“By the time they reach the eighth grade, virtually every middle-class child in the Western world is playing smartphone apps, video games, computer games,” says Davidson. “Our hope is that we can use some of that time for constructive purposes and take advantage of the natural inclination of children of that age to want to spend time with this kind of technology.” The grant came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is keenly interested in preparing U....

The right brain innovates and the left brain calculates. What science used to conclude is that it’s the stimulation of the right side of the brain—perhaps with brainstorming exercises (get your flip-charts, markers, and games out, people)—and then the left brain decodes it all and comes up with a strategy to apply or make real the idea that blossomed in the right brain. Scientists are now saying that the left and right hemispheres of the brain are both equally involved in creative tasks....

That’s what happened to Mike and Dave Radparvar, who, along with co-founder Fabian Pfortmüller, created their sustainable design company, Holstee. Founded on a name that portmanteaus two aspects of their first product—a t-shirt with a pocket holster—Holstee didn’t become an overnight sensation. The 2008 recession prompted the brothers to become entrepreneurs. They quit their jobs and brainstormed their manifesto: How do we live our lives, and what’s most important? Ever since The Washington Post dubbed Holstee “the new Just Do It” in 2011, companies have been asking Holstee to help them craft their own manifestos, in the hopes of similar viral charm....

But as this video from School of Life points out, sometimes the places we feel most drawn to are places with no one around at all. Places that are stark, isolated, or even downbeat. Despite this, “we nevertheless experience a deep pull, coming to feel perhaps that we belong here far more than in the gaiety, elegance and color of familiar vistas,” says philosopher Alain de Botton—but where does this pull come from?...

But hopes like these are justified more by wishing than by any reliable evidence. There is in fact very little data in relation to the impact of mindfulness training on leadership development. Despite plenty of anecdotal support from leaders who have tried mindfulness, the current enthusiasm for it derives mainly from research conducted in clinical contexts that don’t much resemble modern organizations. From the perspective of leadership development, there are three urgent questions that need to be answered if the enthusiasm (and the usefulness of mindfulness in a leadership context) isn’t to dissipate....

Symphonies of birdsong play overhead as we load groceries into our car trunk. The tangy scent of earth dampened by dew fills the morning air. And even alongside highway on-ramps, flowers grow. Biomimicry expert Jane Benyus has said when she’s outside she tries to quiet her analytical mind. She listens, observes, and puts herself in the presence of nature, allowing its beauty and surprise to unfold before her. We can do the same whether we’re walking along city streets or sitting quietly in a meadow....

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Co-Director of the Greater Good Science Centre at UC Berkeley. Keltner’s book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, is published by W.W. Norton and Company.

Hilarity ensues. This scenario becomes the pretext for a full-blown satire of the mindfulness revolution. The retreat takes place in a posh estate surrounded by lush, manicured grounds. The woman leading the retreat speaks softly but wields a big passive-aggressive emotional stick that is thinly concealed. She’s better, calmer, more aware, and more woke than the messed-up women (it’s a women-only event) who wash up on her shore. And speaking of washing, participants are made to do lots of cleaning chores, and they are paying for the privilege....

Our characters were initially hostile and suspicious of each other. On set, I was the newcomer on her turf, but ironically in the show she was the newcomer coming on to my turf. The intensity of our interaction allowed me to capitalize on my initial fear and substitute it for the conflict that needed to arise between us. As our characters became more familiar with each other they grudgingly formed an alliance that served the needs of the story and gave Claire and me a chance to have some fun together....

The trick to improving our relationship with money, says Kristi Nelson, a financial and fund-raising consultant based in Hadley, Massachusetts, is to put your wallet where your values are. “Without our values—the guidelines or touchstones for how we relate every choice, every moment, to money—we become the victims in our own financial plotline,” she says. The place to start is simply to notice your own reactions to money. What drives you from the inside?...

I often see the same thing now in beginning practitioners. Many people come to mindfulness with a desire to be relieved of stress and difficulty, but only when they drop into meditation for its own sake, rather than trying to get something from it, do they find the results they were after. This makes the question of effort a little tricky. There is something to do—in order to make a discovery about the power of letting go, we have to show up, be prepared to learn, listen, and engage with the attitudes and practices suggested....

But, as writer Philip Hoggart pointed out in The Guardian today: “drug-free doesn’t mean side-effect free.” To provide some context, we wanted to throw back to our interview with researcher Willoughby Britton from last year—Britton is often quoted in the press for her research on the possible adverse effects of meditation. Her take? Meditation is not all calm and peace. It opens up a space for you to see what’s going on in your mind....

Marshall Rosenberg dedicated his life to the study and practice of the conditions that bring about peace. As a consequence, he knew well the critical, sometimes life-saving importance of emotionally-intelligent, awareness-based communication. Dr. Rosenberg drew on his own painful experiences in racially-divided Detroit and his training in psychology to develop Nonviolent Communication: a particular approach to addressing conflict that emphasizes listening with empathy, naming and expressing feelings in responsible ways, and recognizing our common humanity, even in the midst of our most difficult moments together....

Jamie’s death is a profound loss to so many people, and many of us grapple with understanding how to grieve. Her death was sudden and shocking, and in trying to make sense of something so seemingly senseless, I found myself remembering one of our last conversations. Jamie and I spoke about the vast potential of maintaining a beginner’s mind and that the essence of mindfulness is remembering this idea when we are faced with something we think we already know....

Responding to concerns about the unkind state of today’s world, the beloved children’s program dedicated its new season to the topic of kindness (that’s with the letter “K”). “We know that our world is changing, [and] parents are commenting that their children are being born into an unkind world,” says Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content for Sesame Workshop, the non-profit education company that produces the show....

Imagine meditating on something as simple as a raisin. Truly see its wrinkly beauty, smell vineyards and sunlight, caress it with your tongue, hear a slight sigh as you bite down, and taste the flood of sweet textured release. Mmm. Well, you just made love with that raisin. If you bring that level of full sensual curiosity to your sweetheart, mindfulness makes you a way better lover. After all, typical sex is the antithesis of mindful....

Silence is a rare and often unsettling experience for many of us in the technological age. When the television is not on, the computer is off, our iPod is not playing, and no one is around to speak with, we often more distinctly feel our anxiety and frustration. We hear our ever-active chattering mind creating a laundry list of to-dos or carrying on multiple conversations with people not there. We contact what Eckhart Tolle refers to as “the voice in the head....

The StarTribune wrote a piece on this study, including talking to a veteran who suffered from severe PTSD, who, in a last hope for healing, took part in the study. Mindfulness meditation is becoming an increasingly popular form of treatment for veterans with PTSD. There are various programs being created specifically designed for veterans, including adventure trips run by a San Francisco-based program, Honoring the Path of the Warrior, which provides an unusual mix of adrenaline-junkie fun and secular training in mindful breathing, acceptance, and compassion....

Thirty-five healthy women aged 40 to 59 (who eat out frequently) enrolled in the study. Researchers randomly selected about half of the women to serve as a control group, and assigned the other half to a six-week program called Mindful Restaurant Eating, a weight-gain prevention intervention that helps develop the skills needed to reduce caloric and fat intake when eating out. Though the focus of the program was on preventing weight gain in this population, not weight loss, on average the intervention group lost 3....