Contemplative engagement with a work of art can, quite literally, help bring it to life. In our conversation after the meditation on Scheffer’s painting, one of the participants remarked that it was as if the painting had been asleep, and through the meditation it woke up – came alive. Her experience was not unlike Rilke’s as he repeatedly went to view the paintings of Cézanne while in Paris in 1907....

It is a lovely wish to have only pleasant, delicious meals, but returning to the here and now, how would that even be possible? The desire to enjoy every bite you eat is unrealistic. Worse, it is potentially very destructive, because the enjoyment you get from eating is a complex experience that can’t be limited only to taste. Choosing to eat only foods that tantalized your tongue would likely cause you to miss the delight that comes from choosing foods that nourish the body and help it function well....

White lies, fibs, shading the truth, exaggerations, self-denial—these are all things that most of us do now and then. And I wonder how much it matters if we fudge the truth when Aunt Mabel asks how we liked our purple-polka-dot birthday poncho? In a teaching on compassion, the Dalai Lama told the story of a monk who was walking in the woods when a deer ran past him, followed a few minutes later by a hunter who asked the monk which way the deer had gone....

Does Social Media Make Us More Connected? Like many children, I thought the wrist TV was super cool, and my friends and I even pretended we had one. We never dreamed that such a gadget could become a reality. Apparently, engineer Martin Cooper thought differently: The two-way wrist device inspired his invention of the mobile phone, which morphed into today’s smartphone, and ironically enough, wrist phones of all kinds. Now, almost everyone is Dick Tracy—connected to our squad and the rest of the world with a device at the end of our arms....

read more Stephany Tlalka September 22, 2017 Mindful Staff April 28, 2021

You might have seen the first video we posted when mindful.org was launched. It’s a short video of Jon Kabat-Zinn talking about his support for mindful.org which I shot using an amateur hand-held video camera while Jon was precariously perched on a park bench overlooking the Pacific ocean in Santa Monica. It’s pretty rugged stuff. Now, with mindfulTV, we can bring the best of the mindfulness world to your computer, tablet, or smartphone, with programs including high-definition live streaming of events and conferences and specially produced shows featuring the leading writers, champions, and activists in the mindfulness world....

Chopra broadcasted on Chopra Center Radio from his annual Seduction of Spirit yoga and meditation retreat in Atlanta. In the meditation Chopra talked about uniting globally to alleviate Japan’s suffering and directing our energies toward restoration. If you missed the live broadcast, you can listen to a recording in the player below.

Enjoy Mindful in vivid display (especially Retina devices!), and the easy-to-navigate layout optimized for iPad. Tap through slideshows and mindfulness practices and tips. Access video extras and related web content straight from the pages of Mindful. Keep a digital library on your iPad and access Mindful anywhere you take it. Bookmark your favorite stories, tips, and techniques in the app. Download the app for free and preview sample content....

In the inevitable social media wars, La La Land was denigrated for even being considered in the same league as a movie of the depth of Moonlight. So, when La La Land won the night’s final Oscar, many Moonlight fans turned off their TVs. When the La La Land acceptance speeches were halted to announce that the true winner was Moonlight, it shocked everyone involved. A truly human moment emerged when the teams from both movies expressed their respect and admiration for their counterparts....

Now, Kaagegaabaw is keeping his language alive by posting an Ojibwe Word of the Day on social media, featuring the pronunciation of an Ojibwe word, with illustrative images—such as “Ode’imin” (“strawberry”), “Wiikonge” (“S/he gives a feast”), and “Iskigamizige” (“S/he boils sap”). In longer weekly videos, Kaagegaabaw offers a basic translation, along with an explanation about how the philosophical and spiritual aspects of the words are connected to the cultural practices of Ojibwe and other Anishinaabeg peoples, such as the Chippewa, Odawa, and Menominee....

That seems counterintuitive, because what we actually tend to do when we feel busy is pack on the work—even clocking 2 extra hours a day by checking in on our smartphones after the workday ends. So how can spending time with others make us feel less…compressed? Patricipants involved in four studies conducted by the University of Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Yale reported feeling that their sense of having time increased when they did small things for others, like writing a kind note....

He writes: It turns out that I found it’s not really about unplugging per se – it’s about creating calm. If you have calm in your body, mind, and heart, you don’t have to be so strict about unplugging. You can feel when enough is enough. You find the physical world more appealing. Your life is less about rules and more about connection. Moraveji is not the first to make this observation lately....

1) Things get hot in a meeting and emotions take over Response: If you ask yourself, “What outcome do I truly want here?” you may be able to see your true aim more clearly and defuse the excess emotion that may be getting in the way. It’s not about doing away with passion and emotion; it’s about assessing how to spend the precious resource of your—and everyone else’s—mental energy. 2) Distraction keeps you from accomplishing important things Response: When you have that feeling of being lost, you can inquire, “Where is the most important place for my focus and energy to be right now?...

The rest of us, on the other hand, find ourselves with bodies that just won’t stop changing. Sometimes we like those changes, sometimes we fear the changes our body goes through, and sometimes we feel so disconnected from our body that we simply can’t even tell, or don’t want to know, what the heck is going on in them there hills. For many, childhood traumas or plain old negative comparisons can become the thought hooligans that make it hard for us to believe that we really might be OK with the body we have, just as it is....

Then, it turned out we knew somebody who knew somebody who knew Maira Kalman, a person whose work had been a model for this idea from the beginning. But it was a long shot, we thought. How great it was, then, when Maira leapt at the chance. She decided to delve into meditation and illustrate the result. What a joy to meet her in New York and take hand delivery of her first installment....

Of all the consequences of digital technologies, few are as profound as those related to our emotional lives. That is not to minimize their effects on the cognitive part of our brain, including the ability to remember and focus, as I wrote about in a 2017 column. Call me biased, but my feelings feel more like me than do my powers of attention and recall. So when historian Susan J....