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Meeting the teacher from Hagerstown, and others like her, told me that mindfulness is reaching beyond the big cities now and into the towns and villages, and it’s being delivered by people who care a lot about the health and well-being of our communities—in every dimension: bodily health, mental health, education, social cohesion, and more. At Mindful magazine and in mindful.org, it’s our mission to present mindfulness, awareness, kindness, and compassion to a wider audience, and we’ve been hard at work doing that....

Beauty contributes indirectly. If we need a vision for a sustainable future then we need a lot of people to contribute their own ideas and energy to forming and realizing that vision. If we are to attract the energy of millions of people to the task, then we must start with beauty in the frame. I was in Germany and Poland during the spring of 1994, about five years after capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany were reunified....

“We will provide a great service if we can help teachers apply mindfulness to their emotions in the intense classroom environment,” said Patricia Jennings, director of the Garrison Institute’s Initiative on Contemplation and Education and a research associate in the Prevention Research Center at Pennsylvania State University. “If teachers can notice the emotion within their body, they can stop and make choices. Instead of seeing children with challenging behavior as problems, they can experience them as suffering human beings who need compassion....

The Tech Effect It starts with child development. Studies show that under-monitored screen time potentially disrupts attention, behavior, language, and academics. For teens and adults, smartphones ping and buzz all day and night. Research suggests that being reachable 24/7 escalates stress, interrupts social interaction, and impacts productivity. One study showed the mere presence of phones visible on the table disrupts conversation. Social media, for all its potential benefits, has been linked to decreased well-being, increased depression, and escalated jealousy....

All the dictionary definitions of this phrase are negative: “shirking work or responsibility,” “to waste time.” But to me, goofing off simply means activity with no redeeming value—it satisfies no “should.” You do it without excuses; there is no justification. Goofing off like this is harder than it sounds because it means acting without a goal, without thought of gain. Doing your cardio workout doesn’t count. Real goofing off may provoke reactions in others—a little censure, even envy—precisely because it is hard for us to do....

That led to a new career as a nationally recognized teacher of mindfulness meditation. Along the way, inspired by the work he’d done as an advisor to business leaders, Moffitt founded what’s now called the Institute of Change and Transition, where he and his team train individuals and groups how to tap into their personal values and make major transformations in their lives. I met up with Moffitt recently at his office in Belvedere, California, to discuss the art of reinventing your life from the inside out....

In this video from the PBS science series BrainCraft, creator and host Vanessa Hill explains where jealousy comes from and what we can do to work with this difficult emotion. Why Do I Feel So Jealous? Jealousy often arises when we sense a threat to a relationship, says Hill. As children, we grow jealous of our siblings when they gain our parent’s attention. As adults, we may feel jealous of a new person who captures the interest of our friend or partner....

Do you enjoy being alone? What do you do when you’re by yourself that you wouldn’t do with company? “Raid the fridge and watch trashy TV.” “Talk to myself.” “Kayak.” “Work in my garden and flower beds, walk my dogs, and play with my cats.” “Most of my work is solitary.” “I meditate, do yoga, and curl up to read a great book.” “Cook something wonderful and eat it!” “Wear only my underwear....

Do you have a nightly routine? 42% don’t follow any routine, 39% follow theirs to a T, 15% lie awake in bed wondering why they’re not sleeping yet, and 4% turn off all screens by 8:00 (so disciplined!). What’s your ideal sleeping situation? 64% chose a king-size bed in a luxury hotel, 20% chose the soft sand on the beach, a warm breeze rocking them to sleep (warning: grit in bad places), 10% could sleep on a bed of rocks if they had to, and 6% were adventurous, choosing a tent in the wilderness....

I’m talkin’ no cell phone, no Wi-Fi alone. When was the last time you were by yourself and didn’t try to sweeten, avoid, or supercharge the moment? Were you fearful, anxious, or hungry for something more? We are awash in studies telling us that we need each other to survive and to be happy. And it’s true, we do. But when we lose the ability to be alone with ourselves, our overstimulated nervous systems suffer from no place to rest and recharge....

