Mindful Magazine December 2022 - The Power of Gratitude

MINDFULNESS • THE SELF-LOVE ISSUE

THE POWER OF

Gratitude +

H OW TO H O LD BO U N DA R I E S W I T H SK I LL A N D C A R E

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M E D I TAT I O N S TO TA P I N TO YO U R OW N W I SDO M CH A N G E YO U R LI FE BY LOV I N G YO U RSE LF FI N D C A LM W I T H M I N D FU L J O U R N A LI N G

DECEMBER 2022 mindful.org

WHY WE TALK TO OURSELVES The science of your internal monologue

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CONTENTS THE SELF-LOVE ISSUE

10 MEDITATIONS TO TAP INTO WISDOM 12 Rest and Reset 21 Pause with Purpose 23 Give Thanks 36 Try Belly Breathing 46 Thank Your Body 47 Connect to Life 48 Awaken Flow in Nature 49 Counteract Resentment 50 Embody Gratitude

PHOTO BY SANTI NUÑEZ / STOCKSY. COVER PHOTO BY MARESA SMITH / STOCKSY

63 Explore Haiku

Start With Self-Love

Learning to truly love yourself is the work of a lifetime. The founders of the Holistic Life Foundation, Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez, illuminate a clear path to self-love—and it begins with the breath.

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contents

Loving Yourself Changes Everything Learning to take care of your heart, to accept the pain that comes with seeing the people you love suffer, and to be okay with suffering yourself, is the true work of self-love.

42

Gratitude for the Lousy Ingrate Feeling thanks-less? Stephanie Domet explores a different path to the many benefits of gratitude practice.

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How to Hold Boundaries with Skill and Care

28

Why We Talk to Ourselves: The Science of Your Internal Monologue

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Change Your Life by Loving Yourself

42

The Power of Gratitude

54

Find Calm with Mindful Journaling

STORIES

18 Work

The Six Seconds In Between

22 Inner Wisdom

Thanks for That

24 Health

The Kindest Boundary

28 Brain Science

Why We Talk to Ourselves EVERY ISSUE

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Finding Yourself on the Page Mindful writing can take you on a voyage of inner discovery, with Caren Osten Gerszberg as your tour guide.

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4 From the Editor 7 In Your Words 8 Top of Mind 16 Mindful–Mindless 64 Bookmark This 72 Point of View with Barry Boyce

VOLUME TEN, NUMBER 5, Mindful (ISSN 2169-5733, USPS 010-500) is published bimonthly for $29.95 per year USA, $39.95 Canada & $49.95 (US) international, by Mindful Communications & Such, PBC, 515 N State Street, Suite 300, Chicago IL. 60654 USA. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Mindful, PO Box 257, Lincolnshire, IL 60069-0257. Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement #42704514. CANADIAN POSTMASTER: Send undeliverable copies to Mindful, 5765 May St, Halifax, NS B3K 1R6 CANADA. Printed in U.S.A. © 2022 Mindful Communications & Such, PBC. All rights reserved.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BONNINSTUDIO / STOCKSY, ILLUSTRATION BY DEDRAW STUDIO / ADOBESTOCK, TANYAJOY / ADOBESTOCK

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On the Cover

from the editor

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coaching Everyone deserves a coach who believes in them.

Sign up for Mindful’s new one-on-one live coaching program and discover what’s true for you. Developed in collaboration with leading neuroscientists, we’ve created a customized, one-on-one coaching experience to help you develop tangible, easy-to-apply habits that are tailored for your individual life.

Learn more at coaching.mindful.org Heather Hurlock is the editor-in-chief of Mindful magazine and mindful.org. She’s a longtime editor, musician, and meditator with deep roots in service journalism. Connect with Heather at heather.hurlock@mindful.org.

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Every now and then, and less often than appropriate, I realize how grateful I am to help produce this beautiful magazine. I’ve been on a healing journey most of my life.

It’s been messy. And clarifying. And hard. I joke with my friends that I make the magazine that I need to read at the moment, but that’s not far from the truth.

It’s my privilege to humbly call in a community of big, wise hearts—who are out there in the world, illuminating the edges of where the practice of mindfulness meets the sharp points of broken systems and battered spirits—and ask them questions about what they’re learning right now, so we can all learn it, too.

As the founders of the Holistic Life Foundation say on page 41, “Learning to love yourself is the work of a lifetime.” That’s not a call to pamper yourself as a distraction from the hard moments of your life. Self-love means learning how to meet the pain of the world with kindness and with healthy boundaries. It means standing in the fire of your own suffering, and of those you care about, with an open heart. It means calling in your community for support.

One of the most alchemical forces in the world that brings balance to our suffering is gratitude. Not the kind of gratitude that compares your suffering to someone else’s in order to feel better—like being grateful you have food on the table when others don’t. But the kind of gratitude that reminds you that you carry generations’ worth of wisdom inside—and when you remember, you help others remember, too. The kind of embodied gratitude that resounds from within, proclaiming: You are not separate from the suffering of others. The kind of gratitude that builds communities of authentic care, because, as bell hooks reminded us, “Healing is an act of communion.”

And gratitude is the glue.

This magazine you hold in your hands made it through the pandemic, just like you. It’s still alive and being shared from hand to hand, thanks to the hearts and minds of our staff here at Mindful, thanks to our teachers who share their stories and wisdom, and thanks to our readers (that’s you).

It is with deep appreciation for you (and your healing journey) that I gently call on you to share your gifts, your unique wisdom, your beautifully imperfect aliveness, with those around you.

With love and gratitude,

PHOTOGRAPH BY CLAIRE ROSEN

Calling You In

WORKING WITH PAIN Mindfulness practices and insights for pain relief

WITH CHRISTIANE WOLF

EXCLUSIVE COURSE!

MD, PH.D.

A gentle, science-backed approach to connecting with, understanding, and working with your experience of physical pain.

LEARN MORE

mindful.org/pain-course

Healthy Mind, Healthy Life

Welcome to

We are dedicated to inspiring and guiding anyone who wants to explore mindfulness to enjoy better health, more caring relationships, and a more compassionate society.

By reading Mindful and sharing it with others, you’re helping to bring mindfulness practices into the world where the benefits can be enjoyed by all.

Thank you!

mindful magazine • mindful.org Editor-in-Chief Heather Hurlock heather.hurlock@mindful.org

Creative Director Jessica von Handorf jessica.vonhandorf@mindful.org

Senior Editors Kylee Ross Amber Tucker

Associate Art Directors Spencer Creelman Paige Sawler

Associate Editor Ava Whitney-Coulter

Founding Editor Barry Boyce

Contributing Editor Stephanie Domet

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in your words

Attitude of Gratitude Mindful readers share what they appreciate and how they show it.

What’s one thing about yourself that you’re grateful for?

What’s one thing you tend to under-appreciate?

Definitely my resilience.

I get knocked down, but I get up again!

Time

sherwalt1 My capacity to hold loving and kind space for others and my willingness to continuously move toward self-acceptance and self-love. That I can see beauty and be grateful even through challenging moments. I love my divine beautiful heart.

Health, fitness, family, friends, the list goes on...

pathtoessence

ArcheeDebunker

Sleep

Life is a gift and I’m grateful for this gift!

rachelatri Myself. I don't give myself enough credit and recognition. chelseanarsenault

How do you express gratitude?

vioroz01 My capacity to forgive (and my ability to not only see but to genuinely feel joy from the myriad of life’s everyday, perhaps even ordinary, offerings). reticent.grace

What are you most grateful for today?

income_yogi Family and life. andreas_diago

What does gratitude look like to you?

Being in the present moment and appreciating what I have.

42%

WITH ACTIONS

54% WITH WORDS

pathtoessence If you have an attitude of gratitude each day your life gets better and better. yasmin.carroll.92

Next Question…

How do you practice mindfulness off the meditation cushion?

Send an email to yourwords@mindful.org and let us know your answer to this question. Your response could appear on these pages.

4%

WITH GIFTS

Sitting in silence with my thoughts. kennethlbourne

→ @georgina.ventures reminds us that gratitude isn't only about what's around us. We can also notice and appreciate the good inside ourselves.

↑ @houseofnida_ offers words of wisdom.

↓ @intendedwell shares a moment of self-care with the August issue!

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Sheila Kinkade, advancement strategist for Mind & Life. The site features essays by Richard Davidson, Rhonda Magee, Judson Brewer, Sona Dimidjian, and many other luminaries, with powerful artwork and Mind & Life podcasts and video, “to both educate readers and inspire action toward a world that truly embraces our shared humanity,” says Kinkade. Dive in at mindandlife. org/insights.

TOP OF

mind Keep up with the latest in the world of mindfulness.

GROW WILD Since the 1940s, bird, insect, and small-mammal populations have been in decline, partly due to modern-day farming practices, but

a new study shows that farmers can reverse these effects by dedicating small areas of unproductive land to create wildlifefriendly habitats— and that,

in turn, creates thriving crops.

Researchers at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology monitored for a decade the impact of 1 km x 1 km wildlife habitats on Hillesden Estate, a 1,000-hectare commercial farm.

The authors of the study saw dramatic increases in species of seed-eating

birds and butterflies, which increased pollination and natural pest control, ultimately increasing crop yield. Marek Nowakowski of the Wildlife Farming Company says, “The Hillesden study shows that it is possible to balance wildlife conservation with efficient food production.”

NEW INSIGHTS For anyone who (like us) can’t get enough of the science and wisdom of personal and

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collective wellbeing, here’s a new gem to explore.

In fall 2022, Mind & Life Institute launched Insights: Journey Into the Heart of Contemplative Science, a multimedia website sharing key insights catalyzed through their work over 35 years. “We have an important story to tell about the evolution of the field of contemplative science—and the relevance of the knowledge generated for addressing the unprecedented challenges of our time,” explains

Many libraries host programs where children can read stories to therapy dogs—at least one study has shown this can help to boost the confidence and skills of reluctant readers. Recently, Kerri Lanzieri put a new spin on this formula at her library in Greenville, Rhode Island: For the Mindful Mutts program, children could sign up to read books about stress reduction, practice deep breathing, or demonstrate yoga poses to Lanzieri’s therapy-trained King Charles Cavalier, Gillette. Lanzieri, an

PHOTOGRAPH BY ЮЛИЯ ЗАВАЛИШИНА / ADOBESTOCK, AARN GIRI / UNSPLASH

DOWNWARDFACING DOGS

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elementary school social worker and children’s book author, told the Valley Breeze, “The end goal is to master and show their families mindful strategies needed in life now and later.”

ILLUSTRATION BY AMAVEINDESIGN / ADOBESTOCK, SPENCER CREELMAN

KIN TO IT Shayla OuletteStonechild of Muscowpetung Saulteaux First Nation takes inspiration from the Cree word “wahkohtowin, which means kinship,” she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). OuletteStonechild’s online wellness platform the Matriarch Movement helped her win an Indspire Award this year (“the highest honor the Indigenous community bestows upon its own people,” says Indspire’s website) for her dedication to Indigenous representation and wellness. OuletteStonechild adds that wahkohtowin “reflects on an individual’s responsibilities and relationship to the systems

they’re a part of— realizing we have a set of obligations, accountability, and responsibility to one’s role within our own communities.”

FLOWER POWER Those traveling by car into Long Newnton, a village in Gloucestershire, may not be stopping to smell the roses, but they seem to be slowing to appreciate the wildflowers. Village council recently planted wildflowers along the road that leads into the village—on which, their data shows, about 90% of cars move faster than the speed limit.

They intended the wildflowers to aid biodiversity in the area, and soon noticed drivers were slowing to appreciate them.

They’ll now use funding from the UK government to care for the flowers over the next three years, and to use the data from their roadside speed sensor to evaluate the impact of the flowers on speeding drivers.

CALL FOR HELP Somewhere between the ten digits of the National Suicide Prevention hotline, and the three digits of 911, lies a gap in which someone who needs mental health help might fall. One study found that people in a mental health crisis are 16 times more likely to be killed in an interaction with police than people who are not.

The Substances Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has launched a new hotline, 988, to connect people in crisis to resources they need. The hotline replaces the National Suicide Prevention number, which fielded 3.6 million calls and chats in 2020. Officials say the hotline will better serve Black, brown, and Indigenous people, who face more disparities in accessing health care, and LGBTQ youth, who are more at risk for dying by suicide than others.

ACTS OF kindness

by AVA WHITNEY-COULTER

SEW KIND

In celebration of an Ontario quilt shop’s fifth birthday, quilters across Canada are sewing blankets for women transitioning out of homelessness. “Quilts symbolize warmth.

