As a society, we’re still experiencing a deep sense of loss, both collective and individual. For some, it was the loss of a family member, a job, a stable income. For others it was the loss of graduations, birthday parties, or vacations. We lost time that can’t be replaced. We lost our normal. The grief, and sometimes the trauma of these losses cannot be healed as quickly and conveniently as we might like....
After nearly two decades of helping leaders around the world develop into conscious leaders, often while they guide their organizations through considerable change and transformation, I’ve seen that a critical characteristic of the most remarkable leaders is compassion, not only for others, but for themselves. Compassion can be a guiding force and light to get through the most challenging times. It can also create a powerful shift in organizational culture....
Find an emotion—fear, anger, jealousy—and begin by feeling it fully. (I’ll use fear as an example in the following steps. You can substitute whatever emotion you choose.) Silently say to yourself, “I am afraid.” Fully experience what it is like to say and feel “I am afraid.” Stay with this experience until you feel it completely. Now, instead of saying, “I am afraid,” take a breath and say silently to yourself, “I feel fear....
Take a moment right now to try this basic mindfulness meditation for yourself. Before you begin, adopt a posture that is both comfortable and sustainable for a few minutes, and then set a timer for three minutes. First, bring your awareness to an anchor: sensations or movement in your body, the breath, ambient sounds, counting, or even an image you found powerful or calming. Anything can be the anchor for your attention....
Daughter Time: “The time of childhood is going to go fast,” says Rick Bass, author of Where the Sea Used to Be. “I’m doing what I can to slow it down. There’s still time for me to learn some of what they see and know and feel.” Love’s Legacy Lost: A child of one economic crisis, he died on the eve of another. His gift of love was economic security for his family....
A Guided Meditation to Deepen Our Intergenerational Resilience read more Amber Tucker, Ava Whitney-Coulter, Kylee Ross, Oyinda Lagunju, and Stephanie Domet July 16, 2022 Rose Felix Cratsley December 27, 2022 Aden Van Noppen June 23, 2022
This is a common refrain when you tell people you work with the dying. To be fair, few of us feel amazing these days. We’re more careworn and stressed, standing in the shambles of our health-care system years into a pandemic. Frankly, dying is often gritty and full of suffering. At the same time, death is a powerful teacher for the living. “Death is a shift to the great unknown,” says Kelly Arora, professor and former co-director of the palliative care program at the University of Colorado Medical School....
Veenstra and his students are participating in a program called Roots of Empathy, which teaches school-age children how to identify and reflect on their own feelings and the feelings of others. The baby’s visits help the students learn about compassion. From the minute his mother brought him into the classroom, the infant zeroed in on a shy boy who rarely takes part in class. “As the mom carried him around the circle,” Veenstra remembers, “the baby was turning and craning his neck to make eye contact with that student....
Having interviewed 70 business leaders, Bryant identified five such qualities – all of which resonate with a mindful approach to business — that all these leaders shared: “Passionate curiosity, battle-hardened confidence, team smarts, a simple mind-set, and fearlessness.” See Bryant’s article here. And for more on mindful leadership and mindfulness in the workplace: Mindfulness as a Tool for Organizational and Social Change Mindfulness, Work, and You! Finding the Space to Lead
These phrases point to a mental state that we’re all craving some relief from. And yet many of us seem strangely attracted to it. In fact, busyness is often presented as a modern-day status symbol. We tell ourselves that we don’t want to be so busy. But we’re also unwilling to make the changes to become significantly less busy. And some of us even have judgments about people who aren’t as busy — perhaps that those who don’t have full calendars are lazy or lonely (after all, who wants to miss out on the action?...
In this 12-minute relaxation, mindfulness, and gratitude practice, we’ll begin by deliberately engaging in a practice of the breath that may offer a little bit more stability and tranquility for when we transition to a more traditional mindfulness practice. For example, when focusing our attention on an object like the breath and when noticing our mind wandering from that object, we can gently return or remember the breath, and we’re able to do so with a little bit more engaged attentiveness and sustained capacity to stay with the object of our attention....
Results from a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association show that primary care physicians who participated in a year-long course on mindfulness became less burned out, less emotionally exhausted, and more empathetic toward patients. Seventy physicians enrolled and participated in the four components of the course—mindfulness meditation; writing sessions; discussions; and lectures on topics like managing conflict, setting boundaries and self-care. For more on this, read the article in The New York Times....
This is where practices like the body scan can help—is that tight chest a symptom of serious illness, or is it more likely anxiety? Anxiety usually passes pretty quickly, while symptoms of illness can last for days. In shorter moments in the day, we might not have the time away from family or work for a forty-minute body scan, or even if we had time, anxiety can really cut into our ability to pay attention....
Past hurts and emotional triggers have a way of keeping us stuck. It can be difficult not to ruminate on negative thoughts. Pixel Thoughts asks you to write down what’s bothering you into a large star in the center of the screen. The star begins to slowly fade away as the website prompts you to take a deep breath and reassures you that everything is okay and “life is much grander than this thought....
The other three categories in the section are Spiritual Development, Forgiveness, and Wisdom. Posts in the mindfulness section feature such writers as Susan Kaiser Greenland, Dan Goleman and Rick Hanson. One post, by Kaiser Greenland, author of The Mindful Child, deals with the concept of “Sympathetic Joy.” She talks about a YouTube video of Paul Simon modeling how: “Genuine happiness comes from a responsive (not reactive) mindset, one where life is not viewed as a zero sum game....
Before publishing this piece, I reached out for comment to a variety of people of color who do mindfulness work. To a person, they thought the piece presented information that it was valuable for us all to take into account. They also suggested that we need to continually present pieces that also emphasize the means to counteract bias and its very harmful effects. At the end of the piece, I include a synopsis of some of their comments....
Lie down on your back. Let your legs and your arms relax and fall to the sides. Settle yourself in a comfort-able position and close your eyes. Start by taking two or three gentle, large breaths. Pay attention to how that feels. Your belly rises and falls. Air moves in and out of your body. If you like, place a hand on your belly and feel it move with each breath....
And yet, the moment I clicked the dishwasher door open—“MOM!!” I headed down the hall and stuck my head into her room—“Yes?” “Could I have a snack?” I grabbed her a snack and strolled back down the hall to deliver it, making a mental note to put the snacks lower where she can reach them. If the hallway had better lighting, I’m sure you’d be able to see the tracks from our frequent travels back and forth to Opal’s room....