It’s time once again for our favorite year-end ritual here at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center: Our annual list of the top scientific insights produced by the study of happiness, altruism, mindfulness, gratitude—what we call “the science of a meaningful life.” We found that this year, the science of a meaningful life yielded many new insights about the relationship between our inner and outer lives. Cultivating mindfulness can make us more aware of knee-jerk prejudice against people who are different from us; believing that empathy is a skill helps overcome barriers to taking another person’s perspective; concern for others, even for animals, can move people to action for the greater good more quickly than focusing on ourselves....

Mark Coleman • New World Library Longtime meditation teacher and naturalist Mark Coleman—author of Make Peace with Your Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Your Inner Critic and Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery, among others—is at pains to demonstrate in his new book that mindfulness is definitely, incontrovertibly not about finding an escape from the pain we find in the midst of everyday life....

But we don’t tend to be rational about these matters. Instead, not only do we suffer, we feel isolated and alone in our suffering. When we remember that pain is part of the shared human experience, however, every moment of suffering is transformed into a moment of connection with others. The pain I feel in difficult times is the same pain you feel in difficult times. The circumstances are different, the degree of pain is different, but the basic experience of human suffering is the same....

Respond with Calm Anxious feelings often provoke us to act in habitual ways. For example, when you’re anxious you may find yourself chewing on your nails or lashing out at close friends. By practicing mindfulness, you can bring awareness to your experience and respond, rather than react, to the moment at hand. This meditation helps you open up, so you can choose whether to engage in a habitual action or simply stay with your feelings....

On stage—50 years into his career—Mason, who says, “Rock and roll is not an age, it’s an attitude,” is still a hard-driving rocker. In person, he’s a warm, direct, personable guy. He’s also a guy with a cause. Mason is concerned about soldiers who come back from war, having given some of their best years to their country, only to fall into a life of disappointment, despair, underemployment, and unemployment....

For more information about the film, friend Underneath the Surface on Facebook. The film is a work in progress and is looking for funding so your attention will certainly be appreciated. And click here to learn about and register for Creating a Mindful Society, the conference taking this fall in New York, featuring Jon Kabat-Zinn and many other pioneers of mindfulness as it applies to every aspect of our lives....

Mindful: Why is the relationship between teens and technology so precarious at times? Tristan Gorrindo: It’s kind of like having a new dance partner. With any new partner, you’re learning to dance and you’re invariably going to be stepping on each other’s toes. That’s the same thing with technology and teen development. The two are going to interact in ways that are going to cause problems and raise lots of questions, but that should be the expectation, right?...

I’m at Gilgo Beach on Long Island. The early morning sun is shining off the ocean, and as soon as I arrive I see a group of my friends out in the water. I quickly wax my board and paddle out to say hi. We’re laughing, joking, and goofing around. As I catch a wave, I see a friend to my left and another to my right. With a big splash, we jump off at the end of our ride....

An exasperated out breath, for example, may signal that we’re experiencing stress or processing trauma. Jasmine Marie is founder of Black Girls Breathing, which aims to create a safe space for Black women to manage their mental health through breathwork and community. She often includes a strong out-breath, “a forced sigh,” as part of the breathwork she teaches. A sigh is how we communicate to others that something’s off or wrong, she says....

For 25 years, I and other social scientists have documented how feeling powerful can change how ordinary citizens behave—what might be called the banality of the abuses of power. But my research into the social psychology of power suggests that—without exculpating corrupt individuals—we also need to take a hard look at the social systems in which they commit their abuses. In experiments in which one group of people is randomly assigned to a condition of power, people in the “powerful” group are prone to two shortcomings: They develop empathy deficits and are less able to read others’ emotions and take others’ perspectives....