They’re like a big hug,” Michaelanne Hathaway, owner of Stache Fabric & Notions, told CBC. The quilts will be given to the women as housewarming gifts.

HEALING SPACE

Late-stage colorectal cancer patient Aaron Banfield used some of his remaining time to turn an underused hospital chapel into a welcoming, neutral space that supports connection

and mindfulness.

“Anyone that has spent time in a hospital knows you get into a limbostate,” he said. His hope for the space is that it will facilitate psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being for patients at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in British Columbia, where Banfield himself spent time.

ON TRACK

When Diane Akers’ train to Norwich, England, halted because of an injured giant tortoise on the tracks, she tweeted to alert the Greater Anglia train company, and local officials. It turns out, Clyde the tortoise escaped from his cage at a pet store nearby, likely searching for female companionship. He was quickly located and taken to a vet to recover.

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Research News

by B. GRACE BULLOCK

Research gathered from the University of Rochester, Yonsei University College, and University of Innsbruck.

GET SMART Researchers at the University of Innsbruck in Austria wanted to study how different meditation styles would affect automatic behaviors.

They randomly assigned 73 adults to one of four groups for internally focused meditation, externally focused meditation, open monitoring meditation, or a waitlist control group. All meditation group participants were asked to attend two sessions per week of roughly 30 minutes each for four weeks.

The internal meditation group focused on

sensations related to breathing. The external meditation group paid attention to a candle flame. The open monitoring group observed sensations that arose while meditating. Before and after the fourweek interval, all participants completed two cognitive tasks testing their ability to pay attention and to select an appropriate response. In general, those in the meditation groups were more accurate in their responses and better able to inhibit their automatic behaviors than those in the control group.

This was particularly true for the open monitoring group, suggesting open monitoring may help reduce the tendency to overrely on habitual behaviors.

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ANGER QUELLER The effects of a mindfulnessbased anger management intervention were examined by researchers at the Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine in South Korea. Sixtytwo unmarried young men, half of whom scored very high in self-reported anger and half who scored very low in anger, engaged in two virtual-reality tasks involving conflict with a friend and with a stranger.

Each scenario was repeated twice. During the first attempt, participants were encouraged to express their

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anger. In the second, they received instruction in how to modulate their anger and attempt to resolve the conflict. Their degree of anger in each scenario was rated. They then completed two mindfulness training modules—they viewed a guided mindful breathing and relaxation video at home and listened to guided audio asking them to breathe calmly and look out the window while in a crowded

at home and in the subway following mindfulness practice.

LESS STRESS To test whether or not your mindset can enhance your stress resilience, researchers at the University of Rochester conducted six experiments with a total of 4,291 students

ILLUSTRATION BY SPENCER CREELMAN

Open monitoring may help reduce the tendency to overrely on habitual behaviors.

subway. Their level of comfort was assessed before and after each task. Findings suggest that individuals in both the highand low-anger groups showed reduced anger following guided anger management instruction.

They also reported feeling generally more comfortable

in grades 8-12 and college undergraduates. In each, participants were randomly assigned to either a 30-minute selfdirected synergistic mindsets group, or a control group (also 30 minutes and self-directed).

The intervention—the synergistic mindsets group—focused

on two types: Growth mindset, which rests on the assumption that challenges help foster enhanced intelligence, and “stress-canbe-enhancing mindset,” which teaches how to harness the stress response to tackle challenges. Both mindsets require an individual to be mindfully aware of the link between their thoughts and their experience of stress.

After the intervention, the synergistic mindsets group showed improved physiological responses to stress, including a quicker return to a non-stressed state after a challenge. This group also reported feeling more empowered and less anxious, disconnected, and rejected, and were more likely to pass challenging courses than the control group.

Researchers caution that this approach would not be suitable for those coping with trauma, abuse, or structural inequities.

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BEGINNER’S MIND Q&A

REST AND RESET I’ve been feeling a little world-weary and tired, and I’m looking for a way to restore. How can my mindfulness practice support me right now?

The simple practice of pausing and resting in awareness can bring about a great sense of restoration and renewal.

Take a few moments to feel what it means to be alive in your body right now. Notice your body and ask yourself: How is my body expressing its aliveness in this moment?

Here’s a simple practice: Allow your attention to lightly rest on the sensations of your body touching whatever is supporting it. Maybe it’s the floor, a cushion, a bed, or a couch. Feel your body being supported by whatever is under you. This is my body resting, supported by what’s under me at this moment, and I’m grateful.

Invite your body to rest in the feeling of the space around the body. Allow your attention to rest on your skin and with each exhale,

A

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let your attention begin to expand out beyond the skin, just going out a few inches around the skin, resting in this space. Imagine that, with every exhalation, you begin to sense your body being held by the vastness of the space surrounding the body.

For a few moments, allow your attention to rest in the space around your body. Breathing in, feel your body held in kind awareness.

Breathing out, be grateful for the space around your body.

Allow your body to relax.

Place a hand on your heart, feeling a sense of gratitude and appreciation for your body, the space around your body, and this moment of resting. And remember that gratitude for the body is one way we can always reconnect with this sense of rest, presence, and ease.

Rashid Hughes is a writer, meditation teacher, yoga instructor, kung fu practitioner, and a restorative justice facilitator. He is cofounder of the Heart Refuge Mindfulness Community, a mindfulness community dedicated to inspiring Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to live with love and courage.

He is the creator of a contemplative practice and acronym called R.E.S.T. A Practice for the Tired & Weary. Most recently, Rashid was selected to be a fellow of the Garrison Institute.

PHOTOGRAPH BY EUGENIU / ADOBESTOCK

Q

top of mind VOICES RISING • VIDYAMALA BURCH

“

Learning to Love and Be Loved

by AVA WHITNEY-COULTER

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY VIDYAMALA BURCH

Rather than feeling like this pain is just ruining my life, it’s more like this pain has opened a door for me to work with my mind and my heart.

Vidyamala Burch was 25 when she first practiced mindfulness. Two years earlier, she had been in a car crash that caused the second spinal fracture she had experienced within 10 years. At 25, after a physical breakdown from pushing herself too hard, she was back in the hospital.

“It was a total dark night of the soul,” she says. “I got obsessed with getting through until morning.”

She told herself, “You just have to live this moment, and this one, and this one,” and moment by moment, she reached the morning.

“I was one person before that and I’ve been another person since.”

With no way to fix her spine or stop her pain, the physicians sent a hospital chaplain who led Burch

in a meditation. He asked her to recall a time and place where she felt happy, and she thought of a time before her injuries when she climbed the Southern Alps of New Zealand. “I went from feeling lost and desperate to feeling connected to these very happy, beautiful times,” she says.

After leaving the hospital, she asked a social worker for some meditation cassette tapes (this was 1985) and she taught herself to meditate. Eventually she traveled to England to live at a retreat center for five years, where, she says, “I learned to soften and feel some of the grief and the sorrow—I learned to love and be loved.”

For people living with chronic pain, “Mindfulness is not some kind of

optional extra to make life a bit easier,” she says. Instead mindfulness is about a very significant choice: “Are you going to have pain and be mentally tortured, or are you going to have pain and have a little bit more mental and emotional ease?” In answering this question for herself, Burch found her purpose.

Today, Burch is the cofounder of Breathworks, a UK-based charity that developed from courses she began to lead in 2000 offering mindfulness and compassion training for people living with chronic pain, illness, and stress. In 2022 Burch was awarded an OBE by the Queen for her service. “This is no longer a fringe-y thing, it’s a recognized healthcare intervention.” Burch works every day to help those with chronic pain find peace.

“Rather than feeling like this pain is just ruining my life,” says Burch, “it’s more like this pain has opened a door for me to work with my mind and my heart, and then I can offer that to others.”

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SOMETIMES THE MOST IMPORTANT GIFTS ARE THOSE YOU GIVE TO YOURSELF.

Find your voice, reconnect within, and set healthy boundaries with beloved therapist and bestselling author Nedra Tawwab.

TECH WITH

Heart These new apps have wellness and inclusion woven into their development and aim to help us connect with others and with ourselves without sacrificing our privacy or principles.

Available wherever books are sold.

Learn more at prh.com/boundaries 14 mindful December 2022

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Blackfullness With the new app Blackfullness, founders Sonia Russell and David Walker aim to highlight the ways African Americans are already practicing mindfulness—though they may not call it or think of it as such. The app welcomes users into regular and customizable practice, where Black folks can experience the benefits of stress reduction and awareness. “​​It’s the love we have for humanity that is really driving us,” Walker told The Root.

ILLUSTRATION BY TOVOVAN / VECTEEZY

Marco Polo In recent years, social media users have been surprised with reports about the collection and selling of their data by platforms like Facebook.

Video-based social media app Marco Polo offers an alternative. “We do not run third-party ads because our community of Marco Polo members is our customers, and that’s who we work to support,” says Vlada Bortnik, the company founder. Users send private video messages to friends and family, and people can reply when it’s convenient for them, helping loved ones connect without sharing their personal information.

Morale Most of us have bemoaned the negativity that thrives on social media at one point or another. A new app on the market aims to be the antidote. With the Morale app, users send anonymous positive affirmations to a customized network of friends.

Backed by science that shows that giving a compliment boosts the mood of both the giver and receiver, users are encouraged to send five messages of positivity per day.

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MINDFUL OR MINDLESS?

There isn’t much LGBTQ+ visibility in his rural Texas town, so Marz Gamez is taking action to build community.

With a grant from the It Gets Better Project, the 14-yearold is creating a queer youth conference in Mission, TX, to provide a safe, supportive space and to encourage more inclusive schools.

MINDFUL

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Our take on who’s paying attention and who’s not

by AMBER TUCKER

Ever heard of Linda Skeens? Tiktok raved over her 25 awards for cooking, baking, and crafts at Virginia-Kentucky District Fair this summer. With a stunning 450 awards over the past decade, 74-year-old Skeens has long swept the competition—but she has no taste for fame, telling NPR, “I’m busy cooking for my family.”

Canadian regulators called out coffee chain Tim Horton’s for collecting customers’ private data through their app for over a year. So what is Timmie’s doing to regain our trust? Offering affected customers one free coffee and a pastry: a rather lukewarm apology for violating privacy laws.

It’s always best to return your library books, no matter how overdue. Just ask New Jersey resident Bob Jablonski, who this year returned a book he borrowed from his high school library in 1947. Luckily for him, in the intervening 75 years the library has adopted a progressive no-fines policy.

In 2013, James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive holding 8,000 bitcoins— now valued at $181 million USD. Nine years later, he’s concocted an $11 million, high-tech plan to search up to 110,000 tons of garbage for the drive, posing environmental risks. Has anyone told him about the gift of letting go? ●

MINDLESS

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SPENCER CREELMAN

Ropeless fishing gear can help protect right whales and other endangered species, and make fisheries more sustainable. While the technology is costly, a new lending program in Nova Scotia allows fish harvesters to test out the gear. In just three months, according to the Canadian Wildlife Federation, over 800 buoylines have been replaced.

a ! es ift ak t G M fe c r Pe

SPECIAL EDITION

Gratitude Journal The Gratitude Journal by Mindful offers a rich journey into the heart of gratitude. Rooted in science, the Gratitude Journal helps you bring the practice of gratitude into every area of your life.

THE GRATITUDE JOURNAL INCLUDES • 15 guided meditations (plus accompanying audio practices on mindful.org) • 20 mindful writing prompts • Inspiring quotes • The latest research on the science of gratitude • Motivational essays

Order today

mindful.org/gratitude-journal

mindful at work

Mindfulness is an indispensable leadership skill that takes moments to practice, and it can shift the paradigm of our working culture.

THE SIX SECONDS IN BETWEEN

m COURSE Mindful at Work Learn simple mindfulness tools for compassionate leadership and create healthy habits that cultivate your creative potential. mindful.org/ work-course

by Andrew Swinand

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mindful at work

ILLUSTRATION BY MORGAN HOUSEL / UNSPLASH

By the end of my first year as president of Starcom MediaVest Group—a global advertising and media company—I’d traveled 500,000 miles while managing over 100 offices across the globe. I had also learned the staggering cost of excess stress. Just one example: I was grinding my teeth so badly at night that I needed six root canals. A problem for me, yes. But also a problem for those I was leading. It became clear to me then that when leaders are overwhelmed and depleted, we’re going to consume the energy of those around us.

