Social-emotional learning encompasses teaching students how to understand and manage emotions and work with others—beyond what might be encountered in a routine math or english class. Ryan and his colleagues first introduced the bill in 2011, and Ryan hopes there is now more support for the bill. “I have already seen what teaching social and emotional learning skills can do for a student and their classroom,” said Ryan in a statement yesterday....

That’s a lot of rapid-fire, non-face-toface communicating. For teenagers this can be especially tricky, expecially once you add in an adolescent’s proclivity for impulsivity—makes it a little easier to understand how they can land themselves in the world of sexting and cyber-bullying pretty fast. “Adolescents are biologically more prone to making decisions that are not well thought out,” says Tristan Gorrindo, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital....

I would like to share with you one of the principles of mindful eating, guidelines that help individuals and professional become clear on what mindful eating really is. The Principles of Mindful Eating were created by The Center for Mindful Eating and are available free on our website. Reading the principles of mindful eating can deepen your understanding of this concept. I suggest that people print them out and circle the words that seem to resonate within them....

Because we love a story. It can neatly organize the chaotic, impermanent mishmash of life into a coherent arc. There’s a beauty to storytelling that goes back to cave painting, bards singing epics to rapt listeners huddled around a fire, and sacred books with their fantastical cosmologies. They enrich life, and can be a great source of healing and insight, when they help to open our eyes to something we had not seen or understood....

Cancer patients often also encounter many types of pain, from painful procedures like biopsies, blood draws, chemotherapy administration, and radiation therapy to post-surgical pain and lingering aches and pains from the illness itself. There are mindfulness practices that specifically apply to all of these problems, and can help reduce your stress and improve your overall quality of life. Being in distress initiates excitatory and inflammatory responses that can exacerbate many side effects, but good evidence shows that relaxation alone can reduce the intensity of such side effects....

As a result, when a child needs our attention, we often perceive this need as an interruption. “Not now, honey. I need to finish this first” “I can’t get through this lesson when people are talking.” Depending upon the level of pressure, we may feel frustrated, even angry. We may loose our cool, especially if we feel our job is on the line. However, we rarely consider how our reaction is experienced from the child’s perspective....

Caring for her fell mostly to my brother and his wife, who lived nearby. I may have done as much harm as good trying to relieve their burden during my visits. Taking my mom out to lunch, I absentmindedly put her purse on the car roof before pulling off. Its contents, strewn along a highway, were fortunately recovered by a good Samaritan, but it took him a long time to figure out how to get in touch....

But that’s only part of the problem. We are also experiencing the disappearance of mental space. This form of space is less tangible but perhaps even more significant. It’s space from screaming children, your partner’s virtual meetings, and other distractions. It’s the space that allows your mind to rest and open up to new and creative possibilities. The loss of physical and mental space is a problem for many reasons....

From the introduction: Click here to watch the video (29:34). MORE RELATED STORIES Veterans relearn compassion through meditation PTSD and war veterans—can mindfulness help? Mindfulness and the military

The aim of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is to increase awareness so that we can respond to situations with choice rather than react automatically. We do that by practicing to become more aware of where our attention is, and deliberately changing the focus of attention, over and over again.

Numerous studies have documented the perks. Research shows that an attitude of gratitude can lead to improved physical health, make you more optimistic and less prone to negative emotions, and even help you sleep better and avoid the type of exhaustion that leads to burnout. What’s more, showing thanks to others can strengthen your bonds and help you build new friendships at work. But here’s the best part: In addition to the boost we get, gratitude can also bring out the full potential in those around us....

The world is too complex and multifaceted for us to continually get our way. It’s good to aspire for the best for ourselves and others, while nonetheless remaining committed to the journey more than the satisfaction of achieving a fixed outcome. If everyone gets their way, we can’t have a cooperative world. From time to time, we need to undercut our own perspective and see things from the other side—maybe even from all sides....

We don’t eat as frequently as we breathe, but it’s not far behind. We take somewhere between 50 and 100 bites per day. By the time a person is 50, they’ve eaten something like 55,000 meals and taken in the neighborhood of 2 million bites. Nothing except for sex engages your senses in such an intimate and direct way. Eating is a realm that’s fascinating to pay attention to. For one thing, when we shine the light of our inquiring mind on eating, we see so easily the connection between body and mind....

Ammi’s Adventures: Seeds Hi! I’m Ammi. My name means “the whole world is inside of me,” and I think it’s true: I carry the whole world in my mind and heart and body. I know you do, too! I like to play games, explore, and discover what makes me, me. I’m so glad we’re together on this journey! Have you ever held a seed in your hand? Some are so tiny we can barely see them with our eyes, and others are so big they fill our whole palm....

Still, countless acts of goodness, kindness, and heroism are taking place all over as the world battles COVID-19. Of course, much of it is going on behind the closed doors of hospitals and homes, anonymous and unsung. But some of it is happening for all of the world to see. We’ve rounded up some of the good news as a reminder that, amid the darkness, people are still out there loving and caring for each other....

If you’d told me when I first arrived in New York City, to start working in network news, that I’d be using meditation to defang the voice in my head—or that I’d ever write a whole book about it—I would have laughed at you. Until recently, I thought of meditation as the exclusive province of bearded swamis, unwashed hippies, and fans of John Tesh music. Moreover, since I have the attention span of a six-month-old yellow Lab, I figured it was something I could never do anyway....

2. Go Deep Whether a circumstance shakes your confidence or you harbor a nagging doubt about yourself, those feelings seem to come from the depths of your being. But through mindfulness, you’re able to touch something even deeper: a trove of natural well-being, and yep, confidence. Meditation teachers and authors Ed and Deb Shapiro write that the practice “enables you to meet, greet, and make friends with yourself…to know who you really are, and to accept and embrace every part....

Unsatisfying communication is rampant in our society: in relationships between spouses, parents, and children, among neighbors and co-workers, in civic and political life, and between nations, religions, and ethnicities. Can we change such deeply ingrained cultural patterns? Is it possible to bring about a shift in the modes of communication that dominate our society? Contemplative practices, with their committed cultivation of self-awareness and compassion, may offer the best hope for transforming these dysfunctional and damaging social habits....