Waiting in the clinic waiting room before our appointment, I sat with the other mothers and little ones, ranging in age from a few months to early teens. Moms held their babies, and older kids leaned on their moms, heads resting on shoulders or laps. I could see in the mothers’ eyes the concern and fatigue that comes from caring for a sick child. Parenting is amazing, beautiful, and rewarding, and it is hard work, even on the best of days....

Are you ready? Here it is. When you settle into your meditation practice, bringing your awareness to the sensations of your breath, don’t expect to and don’t even try to stop your thoughts. Trying to stop your thoughts is not really possible and it often leads to a great deal of frustration. Frustration that might make you doubt your ability to develop a mindfulness meditation practice. Rather than trying to stop your thoughts, work on changing your relationship to your thoughts....

One of our favorite toys for teaching basic breath awareness is the Hoberman sphere, a geodesic dome that can be folded and unfolded. We call this tool the breath ball because we can mimic the movements of breathing through the dome’s movements: as the dome folds inward, we imagine the out-breath contracting; as the dome expands, we imagine the lungs expanding on the in-breath. The Hoberman sphere might be more remarkable than the fidget spinner....

Dr. Judson Brewer MD, PhD, is a thought leader in the “science of self-mastery,” and an associate professor of psychiatry and medicine at University of Massachusetts School of Medicine, where he is director of research at the Center for Mindfulness. In this TEDMED, he talks about using mindfulness to tame cravings of all kinds. A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit When I was first learning to meditate the instruction was to simply pay attention to my breath, and when my mind wandered, to bring it back....

While we cannot always eradicate pain, practicing mindfulness can help us change our relationship to it. In this video, clinical psychologist Elisha Goldstein demonstrates a practice to welcome pain from his book, The Now Effect. Explore This Guided Meditation for Pain “We spend much of life resisting and fighting with our pain and this is often the cause of further suffering,” says Goldstein. “In this practice we begin to sample a radically different approach that evidence shows cultivates greater healing and makes us more present, focused, and effective to pay attention to what matters....

The piece is by two business school behavioral scientists, Kathleen Vohs and Andrew Hafenbrack, who conducted research to test, among other things, whether “the mindfulness condition would reduce task motivation.” In other words, because mindfulness practice asks you to bring your attention to the “current moment” and “accept things as they are,” you’ll be less likely to “strive to obtain a more desirable future.” When you look under the hood, you find that the subjects in their initial experiment, about 100 people, were divided into two groups and paid $1....

And that show, Derek, is the creation and star vehicle of an even unlikelier source: Ricky Gervais, who rose to fame through the did-he-really-say-that cringe comedy of the original British version of The Office. Derek uses the same “documentary filmmakers on-site” device as The Office, but that’s where the similarities end. Swinging far away from the pathologically self-absorbed office boss David Brent, this time around Gervais plays Derek Noakes, a likely-autistic caregiver at the Broadhill retirement home whose true joy come from doing good for others (well, that and YouTube hamster videos)....

To listen to a sample track, click here.* This web extra provides additional information related to an article titled, “Minding Your Health,” which appeared in the October 2013 issue of Mindful magazine. Subscribe to Mindful‘s print edition or digital edition. * Brian Eno and Opal Ltd., London, kindly gave Mindful permission to host a four-minute sample track from the Quiet Room for one month. Starting on September 12, 2013, this link will redirect to a shorter sample track on the BBC website....

It should be no surprise then, that the man who fills this role is a temple of stress tolerance, handling the demands of his job with such steadiness that his 35-plus years in the Army have taken him from a standard enlistment all the way to the Pentagon. So, how, between high-level assignments and operational deployments, is he able to maintain his composure under such pressure? To date, stress reduction in the military has been based on theory more than research: If we give time off, if we encourage fun group activities, we can provide stress-free moments to cushion the stressful ones....

For me, it’s the smell of squash roasting in the oven, years ago, and my father avoring it with a large pat of butter and a generous drizzle of maple syrup. We ate the tangerine esh with two forks straight out of its skin, a spontaneous meal that was always served at odd hours of the night. It was one of the few dishes I remember him making. I remember preparing it for myself, many years later, in a manner far more savory than sweet....