Effective leaders understand the importance of maintaining and sharing positive emotional energy. It sets the tone for workplace culture, motivates teams, and creates space for innovation. To achieve that, though, we have no choice but to look after ourselves— committing to radical self-care, a foundation for effective leadership cultivated by mindfulness, meditation, and movement.

Forget any thoughts you have about these practices as chores. Think of them instead as small, daily steps designed to replenish your energy, not add to your burdens.

On day one of Ranger training in the Army, I was taught to “put your own boots on first”: Looking after yourself before doing something for others is not selfish. It’s a necessity. If you haven’t looked after yourself, you’re not ready to lead. Radical self-care is ultimately a selfless practice that ensures you’re ready and recharged before giving your full attention to the people who depend on you for motivation, vision, and inspiration.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrew Swinand is the CEO of the Creative Group across all Publicis agencies and the CEO of Leo Burnett.

Previously, he was president of Starcom MediaVest Group, worked in brand management at Procter & Gamble, and began his professional career at BBDO. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business and served as a platoon leader in the US Army.

When leaders are overwhelmed and depleted, we’re going to consume the energy of those around us.

POWER OF THE PAUSE Many people think a practice like meditation works only for people who commit to long hours of practice every day. Not so. The former vice president of people development at Google, Karen May, used the practice of taking one mindful breath before every meeting to reset mentally and physically. It took six seconds.

That six seconds in between is a potent symbol for bringing attention to the present moment and for benefiting from the natural pauses that life provides. You can use any short break to breathe consciously, practice gratitude, or simply observe your surroundings— almost anywhere and at any time, even while waiting in line. That’s the radical part of self-care: It’s so simple and organic. And it runs counter to our first refuge when we’re overwhelmed: distraction. Instead of getting frustrated about the time wasted while waiting, take a moment to be present and aware of your surroundings, your breath, what you can hear, see, taste, smell, and feel. These moments of awareness and appreciation are meditation.

THE SCIENCE OF OVERWHELM After Starcom, I cofounded a venture incubator, Abundant Venture Partners. We worked with Dr. Richard Davidson, the founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has

spent 30 years studying brain activity. His research on the prefrontal cortex showed that our tech devices have increased both the frequency and intensity of our stress responses.

They’re reshaping our brains.

A study by research firm dscout estimated that the average user touches their phone 2,617 times a day. For most people, that’s a triggering moment. Yet our brains and bodies are designed to respond to only a few stress stimuli a day, not a 24-hour-a-day onslaught. As a result, we’re constantly in a triggered state, and our attention and focus have never been so frayed.

When people say they’re overwhelmed, then, it’s a physical fact.

We’re running new software on old hardware. In addition to being overstimulated, our brains and bodies create strong memories of bad events, because we were wired that way to help us survive earlier in our evolution. We need to counteract both this “negativity bias” and the overstimulation by altering our habit patterns.

SET BITE-SIZED GOALS Meditation is less about achieving a transcendent state and more about training our ability to be nonjudgmentally aware of the present moment— which may also help keep our minds from swinging wildly from thought to thought. (What are the 50 things I need to do? What are the emails I didn’t answer? Who are the people I need to call?) A recent study by researchers →

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mindful at work

MOVE FOR CHANGE When I first got out of the Army, my attitude to exercise was that if I didn’t

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run five miles, it wasn’t worth it. The movement component of radical selfcare dispenses with this old no-pain, no-gain dogma. It emphasizes small, consistent practices.

It may feel silly, but switching off the camera during a Zoom call and doing lunges, squats, and touching your toes will stimulate adrenaline to increase your heart rate and help you feel better. A walk around the block twice a day can break the stress cycle.

Be inventive. Do five minutes of yoga stretches, take the stairs, park in the farthest spot. Be intentional and creative about how you move your body.

Your brain will benefit.

STOP JUDGING YOURSELF Meditation practice and mindfulness overlap, but they are not the same thing. Small moments of self-care cultivate the state of being we call mindfulness—an open awareness of

THE RADICAL SHIFT At a time when the demands on our attention feel insatiable, there is no avoiding the need to recharge, and there is no better means than meditation, mindfulness, and movement.

As leaders, it’s essential that we model these practices for our employees, which may invite them to also become more aware of themselves and how they show up for their colleagues. As humans, it allows us to show up each day with kindness, creativity, and focus. ●

ILLUSTRATION BY DEAGREEZ / ADOBESTOCK

at Queen’s University estimated that we have over 6,000 thoughts a day!

Being in the present moment unfixes us from the negative cycle of dwelling on the past and projecting into the future. It’s not what if. It’s what is—focusing on what we can affect now, so we can more easily choose how we want to respond to challenges that arise.

Dr. Davidson’s research suggested that 20 minutes of meditation three times a week is enough of a dose to help you become less vulnerable to stress, and the effects are cumulative.

You can also get these benefits through “snackable” moments: clearing your mind before a meeting or call, taking pauses during the day, or taking stock at day’s end of the positive things that occurred during the day.

thoughts and feelings without judgment. Some leaders believe they can’t betray any weakness. Frankly, there’s great courage and power in showing vulnerability. Something will eventually break, especially when we’re constantly being called upon to make multiple, fast decisions. Sooner or later, no matter how good you are, you’re going to get it wrong.

I’m not preaching from the pulpit.

Throughout my career, I’ve had many failures. I’ve been fired. I’ve started businesses that came apart at the seams. Mindfulness has taught me not to make these experiences a measure of my intrinsic value but instead to regard them as valuable moments of learning.

The capacity to detach from outcomes, focus on what we can learn from the experience, and acknowledge our challenging emotional states are all part of mindfulness. Simply naming when you feel triggered can help you navigate difficult moments.

Practicing non-judgment can help you come to peace with the complex choices you make daily and move on to the possibility of the now.

practice

Simple Ways to Add Purposeful Pauses to Your Workday Janice Marturano

Taking purposeful pauses can allow you to be more fully present, and that presence is felt by those around you.

1 2

Choose some activity you do every day—like walking to your desk or filling your water bottle.

Be present for the activity. Each day when you walk to your desk or fill your water bottle, make it a purposeful pause by staying focused on the activity— notice your feet striking the ground, the air on your skin, the colors of the walls, the people you pass, the sounds you hear. Notice them, but don’t get carried away by them.

3

Be kind to your wandering mind.

Each time your mind tries to carry you into the future or the past, redirect your attention to the experience of walking to your desk or filling your water bottle.

Redirecting your mind back to the present when it wanders trains your brain to recognize when you’ve defaulted to autopilot. As you engage in this mind training daily, you’ll begin to notice how often you’re not being present for your life. And in that noticing lies the seed for choosing to do something different.

Janice Marturano is founder and executive director of the Institute for Mindful Leadership, a nonprofit that trains and supports leaders in exploring mindfulness and leadership excellence.

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Upcoming

Course Offerings MBSR Foundations MBSR Teacher Advancement Intensive (TAI) Curriculum Study Group and Skill-Building Ethos of MindfulnessBased Programs Dialogue & Inquiry for Mindfulness-Based Programs

Learn More Today professional.brown.edu

inner wisdom

THANKS FOR THAT m AUDIO Savor the Moment Practice with Elaine Smookler as she guides you in cultivating gratitude for life’s small delights. mindful.org/ delight

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by Elaine Smookler

At times, we might think that gratitude is for suckers.

After all, life can be brutal and harsh and days can be overfilled with a**holes who cut you off in traffic and then give you the finger.

Grateful? For what? For a**holes?

I hope that made you laugh, just a little. And you can feel grateful for actually having a sense of humor. In fact, why not be grateful for all the small and large wonders that you trip over every day? You don’t have to like everything you encounter, but that doesn’t mean that life is not a marvel.

And yet often, our lives are full of sadness and madness. So, what are we supposed to feel grateful for?

Gratitude is a positive feeling we experience when something beneficial comes our way. It could be the benefit of having met someone who offered us guidance. It could be the thrill of love, or the joy of accomplishing something difficult—and feeling grateful for having hung in there!

Simply being alive is a great starting place for feeling gratitude.

What stops you from being grateful? Is it fear

ILLUSTRATION BY SPENCER CREELMAN

On difficult days, you may find gratitude hard to come by. But when you make it your plan to welcome life’s vast smorgasbord of experiences, you’ll find lots of delightful treasures to be grateful for.

inner wisdom PRACTICE

ILLUSTRATION BY SPENCER CREELMAN

that you’ll be taken advantage of or mocked? Or does saying “thank you” feel like a weakness, a bother, or unnecessary? Or maybe you can’t find anything at all worth being thankful for. You have your reasons, but when you can take the radical leap to appreciate whatever shows up, you allow yourself to see the possibilities in everything.

Try this experiment: Every day for two weeks, thank as many people as you can for as many things as you can. Then, be your best Sherlock Holmes—take some notes. How does your gratitude-in-action affect your interactions?

Does it nurture warmth or encourage greater friendliness? What did it cost you to express your gratitude?

How is being this grateful different from how you typically interact with life?

When being grateful seems far-fetched, try naming the tiny things that might be right in front of you, just waiting for your appreciation. These might include: • Gratitude that your phone didn’t break its screen, again, when it fell off the table • Gratitude that potatoes are cheap and delicious • Gratitude that laughing is free

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elaine Smookler is a registered psychotherapist with a 25-year mindfulness practice. She is also a creativity coach and is on the faculty of the Centre for Mindfulness Studies in Toronto.

• Gratitude for one-bite brownies • Gratitude that libraries still exist • Gratitude for enough to eat • Gratitude that water comes out when you turn on the tap • Gratitude for a beloved pet, plant, person, place, or possibility, and for all cats that play the piano You may find that your tolerance for being able to handle stressful situations greatly increases when you strengthen your gratitude muscle. Turning the gratitude dial up to 11 releases all kinds of juicy neurotransmitters into your bloodstream. Chemical darlings endorphins and serotonin and lots of feel-goodies are triggered when you cop an attitude of gratitude. Isn’t that fun!

As for me, I recently got into a squabble with a family member. Just as I was about to let ’em have it, something told me to take a pause. With some effort to stay alert, instead of rocket-launching my defense, years of mindfulness practice helped me stay present to what I really wanted, which was peace.

So I gently looked for the most peaceful solution to a gnarly interaction, and suddenly a horrible moment became a wonderful moment. I was so thankful!

I was filled with energy and excitement. I hadn’t fallen into my childhood habit of hurt and indignation.

I stayed awake. I made a different choice. I felt such huge gratitude! ●

Give Thanks The most radical acts of gratitude are also the simplest, but they connect us with the wonder and majesty of every moment. Try these three lovely ways to get your gratitude wagon rolling: • Say thank you! What do you notice about the effects of your genuine appreciation for what’s here?

• Make a list. Journaling about what you appreciate strengthens cognitive awareness, and helps you notice what you might otherwise miss out on.

• Rise and remember. Wake up every morning with the awareness that life is a gift. Be grateful, and notice how this simple act of gratitude sets the course for your mood and your day.

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mental health

By Melissa Urban

Setting and holding boundaries can be challenging, even if you’re not a people-pleaser. But, as Melissa Urban writes in The Book of Boundaries, communicating clearly cuts down on conflict and increases freedom—for those on both sides of the line.

mental health

Early in my recovery from addiction, I attended the wedding of an old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. I arrived at the event alone and was standing by the bar when an ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, who I had only met once before, approached me. She noticed I was sipping water, and it seemed to really bother her that I wasn’t indulging. She said hello, then immediately launched into, “Why aren’t you drinking tonight?”

She didn’t know I was in recovery and I wasn’t comfortable sharing, so I just said I was good with water and that I liked her dress, thinking that would be the end of it.

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. For whatever reason, my mind flashed to the Homeland Security Advisory System— you know, their “threat

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Melissa Urban is CEO of the Whole30 and an authority on helping people create lifelong healthy habits. She is a six-time New York Times bestselling author and has been featured by Good Morning America, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and CNBC. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

level” colors—and I began mentally evaluating where I thought we were.

Threat Level Green? Oof, we’re past that already. I tried to laugh and change the subject an hour ago, but that didn’t work. We’re clearly at Threat Level Yellow now—she’s getting pretty drunk, and emboldened by the presence of her friends. In the moment, I said something dismissive like, “I just don’t feel like drinking tonight,” and left to talk to someone else. But I was on higher alert now, anticipating this wouldn’t be the end of it.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, the woman approached me again— this time with my ex in tow (who at least had the decency to look embarrassed) and two shots in hand, insisting I do one with her. This is Threat Level Red, Melissa, I thought to myself. If she doesn’t chill out, I’m going to have to leave. I don’t want to feel pressured to share my recovery status with a room full of strangers—or worse, take a drink I don’t want. I again declined, threw a pointed look at my ex, and walked away.

