communicate clearly with our person about it, actually achieving change can be much more complicated. In the midst of our frustration, a deeper question bubbles up: Are people capable of real change? In this video, philosopher Alain de Botton explains some of the barriers we should be prepared to face during these sorts of crises of relationship....

The information was presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons in Washington, D.C. “It’s important for doctors to know that their patients may still experience psychological distress and they need to ask about it and have resources available,” Dr. Ruth Lerman, who led the research at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, told Reuters Health. “I think that the health value of meditation is remarkable....