They had recently arrived from the frontlines of the Syrian refugee crisis—Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and centers in Jordan—to take part in a contemplative-based resilience (CBR) training for aid workers. The responsibilities of aid workers in the Syrian crisis are extensive and challenging, including providing medical treatment to those injured, delivering food and shelter to displaced people and those in need, providing legal support, and ensuring that donor funds are spent responsibly and accounted for....

In this kind of discussion, things always start with awareness: how to we let people know what’s happening, what the risks are, and what needs to be done to prevent them? Logically, you need to be aware first—then comes caring. From caring, comes acting. But a new report points to just how hard that first step is. Psychologists at Duke University and Waterloo University conducted a series of studies looking at how open people are to information about serious challenges, from the economy to the environment....

That may seem like a silly question, since by all expert accounts the mind is just what the brain does. The mind is the output—in thoughts, emotions, memories, and desires—of the electrical and chemical activity of the 100 trillion or so synapses in the human brain. So the question is akin to asking which you value more: the cool air that your air conditioner puts out or the unit itself....

2) Your Mindful Garden Your Mindful Garden was recently introduced by CBeebies, a BBC children’s network. The app-based game has nurturing activities like mindful breathing, movement, and noticing emotions. Bonus: It’s narrated by award-winning actor (and mental health advocate) Stephen Fry. 3) FitMind FitMind is a vigorous meditation trainer delivered via iPhone. It teaches the science behind the practice, tracks your progress, and provides numerous levels and daily challenges to keep you mindfully engaged....

Although a small study group, it represents some of the first efforts to train teachers in mindfulness techniques and to examine the effects of this training in the classroom. Richie Davidson, the study’s senior author and CIHM founder and chair, explains the new research in this video. In a recent post, our education blogger Tish Jennings discusses five things that need to happen to bring mindfulness into education.

The human tone within the hospital was extraordinary. Among patients, their caregivers, and the staff, there was no observable friction at any time. People were very courteous and caring towards one another. In two years now, I have never heard a voice raised in anger within this hospital. In place of the sullen and uncommunicative atmosphere that one sometimes finds in hospital waiting rooms elsewhere, here were patients and caregivers talking with interest and care with one another, listening to each other’s stories about their illness, vacating their seats gladly to accommodate other people in bulky wheelchairs, complimenting one another on their clothing, and in general treating one another as valuable and worthy of attention and compassion....

Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, and Founder and Chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has been at Wisconsin since 1984. He has published more than 275 articles, many chapters and reviews and edited 13 books....

I’d begun writing my book The Compassionate Life to blow the dust off my bodhisattva vows, little suspecting how much the ideas on the page would get under my skin. Hanging out with the folks who do the heart’s heavy lifting—homeless shelter workers, kidney donors, people who forgave their mortal enemies—made me want to get out from behind the desk and do something for the world (wherever that was). When I heard Mom was suddenly fading, I cabbed from a Seattle bookstore to a New York-bound redeye, arriving just in time to say goodbye....

For more articles on Susan Kaiser Greenland’s work, click here. 07/13/12

“Ultimately, the project extended between mountain ranges,” he says. “The desert is so powerful, so it fully involved and reflects it.” The audience for Lucid Stead had a very deliberate experience of just being there. “People became very conscious of their surroundings and hyperaware of the quiet,” says Smith. His newest project, Reflection Field, took the luminescent, mirrored panels from the homestead and proportionally tripled their size, creating a 21st Stonehenge in a field at Coachella, the music festival at Indio, California....

My fiancé assured her that, yes, I had taken the sedative my dentist had promised would help me ignore, perhaps even sleep through, the violent separation of my wisdom teeth from my body. In truth, I had taken only half of one pill—just enough to release my inner Shakira, but not enough to render me unconscious. I had been waiting a long time to have this done, and I wanted to be awake for it....

In my last blog, I wrote that I had been experimenting with a slightly adapted working definition of mindfulness—“the awareness and approach to life that arises from paying attention on purpose, fully present, with curiosity and compassion.” This is a small shift from the most common modern definition of mindfulness, which describes the practice as ‘non-judgemental.’ Misunderstanding of ‘non-judgement’ has, I believe, has led to some unjustified criticisms, which suggest that mindfulness is ethically groundless or passive....

The take-home message: It is all too easy to use technology as a distraction or a crutch, as a way to avoid dealing with difficulties and making tough decisions. “But the costs of this kind of slumber can be high.” Click here to read “The Titanic 100 Years On: Technology, Infallibility, and Mindfulness.” For more about mindfulness and technology, read Tech Support for the Hopelessly Connected by Mindful.org’s “On Mental Health” blogger, Elisha Goldstein....

What seems to be new about today’s teenagers is that they aren’t just stressed about what’s going on at home or at school or in their own lives—they’re stressed about the world they are living in. For example, three quarters say they are stressed about mass and school shootings. More than half feel stressed about the current political climate, and more than two-thirds feel significantly stressed about our nation’s future....

As the sharing unfolded during a period of inquiry and dialogue, I was struck by a few of the questions left for the group to hold. For example, have we in fact “promised ourselves"? Is that promising a conscious choice or is it more a matter of an offer too good to pass up? We were exploring the places in which we found ourselves, our life work, our family and our communities....

Jan Chozen Bays, MD, is a pediatrician and meditation teacher from Oregon. She is the author of Mindful Eating: Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food and How to Train a Wild Elephant, a collection of 53 mindfulness exercises. Jan and her colleague Char Wilkins, MSW, LCSW continue to offer a 5-day Professional Training through the UCSD Center for Mindfulness entitled ”Mindful Eating, Conscious Living” based upon their work in this field and Jan’s book....