I did my best to avoid the woman for the next hour or so, but the more everyone drank, the more she seemed to fixate on me, and I began feeling very alone in that room. By 10 p.m., she was seriously hammered, and I was at Threat Level Fuchsia— which Homeland Security does not recognize,

but anyone who’s been in front of their ex’s current girlfriend after multiple tequila shots surely does.

At that point, I knew there was only one thing I could do to keep myself safe: I grabbed my coat and walked out the door.

That experience is still so vivid in my head, not just because I went home and cried, but because the “threat level” system I used then carried into all of my boundary conversations going forward. Through that experience, I recognized that different levels of threat—to your relationship with that person, your mental health, or your safety—require a different level of boundary response.

Just like you don’t use a flamethrower to kill a mosquito, I didn’t need to walk out of my friend’s wedding after the first hint of peer pressure. But several hours later, the threat to my health and safety (and my relationship with the bride and groom) was real.

If I didn’t set the strongest boundary possible, I was afraid something irreparable was going to happen— I’d either blow up at this woman and start a fight, or give in and have a drink.

The Green, Yellow, and Red system was born from that experience, and represents the level of threat that stems from the boundarycrossing you’re facing. The threat could be to your own health or safety, as it was for me at the wedding.

If someone continues this behavior, is your mental →

m VIDEO COURSE Say No With Heart Join us for a 3-day minicourse where you’ll learn how to practice sustainable self-care, honor your unique needs, and begin to reclaim joy and well-being. mindful.org/ self-careessentials

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The best boundary uses the minimum dose for the maximum effect.

m PRACTICE Compassionate Boundaries Consider these five steps when exploring and restoring your boundaries with compassion for yourself and others. mindful.org/ boundaries

health going to suffer? Are your health commitments at risk? Is it putting you in the way of physical or emotional harm?

The threat could also be to your relationship. If this behavior continues, is the good relationship you have with this person in jeopardy? Are you already feeling avoidant, anxious, or annoyed before you even interact? How close are you to exploding with resentment, frustration, or anger; saying something you can’t take back; or cutting off the relationship altogether?

If that threat is minimal at this point—their behavior is not OK, but it’s the first time it’s happened, or it’s not hugely harmful—you’re still in Green territory, and the language you use to establish or reinforce the boundary should acknowledge that.

But if the threat to your relationship is imminent— as in, “If you mention my weight one more time, I’m walking out the door”— you’re in the Red, and your boundary language and the consequences should reflect that, too.

What’s the Threat Level?

GREEN: Low risk, and the gentlest language.

Assumes the other person wasn’t aware they were overstepping and wants to respect your limits. Your boundary language is clear, generous, and very kind. Leaves any potential

consequences unsaid in the spirit of good faith.

YELLOW: Elevated risk, and firmer language. Used as a follow-up if your Green boundary isn’t respected, or if historical interactions with this person indicate the threat is higher. Your boundary language is just as clear, but more firm.

Yellow may also include an intended consequence, if appropriate.

RED: Severe risk, and your most direct language. At this point, your health, safety, and/or the relationship are in jeopardy, and your language must reflect the severity of the situation. It’s still kind, but this is their last reminder, and makes it clear that you are prepared to hold your limits. State the consequence plainly here and be ready to enforce it.

Minimum Dose, Maximum Effect The best boundary uses the minimum dose for maximum effect. This is a physics principle first credited to Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes, but it has been popularized in the modern fitness industry. It asks the question: What is the smallest action you can take to produce the desired effect?

The principle allows you to leverage your efforts to get the most bang for your buck—and prevents you from the negative consequences of thinking more is always better. If sets

mental health

of five squats make you stronger, you don’t have to do ten. And when it comes to boundaries, how softly can you tread while still effectively establishing your limit?

If you start every boundary conversation with the firmest and most direct language, sure, the boundaries you set will be effective, but you’ll create more conflict than necessary, and probably burn some bridges along the way. Ideally, you’ll head into these conversations assuming the best, starting with Green and only escalating to Yellow or Red if you need to. If your Green boundary is successful, congratulations! You’ve spoken in the gentlest language possible (which your conversation partner certainly appreciates) and your limits have been acknowledged and respected.

However, take the concept of threat seriously. If you find that repeating your Green boundaries just isn’t working and the offending behavior continues to escalate, what’s a kinder response: saying nothing and ignoring the other person for a while, or speaking from a Yellow- or Red-level boundary clearly and setting the stern but necessary limit that could save the relationship?

Practice Makes Progress One last piece of advice: Practice makes boundaries feel and sound far more

natural, which means you’ll come across as more confident, and the boundary is more likely to be taken seriously. While I encourage you to adopt the specific language and words that feel the most natural for you, once you land on what you want to say, practice.

Tell the mirror, “No thank you, I’m not drinking right now.” Tell your dog, “Wow, that’s a rather personal question. Let’s move on.”

Tell your shower wall, “I’ve already left the office. Slack me tomorrow morning and I’ll help.”

Say it out loud until it feels easy and confident, so your brain and body get used to the idea that this is your space, and you have every right to protect it with clear, kind boundaries. And with that, I think we’re ready to build some fences. ●

Somavedic The beauty of harmonized space Harmony is about creating a coherent, life-supporting space for the body and mind to thrive.

Excerpted from The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free by Melissa Urban. Copyright © 2022 Melissa Urban. Published

by Penguin Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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Find out more at somavedic.com

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brain science

WHY WE TALK

to Ourselves

By Leslie Garrett • Illustrations by Edmon de Haro

Some of us chatter to ourselves all day long while others’ inner lives take the form of pictures or, like Einstein, abstract visual concepts.

But as mindfulness urges us to pay more attention, it’s worth asking: What can our interior life teach us?

“Know thyself,” was the advice inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The Tao Te Ching insisted that knowing others is intelligence, while knowing oneself is true wisdom. “To thine own self be true,” Shakespeare urged.

Pithy advice. Good advice. Advice that spans centuries and civilizations.

But…how exactly do we do that?

University of Nevada psychology professor Russell Hurlburt thought a ABOUT THE AUTHOR Leslie Garrett is the author of more than 15 books for children, as well as a journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, and Cottage Life. She currently works as coeditor of Bluedot Living, Martha’s Vineyard, which focuses on local grassroots solutions for climate issues, and aims to expand to locations around North America.

good start was paying attention to the thoughts in our head. Not the eureka! thoughts, necessarily, but the mundane. The “What should I make for dinner tonight?” thoughts. The “That’s a pretty shade of blue” thoughts. The self-reproaching “That was a dumb thing to say” thoughts or the self-encouraging “You can do this” thoughts.

The thoughts that, in meditation, we’re taught to label as “thinking.”

The thoughts that we barely notice, or that we feel dogged by. The thoughts that, as psychologist and neuroscientist Ethan Kross writes in his book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, allow us “to hold information in our minds, reflect on our decisions, control our emotions, simulate alternative futures, reminisce about the past, keep track of

our goals, and continually update the personal narratives that undergird our sense of who we are.”

In other words, to “know thyself,” we have to first pay attention to the voices in our head.

Meet Your Inner Monologue But first, let’s get clear. While lots of us do, in fact, have voices in our head, many of us don’t. What some have instead are images, symbols, sensations, or, if we’re like Einstein, abstract concepts. Consider too that some deaf people experience inner “speech” even if they’ve never heard a human voice.

Russell Hurlburt, arguably the grandfather of “inner experience” →

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brain science

research, ultimately came up with five categories: inner speaking (voice), inner seeing (pictures/images), feelings (happy, sad), sensory awareness (carpet beneath our feet), and unsymbolized thinking (which basically includes awareness of a thought but without words or pictures).

Nobody has managed to quantify how many of us experience this inner speech, but we do know that, among those that report they do, an estimated quarter of our waking lives are spent talking to ourselves, says Hélène Loevenbruck, a researcher in linguistics and neuroscience at the Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Université Grenoble Alpes in France. Loevenbruck prefers the term endophasia: endo = inside, phasia = speech. “It’s just language inside us,” she explains, “and it’s neutral as to whether it’s a dialogue or a monologue, whether it’s speech or sign language or whatever.”

Our brains, however, notice the difference. Thanks to fMRIs, we now know that the brains of those who think in words and sentences light up in the inferior frontal cortex, which is the part devoted to speech.

However, the brains of those whose inner speech is made up of images, or abstract feelings, show activity in the semantic regions, which interpret meaning from what our senses take in—the middle temporal cortex and possibly visual cortex, says Loevenbruck.

Whatever we call it and however we experience it reflects the same thing: an interior life that, when examined, can help us know ourselves better.

What Was I Thinking?

It was roughly 50 years ago that Russell Hurlburt undertook an experiment that involved giving people a notebook and a beeper that would go off randomly. When participants heard the beep, they were instructed to stop what they were doing and

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jot down in the notebook what their inner experience was at that moment.

Hurlburt was resurrecting an aspect of psychology that had fallen out of favor—that of quantifying our conscious experience.

Hurlburt estimates he’s included thousands of people in his studies, which relied on Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES). DES uses an open-ended questionnaire to try to get people to accurately describe what was happening in their minds when the beeper went off.

Easier said than done, he discovered. “That seems like a very straightforward instruction,” he says. But when people would report back, Hurlburt got information about context and what he calls “presupposition.” Presupposition, he says, means that “People drew up their own beliefs about the way the world was and what their inner experience was, and then

m AUDIO Explore What’s True Founding editor Barry Boyce leads us in an inquiry practice to become aware of our preconceptions and loosen our grip on what we think we know. mindful.org/ inquiry

brain science

they ended up telling me about their beliefs rather than what their inner experience was about.” For instance, he said, subjects often believe they’re talking to themselves when they’re actually experiencing a sensation.

He uses the example of a subject who might report that, when the beep went off, she was saying to herself, “What a delicious wine this is.” When pressed, however, the subject ultimately reports that she wasn’t so much talking to herself as experiencing the taste. Reflecting their presuppositions instead of their inner experiences proved a high hurdle for most study participants to clear. Our presuppositions about what we’re thinking—more than what we’re actually thinking or experiencing—get in the way of truly knowing our minds, Hurlburt says.

There was one notable exception, however. “Adept meditators didn’t have that problem,” Hurlburt says.

“They could tell you what was going on.” They were particularly attuned to one of Hurlburt’s five identified categories of inner thoughts: sensory awareness. For example, if they saw a gold door handle, they noticed its goldness rather than what the handle is used for. “The adept meditators had a lot of sensory awareness,” he says. “So much of mindfulness training is basically about paying attention to sensory aspects. Adept meditators have done quite a bit of that.”

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear But paying attention to our inner life is just one part of knowing ourselves.

We then need to learn how to put that awareness to work for us, something Ethan Kross has dedicated much time and research to, building on Hurlburt’s pioneering work. While Kross, a professor at University of Michigan and director of the Emotion and Self-Control Lab, is comfortable using the phrase “inner voice,” he, like others, includes communication

Our presuppositions about what we’re thinking—more than what we’re actually thinking—get in the way of truly knowing our minds.

in images and symbols, sensations or signs. He likens our inner voice to “a Swiss Army knife of the mind” and a “basic feature” of being human.

There is a small segment of the population, says Loevenbruck, perhaps 10% of the general population, who hear voices that they perceive as external. Of these, a small fraction perceive the voices as hostile, and typically these people are diagnosed with psychiatric issues such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or even Parkinson’s. But most people understand that the voice is coming from inside the house, so to speak.

That, however, is not the same as believing the voice to be benign.

Kross’s book addresses those of us for whom the voice is frequently outright cruel and may sound suspiciously like the grade six teacher who insisted we were never going to amount to anything. While our inner voice frequently has benefits, he says, “sometimes it can become hazardous,” “overly critical,” or “ruminating.”

Whether our inner voice is positive and encouraging or harsh and demanding (or most likely a combination, depending on circumstance) is due, says Kross, to genetic and situational influences. But because it’s flexible, we can alter it. We can, as he frames it, turn our inner critic into an inner coach. “Different tools work for

different people,” but Kross says there are four essential categories: personal tools, or things we can do on our own; people tools, or ways of interacting with others; the use of reframing our thoughts, a tool sometimes used in mindfulness practice; and environmental tools, which include organizing your space and spending more time in nature, particularly experiencing awe.

