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For more information, or to register, click here. For more about Google and Meng, read Google Searches and Search Inside Yourself here on Mindful.org.

It’s too sad. Keltner and Ekman in The New York Times: Keltner and Ekman applaud the film for portraying a few major insights from the science of emotion—mainly, that “emotions organize—rather than disrupt—rational thinking” and they also organize our social lives. well as our social lives. But the quibble over sadness is no small one. Downplaying sadness often makes its way into conversations about well-being and meditation: should we be meditating to become more happier, blissed-out individuals, and leave “negative” emotions in the back seat?...

I thought meditation would calm me down (e.g. when trapped behind slow walkers, I would not want to throw them into oncoming traffic), deepen my understanding of the world (e.g. Sarah Palin’s popularity would immediately become clear), and make me a better person (e.g. when my mother announced that I should have married my college boyfriend…again, I’d smile and immediately know her intentions were pure). I soon came to realize all of these beliefs are false....

In Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness, author Melissa Dahl, co-founder of NYMag.com’s social science site Science of Us, explores the origins of why we cringe, and how we can break free from anxiety caused by awkwardness. In this video for Bigthink, Dahl draws a link back to 1960s research where people received electric shocks — the study concluded that participants preferred knowing when they would receive a shock instead of not knowing....

In her new book, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias, Dolly Chugh explains why people committed to social inclusion can still suffer from unconscious biases that keep them from achieving their ideals. Through storytelling and a thorough review of the science, Chugh provides us with tips for recognizing bias and reducing its effects in ourselves and our workplaces. According to Chugh, noticing differences between people is a natural part of being a human being....

“Increasingly, students just don’t know how to deal with boredom, loneliness, and unpleasant feelings,” says Doug Worthen, director of mindfulness programs at Middlesex School, an independent day and boarding school in Concord, Massachusetts. Many educators blame the long hours spent on screens for fractured attention levels, lack of impulse control, and heightened levels of depression and anxiety. Teens are also losing their ability to navigate nuanced and complex interpersonal human interactions, says Adam Ortman, head of mindfulness at St....

What are inner resources and what is mindful living? Can inner resources be purchased? Or are they things that can be uncovered that are already inside ourselves. Watch the video to be guided through two exercises that explore these questions through the lens of practice and see what you discover. To explore exactly what is going on with our attention when we practice, please read “Unpacking the 3-Minute Breathing Space....

It wasn’t. Later we found ourselves in a group together, and she “jokingly” asked why I was being such a prude. At that point, I realized she was already pretty tipsy (as was most everybody), and this situation was starting to feel like a threat to my recovery. I didn’t think I’d give in, but I didn’t feel safe, and it didn’t feel healthy for me to continue to engage with her....

Every one of us can cultivate, train, and naturalize these four qualities, in the same way that attention can be trained and developed. In the face of great distress, though, befriending, compassion, joy, and equanimity can disappear just when they are most needed. Today, we’re going to focus on the second of these qualities: compassion. What Does It Mean to Grow Our Compassion? Like all capacities, our capacity for compassion grows when we tend to it and nourish it....

3 Loving-Kindness Meditations for Beginners 1) Directing Compassion Toward Ourselves Most of the time, we’re our own harshest critics. We strive to hide our flaws and mistakes so we can project a perfect image into the world. With this practice, we choose to instead bring compassion to our imperfections. This shift helps us grow more comfortable with the human difficulties we’ve been desperately trying to avoid—a radical shift that also uncovers the opportunity to develop our inner wisdom and equanimity....

Okay, hold your eye-rolling, but just for a moment. The company did some homework and teamed up with Gunilla Lönnberg, a mindfulness teacher, to develop an accompanying relaxation system called “Clean Your Mind.” The 30-minute recording includes ambient sounds intended to “harmonize” with the vacuum—like the sounds of the the power button clicking on and off. The guided instruction component sounds like a regular body scan—except for particular instructions for praciticing while holding a vacuum (i....

Co-operation A wise teacher was asked: “What’s the secret to your happiness?” The reply came back: “A wholehearted cooperation with the unavoidable.” When the present moment is boring, irritating, frightening, or painful, we may not want to co-operate. We may fear it will feel like resignation or self-betrayal, or that we’ll be overwhelmed. But when we can’t change much about our situation, we can change our approach to it. The word co-operate means “to work with,” and this requires alignment....

On a recent meditation retreat, I asked assembled students to share their favorite “evasive maneuvers” from the present moment, the ways we all hide out from having to be here with the direct simplicity of right now. People said all kinds of funny and not so funny things. In a discussion group later in the weekend, one student wondered why nobody had brought up Twitter and Facebook. Another student joked “Ethan asked us what our individual evasive maneuvers were, not our shared ones....

The speakers will include a variety of professionals and mindfulness teachers, including world-renowned neuroscientist Richie Davidson, author and psychologist Daniel Goleman, and others (see the full list). To get an idea of what the conference is about you can read a piece by Daniel Goleman on why a relaxed brain is a productive brain. To learn more about the conference, click here. If an organization you know might be interested in sending a group of their employees to attend, they should contact the GGSC’s Elise Proulx, at [email protected], to learn about group packages and sponsorship deals....

How Mindfulness Plays a Role in Sleep Many healthcare workers are under more stress now than ever. While previous studies have examined the role mindfulness may play in helping us get a better sleep, in this case, researchers at the University of South Florida asked the opposite question: They wanted to see if medical staffers’ quality of sleep might be linked to how well they paid attention. To do so, they monitored the sleep habits of 61 full-time nurses for two consecutive weeks....

One approach that serves us well in this context is the SoBe Mindful method. It makes mindfulness highly accessible by drawing upon familiar aspects of the natural world around us. Just as this method lets us ground ourselves by connecting with nature—especially amid a pandemic, when so many of us have been staying indoors—it opens a doorway to practicing with loved ones and is adaptable for all ages and needs....

Even if I am having a meltdown, am falling apart, am going ballistic or retreating into a collapsed isolation, I can remember that I am a human being, and that all human beings have similar reactions to life’s disappointments, difficulties, and even disasters. I can hold myself with compassion and care, finding the courageous action I need to meet the current challenges or crises. Many mindfulness practices use the wisdom of our bodies to return us to a state of ease and calm, no matter the cause of disruption to our well-being—allowing us to hold, to accept, and to work with anything at all....

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