A case in point: It was the last class of a seven-week mindful leadership course and I had invited the class to share an impression or intention from our work together. One manager, in a quiet voice, shared his discovery with us. He said, “All my adult life I have been striving to change fear into hope. And what I discovered in these weeks is that what is truly important is not the fear or hope in the future, but the work to be fully present for now....

The New Year is an opportunity to grow and develop new qualities that will more closely align with the kind of person we want to be and the life we want to be living. But first, it’s important to acknowledge everything that we already have and bring into the New Year with us. If we forget this important step, we are setting too lofty of expectations for our year because we are coming from a sense of lack vs....

This exercise outlines several steps that are essential to the process of forgiveness, breaking it down into manageable components. These steps were created by Robert Enright, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading forgiveness researchers. Although the exact process of forgiveness may look different for different people, most anyone can still draw upon Dr. Enright’s basic principles. In certain cases, it might help to consult a trained clinician, especially if you are working through a traumatic event....

Here are four takeaways from her talk: Drive alone does not equip you for sustained success. Sacrificing health and relationships to maintain or accelerate success is a recipe for burnout. “My drive took me to the point where I was giving to everything and everybody […] and that almost destroyed me,” says MacAulay. MacAulay ended up arriving at mindfulness. “It’s about being in the present moment, instead of wasting our time succumbing to the mind wandering and the distractions, and ultimately the unrealistic expectations we put on ourselves with our own inner dialogue,” she says....

You’re in a bar. It’s dark, and all around people chatter, but maybe not to you. You’re waiting for your drink to arrive, which it does, finally. Just before you automatically reach for it, stop: take a breath and notice that your liquid refreshment holds a key to the Technicolor present moment…even if it’s only water or club soda! A mindful drinking practice can help you experience the vivid aliveness of your life, with or without alcohol....

Life’s challenges were seemingly everywhere. And yet…I was smiling. I was cheerful. I was grateful. What? Was I crazy? I made a general goal to cultivate more resilience around the ups and downs of life, so I made a point of tuning my awareness toward the appreciation of life’s small delights. I was curious about what I would discover if I focused intentionally on the things that I appreciated. That morning, as I let wakefulness peel the dark back, I could smell my neighbor’s coffee brewing....

For five minutes, four times a day, stop briefly. (Even set these pauses in your phone or digital calendar.) Bring your attention to your breath and body in the moment, just as they are. And no need to think about your to-do list—it’ll still be there when you’re done. Try passing on a few invitations this year. Pick one or two events that hold special meaning or importance, and enjoy the extra time that opens up in your schedule....

“I tap into creativity by looking through the window of my studio at the blooming flowers, and fluttering butterflies! I marvel at their freedom in flight and the predictability of the seasonal cycles, and I delve into an art journal with the same uninhibited ways nature models for me.”Val V. “I like to find inspiration in nature. Then I paint, either watercolor florals or even design mandalas on flat river rocks…I also love to take photographs of trees in the fall at sunrise, capturing the bold bright colors....

The problem is, of course, that it isn’t so easy—this softening thing. Elena Aguilar knows this, which is why she wrote the new book Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators. “Simply put, resilience is how we weather the storms in our lives and rebound after something difficult,” explains Aguilar. But resilience is more than this, she claims—it’s also “what enables us to thrive, not just survive.” Last year may go down in history as one of pure “survival” for some of us, but why settle for managing or enduring when we have the potential to feel energized and joyful in our work?...

As a long-time meditator and technology researcher, I’ve been exploring how this simple practice of questioning can enrich our digital lives. This curiosity can help us bring the full dimensionality of our human being into all of our digital doing across three broad areas of our everyday lives. 3 Questions to Build a Healthy Relationship with Technology 1) What are my experiences with tech actually like? We read much in the media that questions various aspects of our relationship with technology, from the problems of misinformation to the merits and harms of social media....