Inquiring Minds While learning to pay attention to our thoughts is the route that Russell Hurlburt, Kross, and others encourage to know ourselves better, physician and mindfulness teacher Patricia Rockman notes that practicing mindful inquiry can take us even deeper. “We get to see how we get stuck, get in our own way, if you like,” she says. “We label and externalize our experience, loosening from a rigidly attached view of self, and begin to see the self as process, rather than a fixed entity. This can bring a lot of freedom, broaden our perspectives on ourselves, others, and the world, providing us with more options around how to respond to difficulty and also to have a heightened sense of pleasure and well-being”—like, say, the person in Hurlburt’s study who could learn to savor the taste of the wine itself, rather than mainly noticing her thoughts about it.

You can cultivate the tools to broaden your perspective on your inner experience, urges Kross. “Get out of your head, use your distance, self-talk…adopt a fly-on-the-wall perspective, try to visualize a past or future experience and see yourself in it,” he suggests. Mindfulness practices are very compatible with all of this, he says. And as we tune in to the subtler aspects of our inner experience—as we come to “know thyself,” as the prophets urged—we’re bound to notice how even our stickiest thoughts and beliefs can change. ●

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PHOTOGRAPH BY SANTI NUÑEZ / STOCKSY

self-love

Loving Yourself Changes Everything Learning to take care of your heart, to accept the pain that comes with seeing the people you love suffer, and to be okay with suffering yourself, is the true work of self-love.

This except from Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez’s new book Let Your Light Shine illuminates a clear path to healing—and it begins with the breath.

December 2022 mindful 33

self-love

T

here is a self-love crisis in American right now—and globally too. We aren’t at

peace with ourselves, we don’t fully know ourselves, and as a result we don’t feel comfortable or safe.

term self-love because…well, they’re kids. Telling them to love themselves is going to equal some confused looks and some giggles. But you? The Adult in the Room? There’s no excuse. So our challenge to you is simple: You got to figure some stuff out, make peace with that unkind voice deep in your head—let go of the anger, or the fear, or the resentment—and learn to love yourself.

Sometimes this lack of self-love reflects our psychological underpinnings, but often it’s a reaction to stuff fully out of our control. And when people don’t fully know or understand themselves, they lash out, punishing either themselves or the outside world for something they can’t fully explain or describe.

Let’s be real about something. Life is easier when you don’t care so much.

Life doesn’t hurt quite so bad if you just don’t care what happens to you or the people around you. If you’re scared about how you’re going to feed your kids, it’s easier to watch them go hungry if you harden your heart and shut off the flow of love between you and them. If you’re failing out of school and can see no future for yourself, it’s easier to get through the day if you tell yourself, F**k it. I don’t care.

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Learning to let yourself care, to accept the pain that comes with seeing the people you love suffer, and to be OK with suffering yourself, is the first—maybe the biggest—lesson we all have to learn in life. Distilled down to its essence, this impulse to love is self-love.

Everything we do at the Holistic Life Foundation starts with self-love.

No matter if we’re working with teachers, kids, or adults in a coporate setting, the first task is to guide people toward a place where they can feel that acceptance of themselves.

This isn’t easy for adults. It’s even harder with kids. When we sit in a circle and tell a group of eight- or nineyear-olds, “Be kind to yourself. Have patience with yourself,” we might as well be telling them to fly to the moon.

Normally, we hold off on using the

Our mentor Uncle Will, a former Black Panther, used to sing “This Little Light of Mine.” It was his jam, day in, day out. Uncle Will had seen his fair share—more than fair— of pain and despair. You don’t join the Black Panthers because you think, Things are just fine the way they are.

He knew what it was to hurt. And he embraced that hurt. He understood that pain was as much part of him as the happy Will, or the Will charming the ladies into buying that extra insurance policy. Will had to literally will himself into a place of self-love.

He had to power through hearing the N-word, and feeling the disrespect from white folks. He had to turn off the stuff telling him he was less than or not good enough. By the time he became our spiritual mentor, he knew that the secret to self-love was rooted in turning away from those outside →

PHOTOGRAPH BY FIRECRACKER PICTURES / STOCKSY

Let Your Light Shine

Breathwork connects a disconnected person to their body.

December 2022 mindful 35

PRACTICE

Take a “Busy Brain” Break The belly breath meditation allows you to explore slow, relaxed, abdominal breathing as an act of self-love.

BY ATMAN SMITH, ALI SMITH, AND ANDRES GONZALEZ The belly breath is like a circuit breaker for a brain that is careening out of control and taking the kid (or adult) along for the ride. Belly breath can be a peaceful practice: getting you centered and your head straight for a day at work. Or it can be a lifesaving practice: overriding adolescent instincts that can take a kid from a bad situation to a terrible one.

Either way, you need the belly breath in your practice, and so does your kid.

Here’s a simple practice you can do by yourself, or with your child.

If you’re doing this practice with a child, let the kid burn off some energy first, in the gym or on the playground.

Figure out a way to release that restless energy that every kid has. Then, when your kid is a little more relaxed, and more receptive, sit down with them on a mat in a quiet spot.

In a perfect world you’ll have a little ambience going. Maybe a salt lamp or lava lamp for some mellow lighting, and a white-noise machine or a fan if there’s a ton of traffic noise. A comfortable cushion and some blankets. All these elements have an important role: You’re taking a familiar space and, by making a few small adjustments, adding an element of ritual.

Take a minute to visualize how releasing trauma and embracing self-love might feel: self-regulation, empowerment, beginnings of self-acceptance, even if you can’t get to self-love. Just starting to accept yourself.

As you begin, remember that the biggest win on this first day of practice is simply being willing to show up and sit down. Don’t worry if your breathing is off or if they can only hold the practice for a few seconds. Simply agreeing to try is a victory.

INSTRUCTIONS Place your right palm on your belly. As you inhale through your nose to fill your lower lungs, use your diaphragm to expand your belly like a balloon. Expand your belly slowly and as much as possible. Pause for a brief second.

Now exhale, leaving your hand in the same position, pulling your belly button to your spine, creating a space between your hand and belly.

Inhale again, expanding your belly until it touches your hand. And repeat.

Inhale deeply through your nose, using the diaphragm and expanding your stomach to fill your lower lungs.

Then fill your middle lungs by pushing out your rib cage, breastbone, and chest. Then fill your upper lungs by poking out your chest to lift it and completely fill your upper lungs. Pause on the breath.

Exhale slowly, relaxing and lowering your chest, breastbone, and upper rib cage.

After your upper and middle lungs are emptied, slowly contract your stomach using the diaphragm to empty the lower lungs.

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self-love

We take 21,600 breaths per day, so make each one count.

m

PHOTOGRAPH BY AHMET AGLAMAZ / ADOBESTOCK

GIVEAWAY LovingKindness This feature is an excerpt from the new book Let Your Light Shine from the founders of the Holistic Life Foundation.

Enter to win a free copy at: mindful.org/ shine

voices—and turning in to that voice that lived in his heart through yogic practices. He helped us through our traumas with these techniques, and eventually we passed on his teachings to our kids too.

Trauma and Self-Love Here’s one thing to understand about the kids in today’s world and the obstacles to self-love: Our kids are living in trauma and that trauma is the single biggest obstacle between them and self-love. Most of them have been steeped in trauma their whole lives, both overt (physical, mental, sexual abuse) and less easy to see (food insecurity, hygiene shame, and painful interactions with authority figures).

The kids we work with deal with subtler traumas too: a deep disconnection with the natural world, for one. Pollution from incinerators—always located in the poorer areas—that until recently belched a toxic cloud over South Baltimore. A degraded environment that leads to chronic rates of asthma. Our kids are literally breathing in toxic air. Not just the pollution, but the weight of death and despair, the drugs, and the grinding hopelessness of worlds where many haven’t left a five-block radius of their home their whole lives.

Irrationally Crazy Love Urie Bronfenbrenner was a famous child psychologist. He had many good things to say, but none more so than this: “Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.” This lack of committed, no-conditions love can cripple a child.

Think of the adults who loved you irrationally as a kid—who laughed at your goofy jokes, were reliably delighted to see you, comforted you

when your parents were enraged by your behavior, maybe provided a safe haven when your family was falling apart. What would you have done without them? Now, imagine a world where they were never there to begin with.

Trauma, compounded with adults who are spread too thin to offer that irrationally crazy love, adds up to an undeniable feeling that you are not loved and not valued, full stop.

This trauma compounds itself again when parents and grandparents have decades of unheard stories and unprocessed feelings. They may love their kids desperately, but they are not equipped to help those children work through the trauma of their lives.

Their children in turn grow up in an environment that says that no one gives a damn about them.

Sometimes kids do feel loved, but it is such a toxic, dysfunctional love that it makes their lives exponentially worse. We’ve had grandparents give their grandchildren knives to handle street fights. Now, those grandparents love those kids, and they are doing the best they know how for them. But their best is inappropriate as hell.

It’s a little different for kids who are living in wealthier, more privileged communities. Their basic needs are met, often in abundance. No food or hygiene insecurity for them. And yet they are also deeply distressed: How are they supposed to love themselves when their parents are AWOL on their smartphones or Zoom 24/7?

Perhaps their parents compensate for absences with expensive gifts, teaching the child an empty, transactional kind of love. Or can’t hide their disappointment at their child’s academic failures. The reality is that many, many kids today are traumatized. These crisscrossing realities of trauma on top of trauma affect every facet of their lives. Trauma closes all of our hearts. Self-love practices can open them. →

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Breathing is the foundation of everything we teach. It’s a way of regaining a sense of control.

Inner and Outer Worlds Another way to understand how trauma affects us is to see it as related to two different ways of existing in the world: interoceptive and exteroceptive. Interoception is the state of being aware of and focused on sensation coming from within the body. Think of a moment when you were aware of your heartbeat or heard your bones creak. The interoceptive system uses nerve receptors to send messages to our brain and alert us to how we feel. In a balanced individual, this system will contribute to regulating energy expenditure, alerting us to our needs (hunger, thirst, the need to urinate, etc.).

Of course, our bodies do not exist in isolation from our minds. As our

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emotions ebb and flow over the day, our body mirrors these changes. An angry conversation with your spouse might cause your neck to tense and your skin to turn red. Here’s the key part: Our ability to interpret these physical markers of our internal state is a good indicator of how well we can read other people’s emotional and physical signs.

Exteroceptive individuals are the opposite. They live in a world of heightened sensitivity to external stimuli. They are the ones who are going from standing still to full speed, oblivious to everything around them, including their own feelings and emotions in the moment.

We call these kids high flyers, and they need a little more attention and focus. These kids are aware of everything around them. Hypervigilant, always thinking a block farther on their walk, clued in to the dudes walking ahead of them, the look on the face of the dude they just passed. They’re the kids who don’t even notice that their teeth are grinding or their fists are balled up. Our students are nearly all exteroceptive due to accumulated trauma and their need to be fully aware of their external surroundings in our community. Mindfulness can interrupt this pattern. We may not be able to change their outside world, but we can change how they deal with

it. At least in our programs, they can turn off these exteroceptive edges, and instead drop in and become more aware of what’s happening on the inside.

Self-Love Practices The core of our self-love practices lies in developing an inner spaciousness. Think of our exteroceptive kid (or adult!), fully living in the external moment. His external world is in bold color, full of loud sounds and stimuli.

His brain is processing a salty look or a side-eye, even as it absorbs movements in his peripheral vision, and the

PHOTOGRAPH BY MONKEY BUSINESS / ADOBESTOCK

Not all bad experiences become trauma. Sometimes it’s less about what happened, than what happened right after the traumatic episode. If you were nurtured and allowed to tell your story and felt safe, it might not create trauma that lasts forever. But if people denied it, ignored it, then that awful moment becomes trauma. If you go through terrible situations in isolation, without having the space and the witnesses to share your story—or worse, having people mock or deny it—a bad experience becomes traumatic.

sounds of traffic coming up behind him. Meanwhile, his internal world is like an unwatered garden, dying from lack of attention and love. So our first step is drawing that kid back inside, to his internal world, and the very best way to do that, for anyone of any age, is with breathwork.

Breathing is the foundation of everything we teach. It’s the reset to that exteroceptive overdrive. It’s a way of regaining a sense of control over a situation that is entirely outside of your control.

This is important; hopelessness can crush a kid’s—or an adult’s—spirit in no time. And we work with kids who

have almost nothing to feel hopeful about. That hopelessness might come from poverty, social isolation, fear of disappointing their parents, or a hundred other reasons. Where there is no hope, there is no love, and certainly no self-love. Without self-love, every other hope of change fades away.

