2. Honor the Elements Every piece of food we eat has its own rich origin story, which we usually don’t think about. Next time you sit down for a meal, take a moment to acknowledge everything that went into the food on your plate. Consider the people who made it, bought the ingredients, stocked the store shelves, delivered it, harvested it, and all the natural elements of sun, rain, soil, and wind that allowed it to grow....

1. Affectionate Breathing 2. The Hand Over Heart Practice 3. A Visualization Practice to Call on a Compassionate Friend read more Linda Graham April 8, 2020 Linda Graham May 7, 2020 Linda Graham April 15, 2020

Mindfulness is now the fastest-developing area in mental health. Many therapists have come to regard cultivating moment-to-moment awareness as a curative mechanism that transcends diagnosis, addresses underlying causes of suffering, and serves as an active ingredient in most effective psychotherapies. The clinical value of mindfulness interventions has been demonstrated for many psychological difficulties, including depression, anxiety, chronic pain, substance abuse, insomnia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. And it doesn’t matter which therapeutic approach we take, be it psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, humanistic, or any other....

Children and young adults in particular are more perceptive than we think. They know what’s going on, they hear about it at school, and as much as I wish it were possible to shield kids from all the darkness in the world, I’ve come to realize that the real gift we can give our kids is not the gift of “safety,” but rather a complete set of tools to deal with the true nature of the world around us....

When you shop at a grocery store, stand in line for a movie ticket, or get a tank of gas at a full-service station, engage with other people. Internally, extend wishes of goodwill to them. Listen when they talk and gently smile. Such small gestures make people feel more open and kind. By engaging with them, you engage with your best self. If you use the bus, train, or airplane on a regular basis, let the act of taking your seat be a cue to practice kindness or compassion toward your traveling companions....

For many of us, this moment also invites us to reflect deeply upon other instances of violence that, sadly, are always occurring. Conflicts in countries like Iran, Syria, Yemen, or Afghanistan (among many others) are often omitted from our news cycle. Despite this, the people who are suffering in conflicts around the world are not so different from ourselves.The invitation with this practice is to put aside ideas and concepts about differences, shame, fear, survival, and the rest, and to simply see if you can begin to develop a felt sense of common humanity....

If you have a twenty dollar bill and you crumple it up, or it gets faded in the laundry, or passes through 50 to a 100 hands, at the end of the journey it’s still worth 20 dollars. It’s worth has not changed. It is not our experience that defines us, it’s our identity that defines us. You are a unique and perfect expression of life. No one before you and no one after you, is like you....

After graduating with a masters degree in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard, Torrence became the director of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme), in January 2011, helping to raise funds and organize retreats where teens learn to meditate. But in the spring of that year, Torrence was diagnosed with pneumonia. Doctors quickly realized it was something far more serious than a lung infection: giant cell myocarditis, a type of inflammation of the heart....

Guided Meditation: Connect to Your Fearless Heart Start by finding a comfortable seat. You can sit on a yoga block, a cushion, a sweatshirt, or a chair. Ground yourself in your seat, finding the connection between your feet and the ground. Then, start to feel your breath coming into your body. You may be breathing into your chest, or breathing into your belly. How does the breath feel coming in? How does the breath feel as it leaves?...

A Meditation for Healing Through Hope read more Mindful Staff December 12, 2022 Rose Felix Cratsley June 2, 2022 Mindful Staff November 29, 2022

In this practice, leaders are asked to notice the sensations in their body as they review a single calendar page from their schedules. Almost instantly, when leaders pause long enough, they notice that their chest or stomach has tightened or their neck has tensed up. They begin to become curious about those messages from the body. They begin to question the status quo. For many of us, a calendar of meeting after meeting seems inevitable....

1) In the Morning: Move When you start your day on autopilot—rolling from your pillow, to your phone’s notifications, to your coffee, and then to work without pause—you miss out on insights that could help shape the rest of your day. Follow this mindful movement practice to intentionally start your morning with movement, breath, and stillness so you can focus your mind, energize your body, and listen in. 2) In the Afternoon: Relax Often when we’re stressed or overwhelmed, we aim to calm down our breathing or our thoughts—overlooking the impact that stress also has on our whole body....

Click here to visit ABC News online and watch the video. (Link opens in new window.) For more on Compassion and Loving Kindness practice, visit our special page on Mindful.org. For more on mindfulness in education, see our Education pages, or read posts by Mindful’s education blogger, Tish Jennings.

We journalize our experiences, my wife weaves some of the river’s life into her artwork, and I use sightings of this and that as jumping-off points for my writing and naturalist work. We are truly fortunate—this is our work and our play. We’ve chosen this path in part for the sheer joy of it, the pure pleasure, for how good the beauty makes us feel. That may sound selfish, but it’s like the pleasure one gets from being around old friends who make you laugh, who are fully themselves around you, and who grant you the space to be fully yourself....

The practice of mindfulness teaches us a different way to relate to our thoughts, feelings, and emotions as they arise. It is about learning to approach and acknowledge whatever is happening in the present moment, setting aside our lenses of judgment and just being with whatever is there, rather than avoiding it or needing to fix it. It’s the mind’s attempt to avoid and fix things in this moment that fuels the negative mood....

Rising rates of mental distress are probably related to life in a pandemic—the endless news cycle, financial insecurity, and social isolation. Yet North America’s mental health crisis is nothing new. In recent decades, a significant decline in well-being means that people are more anxious and depressed than ever before. The Four Keys to Well-Being A body of research from the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is addressing this well-being deficit by proposing a training-based framework for “the cultivation of human flourishing....

This is one of the places Ekaterini “Kat” Vlahos takes her students. She teaches architecture at the University of Colorado in Denver, and she believes that instilling in her students a sense of the land, as well as the traditions of the people who settled there, makes for better, more conscious design. First, she asks her students to choose a spot. They sit and sketch for ve minutes. Then they walk the site....

I like to think of Mindful magazine as a version of that practice. Our Spring issue is more than just a collection of articles—it’s a collection of hearts and minds sharing stories about how they’re showing up in the world with kindness, patience, humor, and grace. In this beautiful issue, you’ll find Ashanti Branch, whose Million Mask Movement encourages us to embrace our authenticity by sharing what we let others see and what we keep hidden....

There’s no denying that balanced meals are important, but there’s also more to healthful eating than determining portion sizes and hitting all the right food groups. In fact, when you have a healthy relationship with your food, all else generally falls into place. How do you do that? To start, it involves staying connected with the experience of eating; knowing where your food grew and how it was prepared or cooked; and it even means being aware of who eats with you....