Breathing disrupts this wellgrooved track that tells a child or adult, You are not loved, you do not deserve love, you are bad, which we all have in our brains, based on our experiences and expectations about “what happens next.” Instead of—literally— taking a breath, stepping back, assessing a situation, and responding in a

detached way, someone who is back on that familiar path of panic and fear is unable to regulate their feelings.

Instead, that emotional reaction floods their nervous system with chemicals that send the message: This is bad, you need to react.

Breathwork disrupts this.

Breathwork connects a disconnected person to their body. For a minute they drop out of that sensory overload. The room gets a little quieter, and they are less aware of the hubbub around them.

After a minute they start to tap into the subtler level of connection that comes from inner self-regulation. →

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self-love

Learning to love yourself is the work of a lifetime. Ideally you start young, but we have plenty of friends and loved ones who are only now starting to work on the idea of accepting and embracing themselves. We all have layers upon layers of trauma, accrued over the course of our lives, that can keep us mired in anger at ourselves, and stewing over incidents from our lives that may have happened decades ago. Part of the point of starting these exercises with your kids is to get them into a self-love mindset now, and give them the tools to handle trauma and process the experiences of their lives without adding unnecessary shame or embarrassment.

Your single greatest approach is to use empathy and find a way to connect with your kids—where they are.

We come from a place of love. Part of this means that you don’t really hold anyone at fault. You hold empathy for everyone, even the parents who can’t love their kids the way they need to, or the teachers who are too burned out to educate as well as they should. We believe that when you see a system that is unfair, you use your momentum and resources to try to attack it the best way you can, with love and wisdom. We try to fix the chaos that is going on without blaming people for it.

A young man named Ra’Mon came up through our program, and eventually became one of our teachers.

He grew up knowing “My dad was killed, and they found him in a trunk.”

His family was going through tough times his whole youth. But he stayed “strong,” hustling when he had to as a youngster, then throwing himself into working with us. As part of that work, he joined our annual retreat at the Omega Institute. One evening we did a circle meditation session with our close staff. Each of us took a turn to go in the middle of the circle. The idea is simple: the people sitting in

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Take Care of Your Beautiful Heart When you are starting to get into contemplative practices, like meditation, do whatever you can to be present.

When your mind is still, hard things may come up. You are opening yourself up, and it is natural that now you have to deal with things that you’ve been hiding. And it can be overwhelming. So cut yourself some slack.

You bottled it up for a reason, mainly because you didn’t want to deal with it, or maybe it was too much to deal with at the time.

When you’re explaining this to children, try this metaphor—and maybe it will help you too. Explain that when uncomfortable thoughts come up, because they will come up, it can be as explosive as a shakenup soda can. It can really rock your world. But quickly the soda settles, and goes back to normal. It’s the same with that big, uncomfortable feeling.

Once you finally come to grips with it, or finally get over it, or finally face those demons that will inevitably reveal themselves during your practice, it is so incredibly liberating. The silence that you create during your meditation eventually ends up speaking volumes. ●

Enter to win a free copy mindful.org/ shine

From Let Your Light Shine by Ali Smith, Atman Smith and Andres Gonzalez, published

by TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022

by Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Ali Smith is cofounder and Executive Director of The Holistic Life Foundation. Raised in Baltimore, Maryland, he is a graduate of the Friends School of Baltimore and the University of Maryland, College Park, where he received a BS in Environmental Science and Policy. He is a pioneer in the fields of yoga and mindfulness in education, as well as trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness. Ali has taught in seven countries on three continents.

Atman Smith is a native of Baltimore and cofounder of HLF. Atman attended the University of Maryland, College Park, where he graduated with a BA in Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Andres Gonzalez is a cofounder of HLF and a certified Health Coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. He maintains a BS in Marketing from University of Maryland, College Park, and an MBA from the University of Maryland, University College, and has over 20 years of experience providing yoga and mindfulness to populations all over the world.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BONNINSTUDIO / STOCKSY

The Long, Long Road to Self-Love

the circle focus all their loving energy to the person sitting in the center of it. Ra’Mon took his turn, and we all closed our eyes and focused all our love on him.

Our eyes were shut, but we could hear Ra’Mon start to cry. Eventually, when he came out, he said, “This is the first time that I finally came to grips with my dad’s death.” It took Ra’Mon till he was 24 to finally let himself feel and process the trauma of what happened when he was a kid.

It’s not that the pain and the trauma went away, but that Ra’Mon was able to integrate it into his sense of himself and his life story. He was finally able to mourn his dad, acknowledge the pain, and move on.

Learning to love yourself is the work of a lifetime.

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meditation

ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL_CRAFT / ADOBESTOCK

G R AT I T U D E FOR THE LOUSY I N G R AT E Inspirational posters and embroidered pillows urging gratitude may be all the rage, but if such platitudes give rise to a different kind of rage in you, you’re not alone—and you may benefit from a slightly different path to accessing the many gifts of a regular gratitude practice.

Introduction by Stephanie Domet

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O

n a busy road in a neighborhood in the city where I live, there was a garage door I used to give the finger to every time I passed by.

It was a pretty regular garage door in every way, except that stenciled on it, in two-foot-high letters, were the words be grateful.

Nothing got my back up like that garage door.

“What on earth are you doing,” my husband asked, the first time I broke out of our conversation to flip a door the bird.

“That garage door doesn’t get to tell me how to be,” I groused. “It’s so sanctimonious. It makes me sick.” I continued to give the door the middle finger as we passed by.

“It’s only asking you to be grateful,” he said, shaking his head, no doubt wondering who he had married.

“I’m very grateful,” I sneered. “Not that it’s any of that door’s business.”

We would repeat this scenario once a week or so for about a decade and a half, till someone else bought the house and painted over the gratitude imperative. (Now my husband gives the door the finger whenever we drive by.)

The imperative to “be grateful” is hard to argue with (and believe me, I have tried.) Science, many world religions, mothers, common sense, and that garage door all agree that an attitude of gratitude will do you—and those around you—good in the long run. Gratitude helps us rewire our brain to feel happier, soothes our nervous system, fuels healthy habits, and increases kindness and connection within our communities. I’m not immune to this scientific evidence, nor to the persuasiveness of the role I’ve seen gratitude play in my own life, shaving the edges off bad days, hard times, and challenging moments.

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Surely gratitude is at its best when it arises naturally, rather than when we’re scolded into it.

ILLUSTRATION BY DEDRAW STUDIO / ADOBESTOCK

m But surely gratitude is at its best when it arises naturally, rather than when we’re scolded into it. Be grateful for the twinge in your back from stacking wood, at least you have wood to stack, and the ability to stack it, a phrase like be grateful seems to nag, wagging its finger as it does (or is that my finger that’s wagging?).

When we harangue ourselves and others into conjuring up some halfhearted gratitude, we’re not exactly honoring the kind of awareness of the present moment that can lead to genuine feelings of gratitude. Instead, we’re positioning ourselves as luckier than some other poor sap, who’s much worse off than us and has nothing to feel grateful for (but still, probably, somehow manages to be more virtuous than we are, we lousy ingrates.)

And that rarely feels good in the long run.

Gratitude finds its way to me when I’m not trying for it, when I’m not feeling guilty about it, or goaded into it, and when it’s least expected.

Because the truth is, I am grateful to have wood to stack, and to be able to feel a twinge in my back after stacking it—but not because I “should” feel it.

As a writer, my practice is built on noticing. The more I incline myself toward this noticing, the more I am able to access gratitude. And so the

noticing itself has become a kind of gratitude practice, one I do regularly, in spite of myself. Writing may not be part of how you engage with the world, but a practice of noticing might be your own gateway to gratitude, as it has been for me.

And so, I notice the particular blue or grey of the sky, the smell of wood smoke on the air on a damp winter day, the rustle of leaves, the bitter tang of black coffee, the soft coziness of the bright blue wool blanket a friend brought me from a trip abroad.

These details, when I take the time to notice them—to truly notice the way they look, feel, smell, taste, sound, the emotion that arises in me to accompany the experience—these details anchor me in what’s really happening, and when I can pay my attention to that, gratitude arises naturally in me.

I am grateful for this body that’s breathing, for the natural richness of my experiences in the world, my ability to perceive the beauty and the fleetingness, the pain and the pleasure, the dampness and the wood smoke. And that’s something that belongs to me, and I to it, no matter what that garage door says.

PRACTICE The Gratitude Journal Rooted in science, featuring writing prompts by Jane Anne Staw and practices from leading mindfulness teachers, The Gratitude Journal by Mindful helps you bring the practice of gratitude into every area of your life. mindful.org/ gratitudejournal

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stephanie Domet is a writer and editor who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she is grateful, actually.

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SELF-CARE

Begin with Gratitude for Your Body When we take a moment to appreciate what's happening in our bodies right now, with a spirit of curiosity, we honor all that our bodies do for us every day.

BY ELAINE SMOOKLER

Let's start by taking three nice big breaths. Breathe in for a count of three and out for a count of five. Do you notice? You're alive. It's actually kind of amazing. Can you bring your attention to the jaw-dropping wonder that is the human body?

Let's start with the toes, bringing attention to your feet touching the ground.

You may be amazed by how many sensations there are to experience: tingling, pulsing, restlessness, hot, cool, moist, dry, ticklish, itchy, numb, neutral. What do you notice about paying attention to these small experiences? Is it possible that they could help you cultivate gratitude for this body that's going to accompany you through your life?

As you move up the legs, what do you feel? Whenever I feel anything uncomfortable, I notice how much I want to make meaning out of it. Instead, I invite us all to just feel what's here without making any meaning of it at all. It's all so interesting. So this is what's happening now.

Moving up to the land of pelvis, I notice clenching the moment I go to explore sensations in my bladder.

Do I dare? Again, reminding myself that it's not about trying to relax or make anything easier or better. I use these moments of awareness to widen the palette of colors available to experience what it is to be a human. What do you notice?

Continuing the journey up the body, eventually we encounter the beautiful belly filled with so many stories.

Loss, longing, yearning, wanting. Can you be grateful for all that it's experienced and send it love and appreciation?

Moving up through the torso, this luscious landscape which houses heart and lungs, you may picture an inner river pumping and flowing, bringing juicy life through the body.

When you reach your shoulders, you can lay gentle hands on yourself, massaging some of the day's stress away. Taking a moment

to be grateful for all that our shoulders shoulder. Swooping down through arms to fingers, I thank them for allowing me to be independent in so many ways. Can you offer appreciation to your hands and arms that work so hard?

We visit the neck and face.

Are lips dry or moist? Are your teeth clenched? What about the jaw? Can you feel the air moving in and out of your nostrils? Can you notice your eyeballs, top of head, back of head, side of head, and ears?

On an out-breath, let go of focused awareness. On an in-breath, expand your attention around the entire body, noticing all the sensations reminding you that you are alive right now. What do you notice when you bring the spirit of gratitude into every precious moment that you and your body share together?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elaine Smookler is a registered psychotherapist with a 25-year mindfulness practice.

Reprinted with permission.

Can you bring your attention to the jawdropping wonder that is the human body?

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CONNECTION

Allow Gratitude to Connect You to All Living Things When we awaken awe and gratitude for our interdependence, we can infuse a spirit of loving-kindness toward all beings, including ourselves.

BY SHAUNA SHAPIRO Mindfulness, gratitude, and self-compassion help free us from isolation.

These practices open our minds, awaken our hearts, and deepen our sense of connection. We begin to realize that we are never just practicing for ourselves. Transforming ourselves creates echoes in the universe: As we heal ourselves, we heal each other and our world. As Arianna Huffington puts it, “Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace.”

ILLUSTRATION BY DEDRAW STUDIO / ADOBESTOCK

1

Begin by settling the mind and body, taking a seat on a chair, on the floor, or wherever you can sit comfortably upright.

Allow a soft smile to rest on your lips, not as a way to paper over how you are feeling, but simply to invite in rest and ease.

2

Bring your awareness to the simple sensations of breathing. Feel how

the breath is supporting you, oxygenating the body with each inhale, releasing stress and toxins with each exhale. Begin to sense the beating of your heart.

Become aware of how the heart is supporting you, sending blood carrying oxygen and nutrients to the trillions of cells in your body. Invite in a feeling of gratitude and kindness toward your breath, your heart, your body.

3

Begin to feel your body in your seat, and let your awareness expand to include the Earth below you, supporting you. Allow yourself to rest into it, to feel held by the Earth.

There is nothing more you need to do in this moment.

4

Reflect on how this planet supports all beings equally, with gravity keeping all beings tethered to the Earth.

Reflect on how this planet is connected to a solar

system and a vast universe. And that all things— all humans, all animals, the Earth, the sun, and the stars—are composed of the same matter, the same basic particles.

5

Feel the web of life into which we are born, from which we can never fall.

Feel how you are part of this web. Nothing is separate.

6

Feel yourself resting with gratitude in the heart of the universe.

Begin to send your good wishes to all beings, gently and silently repeating, “May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe and protected. May all beings be happy. May all beings be filled with love and kindness.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shauna Shapiro is a bestselling author, professor, clinical psychologist, and expert in mindfulness and self-compassion.

7

Now recognize that you are contained within the good wishes for all beings. Rest your attention once again on this being, sitting here, and direct the good wishes to yourself: “May I be peaceful. May I be safe and protected. May I be happy. May I be filled with love and kindness.”

8

As you breathe in, you are breathing in this loving-kindness, and as you breathe out, you are sending loving-kindness out. May all beings dwell with peace. May the Earth dwell in peace. And close by offering: May this practice be of benefit for all beings.

Excerpted from Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and SelfCompassion Practices to Rewire Your Brain for Calm, Clarity, and Joy by Shauna Shapiro, PhD. Sounds True, June 2022.

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NATURE

Awaken the Flow of Gratitude in Nature Give yourself permission to be outside. Go into nature without an agenda or expectations, just to be with it and move with it. If you are struggling with stress, anxiety, depression, or sluggishness, moving outside bring us home. A few deep breaths, connecting with can ignite an internal shift. theGEORGINA space we are MIRANDA in, bring home a knowing there Movement doesn't have to BY is no separation between us. We need our Grand be exercise: When you move Mother, the Earth—her air to fill our lungs, her living with the intention of exercise, things to feed us, her awe to keep our souls warm. you quickly enter a state of She needs us too—to look after her, to shift our doing. Mindful movement is day-to-day ways of living, to treat her as one of our free-flowing and allows you dearest friends. to enter a state of being. Try Here are five ways to shift from a state of doing this simple practice when AUDIO intoCultivate a state of being the next time you’re moving in you're out in nature: nature—whether you are walking, hiking, practicGratitude ing yoga, or another outdoor activity. The benefits Breathe and pay attention. are vast when you allow yourself to be one with the Bring all the attention to your Find a collecnature choose, connecting and moving with breath, its rhythm, its ability tion ofyou guided gratitude. to inspire a reset with each meditations inhale and exhale. Notice the from the teachair you are breathing in, the ers featured in smells, the temperature, the these pages. freshness. Let each inhale be an opportunity to connect mindful.org/ you deeper with the nature gratitudeyou are in. Let each exhale practice be an opportunity to let go of anything you brought with you to this natural setting that is not needed in this moment.

m

Breathe and feel deeper.

Connected to your breath, what else do you feel? As you

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take each step, what flows through your body? How does the sun, wind, snow, or rain feel on your skin? What can you hear? With each breath, can you start to unite with the space you are in, versus being separate from it?

Can you notice you are one with the earth, the air, the water, around you?

Breathe and give thanks.

Look around, while staying connected to your breath.

Give thanks for the pause in the busyness of life and existence. Give thanks to your body for its willingness to move freely. Give thanks to this natural setting and the natural gifts from Mother Earth to you. Give thanks for this moment of well-being.

Give thanks for knowing that conscious movement and this state of awareness are always available to you.

Surrender. Let go and allow your body and your breath to just be in nature. Just be.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Georgina Miranda is a social entrepreneur, outdoor adventurer, speaker, writer, and mindful leadership expert.

PHOTOGRAPH BY NABODIN / ADOBESTOCK

The outdoors offer gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) opportunities to be present Regardless of where I am and experiencing with our sensations our nature—at a local city park, perched up high on mountain surroundings.

Awaken gratitude tops, or swimming in the sea—I’ve found it is always for the Earth by and a good time to pausegoing and be outside present with it and noticing what myself. Our breatharises. is an anchor that can always

LET GO

Counteract Resentment When we cling to our ideas of what we want, and resist the way things are, we invite resentment into our lives. Gratitude invites us to let go.

BY BARRY BOYCE To begin this gratitude practice, I'd like to start by considering one of the biggest obstacles to gratitude: resentment. We can dress up our resentment with a sophisticated storyline about how others—one, or many, or multitudes—are doing us wrong, but what it simply boils down to is being upset because we’re not getting what we want.

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. Gratitude is a practice that can work with the tendency to cling to fixed outcomes and to feel resentful when we don't get our way.

1

Bring to mind something that seems unlikely to change, that you do not accept. Perhaps it's something that's happened to you, or it's something that's going on with a loved one or in the world at large.

2

Counter-intuitively say thank you for that. You're not being thankful for the thing itself, you're being thankful for the opportunity to let go. To accept how things unfold doesn't mean we condone bad behavior or indulge in pessimism or martyrdom. The point is to use gratitude to undercut our resistance to working creatively with difficulties.

3 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Barry Boyce is the founding editor of Mindful and Mindful.org.

For about three minutes, keep imagining things you resent, that you're irritated about, that you have trouble accepting or allowing. Try having an attitude of, “Thank you for the opportunity to work with this.” Deep gratitude for the opportunity to let go of our grasping to

outcomes can foster a kind of embryonic openness that can lead to other more outward kinds of gratitude.

4

Next, be grateful in concentric circles, moving out from your immediate situation, with prompts like: I'm grateful to have the necessities of life.

I'm grateful to have people to love and to share love with.

I'm grateful for friends and companionship. I'm grateful for the people who pick up the garbage, take care of the roads, or fix my bicycle. I'm grateful for those who maintain the vast infrastructure that supports society and life.

Thank you to the people who sell me food. I'm grateful to healthcare workers, and to all people dedicated to keeping me safe. Finally, I’m grateful for the need to encounter those who mean harm, who are tormented by mental and physical pain that causes them to act badly or even violently. While I do not condone purposefully harmful actions, I'm grateful that there is a spark of compassion available for those who do harm, and for all of us when we do harm, and the possibility of beneficial change emerging in time.

EXPAND

Nurture A Felt Sense of Gratitude This somatic (embodied awareness) practice offers a gentle way to connect with your body, while nurturing a felt sense of loving-kindness and gratitude.

BY GINA ROLLO WHITE

In this practice, we will be connecting ideas and thoughts with bodily sensations. I'll walk you through all of it. Follow along and do what works for you.

1

Begin by choosing a posture that’s comfortable for you: standing, sitting, or lying down. Allow your gaze to be soft. Take a nice big inhale, and then exhale slowly.

2

Notice the length and strength of your body.

Whatever posture you are in, just notice your feet all the way up to the top of your head. Bring to mind this idea of length, and also the idea of strength and pride. Feel yourself, standing tall or lengthening long, and connect with

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4 the sensation of your feet all the way up to the top of your head, so the entire length of your body is connected with the idea of strength and pride and length.

3

Now we'll move to the back of the body, connecting with the past. See if you can imagine what the back of your body looks like—the back of your head, your back, your seat, the back of your feet— and connect that with the idea of the past. Imagine that everything that's behind you, your entire past, is connected with the backs of your shoulder blades, your seat. Maybe you can notice the space in between your shirt and your body, or the space in between your shoulder blades. Just bring to mind the back of your body, and connect it with the past.

Next, we move to the sides of our body, connecting with community. Bring your attention to the sides of your body, from shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, the outer edges of your feet, maybe ear to ear.

Imagine that these parts of your body are connecting with the outside world, connecting with community. If you can, maybe raise your arms up and create a little circle around yourself. Connect with the idea of protecting yourself, so you can create boundaries.

Then, if you can, open up and reach your arms really wide, reaching out to your community. Notice how you can reach really far and feel connected with those around you, but also create the safety of boundaries, by connecting with the sides of your body, your shoulders, your hips, the outside of your feet.

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Take a moment to continue connecting with community by sending thoughts of love and kindness and gratitude to others. Bring to mind someone or something (maybe a pet) that you have an uncomplicated relationship with, who you feel safe with. As you bring to mind this being that creates safety, silently send these words to them: May you feel love and kindness. May you feel safe and secure. May you feel healthy and strong.

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ILLUSTRATION BY DEDRAW STUDIO / ADOBESTOCK

And now, broaden those thoughts of loving-kindness to your inner circle or your local community or neighborhood. Bringing to mind your community, send thoughts of love and gratitude: May you feel love and kindness. Imagining all those people. May you feel safe and secure.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gina Rollo White is a mindbody teacher and educator who develops and leads mindfulness workshops for first responders.

Continue opening your arms as you open up your circle of love and gratitude. Feel your arms widen even more, as you move on to sending well-wishes to your nation. Imagine all the people and beings on your continent, and then even further out, in the entire world: May you all feel love and kindness. May everyone, every being, every animal feel safe and secure.

May you all feel healthy and strong.

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And now, bring your arms in closer to your body.

Making that circle smaller and smaller, you can come back to your neighborhood, your community, all the way back to that first person or animal that makes you feel safe and secure. Connect once more with the outsides of your body, the outside of your feet, your hips and shoulders.

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Now, sense into your internal world. What's occurring inside your body? Get curious about your heartbeat, your stomach digesting, your lungs as you inhale and exhale. Connect these with the idea of present-moment awareness. What's occurring right now, in this moment?

Your breath. Your heartbeat.

And also yourself, connecting your awareness with all that you are. Take a moment to send yourself gratitude, love, and kindness. If it's available to you, put your hands over your heart.

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Think to yourself as you're standing here in this present moment: May I feel love and kindness. May I feel safe and secure. May I be healthy and strong. May I be happy.

Place your hands by your side, and once again move your attention from the internal to the external. From the front of your body, the tips of your toes to your belly, to the outside of your chest, the outside of your shoulders, your face.

Connect the front of your body with the idea of forward movement, with the idea of all that is before you.

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Picture your entire body, connecting all the parts.

The front of your body, the sides of your body, the back of your body, internal head to toe. Bringing it all into one thought, one image, and take a moment to send yourself some gratitude. You might say to yourself, "Great job. Great job for practicing today." Maybe even put your hands over your heart again and saying, "Thank you."

Place your arms by your sides.

What's occurring right now, in this moment?

Your breath.

Your heartbeat.

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Now, if you can, reach your arms up really high, all the way over your head.

As you exhale, slowly lower your arms. If your eyes were closed, you can open them.

Just take a moment to look around and take in the colors, the sights, maybe even the sounds.

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Get curious about what you feel. What is the quality you feel right now? And as you close this practice, give yourself one final moment of gratitude, saying to yourself once more, "Thank you.

Great job."

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ILLUSTRATION BY SVTDESIGN / ADOBESTOCK

meditation

A CLOSER LOOK AT C Y N I C I S M Misanthropic beliefs and attitudes come with risks to our mental health. Can gratitude help us see things another way?

BY MISTY PRATT

The phrase “A healthy dose of cynicism” implies that there are good reasons to maintain a level of hostility toward the world. Those who argue for cynicism make the point that distrust can be an effective defense against manipulation. Three years into a pandemic, many people would agree that cynicism has been a useful tool in dealing with the flood of misinformation about COVID-19.

However, there is a difference between a transitory sense of distrust (the “red flag” that alerts us when something doesn’t feel right) and the scientific definition of cynicism.

Research considers cynicism to be a worldview, made up of a set of beliefs about human nature and people’s motivations—namely, that other people can’t be trusted and everyone is out for themselves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Misty Pratt is a communications officer in the field of health research and medicine. She is hard at work on her first book about gender bias in mental health care, which explores the bio-psycho-social factors that impact women's mental health.

CYNICAL CONDITION This kind of Oscar the Grouch–like cynicism has been linked to a long list of physical and mental health issues.

One study found that a higher level of cynicism was associated with an increased risk of stroke or transient ischemic attack (a temporary blockage of blood flow to the brain) in middle-aged and older adults, while another study in a similar population drew a correlation between cynical hostility and dementia. There have also been findings about the harmful effects of cynicism on physical activity, mortality, and its close ties with depression.

The opposite of cynicism is not gratitude, but it appears that gratitude is a gateway to positive emotions such as joy, excitement, and optimism—all of which counteract cynicism. The research on gratitude and improved health is burgeoning, and there is evidence that gratitude interventions improve sleep quality, reduce the body's inflammatory response, and lower blood pressure.

While further studies are needed to confirm these findings, experts in the field agree that gratitude appears to play an important role in people’s overall sense of well-being.

Our well-being relies greatly on our social relationships, with gratitude as the “social glue” that inspires people

to be more kind, generous, and forgiving. If cynicism is a deep-seated mistrust of our fellow humans, then gratitude is a deep-seated knowing that there is goodness in the world.

AN ANTIDOTE TO CYNICISM? One common myth about gratitude is that it leads us to become naïve or gullible. In truth, practicing gratitude won’t protect us from getting hurt by others, but it can act as an illuminator for the people and things that are good for us. Robert Emmons, who has devoted his career to studying gratitude, writes that “Practicing gratitude magnifies positive feelings more than it reduces negative feelings.”

If you’ve ever taken a magnifying glass to a patch of moss or a suburban lawn, you may have delighted in your discovery of these tiny worlds of life operating under our feet. Gratitude works in a similar way, by magnifying the good that’s sometimes hidden in the world around us—and once you see it, it becomes easier to identify.

While it’s perfectly normal and healthy to experience passing moments of cynicism, science agrees that opening yourself up to the possibility of goodness in other people may be healthier for you in the long run. ●

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journaling

Finding Yourself on the Page ILLUSTRATION BY TANYAJOY / ADOBESTOCK

Mindful writing can take you on a voyage of inner discovery. It can be the place where the waves of your experience meet the shore of your practice, a place to encounter the ebb and flow of your emotional life—and a bit of solid ground to stand on in stormy times.

By Caren Osten Gerszberg

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journaling

I loved him fiercely, and knew he felt the same, yet somehow our encounters were frequently followed by drama and misunderstandings. After a challenging conversation, I’d often pull out paper and pen and write my feelings down. Thoughts would swirl and emotions would spill out onto the page, my right hand sometimes aching from all that poured out of me.

Airing my feelings through writing allows me to not only “blow off steam” when I feel sad, frustrated, or angry, but also to take pause and see, with a bit of distance, a clearer view of my experience.

Why writing is so cathartic Mindful writing, also known as expressive writing, is a healing form of writing that involves expressing your deepest thoughts and feelings.

It’s an opportunity to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), free yourself of your inner critic and editor, and

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pay attention to the narrative of your experience and how you understand it.

Many of us have a natural tendency to tell ourselves stories about how we think and feel, which typically shapes the way we make sense of our life and the world. But sometimes, the thoughts and emotions we attach to an experience—a challenge, an interaction, a loss, or a memory, for example—change over time. And on occasion, the way we tell our stories isn’t exactly right. Mindful writing puts just enough distance between you and a “story,” which may help you see it with more clarity.

Thanks to the space and sense of curiosity that mindfulness provides, a mindful writing practice can brighten your quality of awareness, helping you to make sense of your thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. It’s a chance to slow down, breathe, turn to a fresh page, and open up to what you’re thinking and feeling. Ultimately, it’s a path to making sense of an experience, and then seeing, and understanding, how you relate to it.

ILLUSTRATION BY TANYAJOY / ADOBESTOCK, VECTOR TRADITION / ADOBESTOCK, LADADIKART / ADOBESTOCK

F

or most of my life, I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with my brother.

journaling

Science agrees: Write it out Much of the research on expressive writing has been done by James W. Pennebaker, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who suggests thinking about this type of writing as a “life-course correction.”

By writing and then reflecting on our own stories, his research shows, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of emotional wellness.

Pennebaker believes that written expression not only helps us make sense of negative experiences, but can also lift a burden. His research shows that writing not just facts but feelings, and not just what happened but how you felt about it, helps you put together a coherent story that helps you better understand yourself. Once feelings and thoughts are a part of the written narrative, there can be a sense of relief—it’s as if you’ve released them from your heart and mind onto the page. There’s no need to share your writing with anyone unless you choose, but you also no longer have to keep your experience held inside.

“One way to understand how these benefits come about is that the very act of writing takes information that is often only dimly perceived, such as quick judgments, fears, worries, and concretizes by putting them in written form on paper,” says Zindel Segal, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology in Mood Disorders at the University of Toronto and a pioneering specialist in the use of mindfulness to treat mood disorders. “It requires that they are formed in language and also, once seen ‘on the page,’ they may be experienced with less of an emotional charge than when they were only ‘in the head.’” Tailored programs such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) incorporate elements of expressive writing in an effort to help participants externalize their experience, rendering it more available for mindful investigation.

“Whether it involves writing about pleasant or unpleasant moments in →

WRITING PROMPTS I invite you to consider a specific topic that inspires you to look inward, tap into present-moment emotions and thoughts, and release whatever arises in the form of written words. Set your timer for an amount of time that feels comfortable, drop in, and write what you’re feeling. Then call up that curiosity and see how you relate to what you’ve written.

You’ll find more themes and prompts in the pages ahead.

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VULNERABILITY. It’s not uncommon to feel increased fear and selfdoubt when trying something new or choosing to make a shift in life—times when the risk of getting rejected or criticized is real. We all face obstacles and challenges, yet it’s the things we do outside of our comfort zone that help us develop and grow. I offer you these words from “A Morning Offering,” by the poet John O’Donohue for inspiration.

May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love To postpone my dream no longer But do at last what I came here for And waste my heart on my fear no more.

TRY IT: Write about a time when you were afraid to do something and did it anyway. How did it feel before and after? What did you learn from that experience?

Expand your perspective From daily challenges to distressing events, mindful writing serves as both an emotional outlet and a chance to gain understanding about the stories we carry. Studies conducted over recent decades find that writing can offer a number of emotional and psychological benefits, such as improved mood, less anxiety, reduced blood pressure, and overall greater well-being. It can also improve sleep, increase self-confidence, and strengthen your immune system.

Without the need to focus on restrictions like spelling, grammar, and punctuation, a mindful writing practice offers an invitation to describe experiences, understand thoughts, work through emotions, expand your perspective, discover meaning, and possibly, notice what approaches may or may not be work-

ILLUSTRATION BY TANYAJOY / ADOBESTOCK, SIRISAK PIYATHARO / ADOBESTOCK, YONG HIAN LIM / ADOBESTOCK

PROMPT

MBCT or journaling in MBSR, the goals are the same. Make that which is fleeting more vivid, and bring a kind curiosity to what is revealed,” Segal says.

It isn’t uncommon to feel sad after writing about a negative or painful experience, but Pennebaker’s research shows that these reactions are shortlived. Writing about an upsetting experience—even a few times—can ultimately help decrease a tendency to ruminate.

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ing. Sometimes, through writing about even the most stressful and negative experience, we can uncover another way to relate it that we hadn’t considered before.

Mindful writing can even benefit our romantic relationships. A 2006 study published in Psychological Science looked at 86 dating couples and found that those who were assigned to write about their emotions for three consecutive days were more likely to express positive feelings in conversations with their partner in the days that followed.

A writing practice, particularly when it comes to negative experiences, can also give birth to selfcompassion, offering you the space to show up for your emotions—joy, anxiety, anger, exhilaration, even boredom—and just be with them for a little while, without pushing them away. Writing in this way provides a place where you can let go of judging yourself to freely explore what you notice and feel. →

PROMPT

SELF-COMPASSION is the idea that you can actually be kind to yourself and accept your own faults. We all make mistakes, face frustrations, experience loss, and are forced to realize our limitations.

This is a part of being a human being. But somehow, we’re very good at beating ourselves up. What if you could treat yourself the way you would treat a friend who is having a hard time—whatever the circumstance? That is self-compassion.

TRY IT: Think about a time when you’ve struggled in some way—felt inadequate, failed at something, had a hardship. Write down some details about the event and how it made you feel. What would you tell a friend who experienced that situation?

What tone would you use? What actions would you suggest they take?

If you ever feel yourself getting lost while writing, come back to your breath and the intention to be truthful and kind with yourself. Spending this time with what arises, what is present for you, and holding compassion for it all, is at the heart of mindful writing.

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PROMPT RESILIENCE is the ability to navigate adversity, to bounce back and even grow in the face of the difficult moments and struggles that life inevitably throws our way. While it feels like so much of our lives is not in our control—and there are obviously things that are beyond our control—we can choose how we respond to the stressors that impact us.

Research has shown that we can cultivate resilience, seen often in our capacity to rise in dark times. Just think for a minute about all we’ve been through, and the uncertainty we’ve navigated, in the past three years. That is resilience!

TRY IT: Write about one of the more difficult or stressful events of your life. How did you get through it and what did you learn? How would you face that situation today?

m VIDEO COURSE Mindful Writing Join Stephanie Domet, awardwinning author and contributing editor for Mindful Magazine, as she shares the joy of experiencing oneself and the world through a writing practice. mindful.org/ mindfulwriting

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journaling

ILLUSTRATION BY TANYAJOY / ADOBESTOCK, ANGE1011 / ADOBESTOCK, TATYANA SIDYUKOVA / ADOBESTOCK, THESIS303 / ADOBESTOCK

How to begin your writing practice Most of the studies on expressive writing use Pennebaker’s straightforward approach, which is to have participants write about their thoughts and feelings about a particular topic for 20 minutes, for three or four days in a row. Here is a modified version of his writing rules: Set a timer for 15 to 20 minutes.

Open up a notebook (or begin a document on your computer) and write your thoughts and feelings about some important emotional event or issue that has affected you. In your writing, let go and explore your deepest emotions and thoughts. You might tie your topic to your relationships with others; to your past, your present, or your future; or to who you have been, who you would like to be, or who you are now. Write only for yourself. Do not worry about spelling, sentence structure, or grammar.

Continue writing until the time is up.

You have begun the process of stepping out from your experience to gain perspective on it.

Mindful writing can take on different forms, but the essential ingredients remain the same—write down your thoughts and feelings, notice the narrative, and approach your reflection with a sense of curiosity and an open mind. You can also try beginning with a brief mindfulness practice to welcome a sense of calm and grounding before writing.

PROMPT

Start by settling into the body, noticing any felt sensations, such as tension, pressure, warmth, or coolness. You can close your eyes if that feels comfortable, and take a few slow, deep breaths. Bring your awareness to the flow of the breath, following the movement of the air as it enters through the nose, making its way into the chest and abdomen. Allow the mind and body to rest for as long as you like, opening up to whatever emotions and thoughts arise. When you feel ready, you can open your eyes and reconnect with your surroundings. Now you can begin writing with a sense of acceptance and deep self-compassion about any topic that surfaces. After you’re done writing, and reading, ask yourself: • • • • • •

How did I experience this event or experience?

Did I see it clearly and accurately, or was it impacted by my emotions?

What were the specific circumstances and how did they make me feel?

Do I feel differently now?

Have my thoughts and emotions shifted?

What have I learned from reading what I wrote?

If you’d prefer to not read what you’ve written, that’s OK too. Just expressing yourself through writing— allowing your thinking and feeling experience to emerge—can initiate a greater perspective on any situation.

When things got ugly between my brother and me, writing down my emotions always made me feel better. Sometimes it simply helped to

GRATITUDE. Giving thanks is said to be the mother of all virtues and is consistently shown to increase our happiness and make us kinder. Yet in these tumultuous and technology-charged times, we sometimes forget to stop and express our gratitude— especially to the people we love and care for—which deepens our relationships and social bonds.

TRY IT: Think about someone to whom you feel closely connected. Write about the gifts they bring to your life and how you can (and perhaps will) express your gratitude to this person.

clear my head and heart; sometimes it offered clarity about where we’d misunderstood one another. And always, my writing practice has offered a path forward—one that frequently leads to healing. ● ABOUT THE AUTHOR Caren Osten Gerszberg is a writer, certified positive psychology life coach, and mindfulness teacher. She helps clients find balance, resilience, and positivity.

Also a contributor to The New York Times and Psychology Today, Caren writes about well-being, mindfulness, and education.

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REFLECT

ALLOWING HAIKU Poetry can be a kind of meditation, explains Rashid Hughes. He explores how the art of haiku can bring a sense of peaceful, awe-inspired expressiveness into your practice.

Life has so much to offer, if we’d only listen. The evening was young and my body tired from being in motion all day. There was an intrinsic quietness in the air, with gray skies above and an unceasing but very tender rainfall. I sat at my desk, looking out of my back window as I often do after a long day of reading or writing. The usual sounds of insects and animals on a late summer evening seemed to be very few. The candle flame to my left on my ancestor altar reminded me of the sacredness of resting, so I allowed myself a moment to just be. I enjoy cracking my window a little to listen to the rain with the coincidental thunder on the horizon. As I feel on many rainy days, I felt like the rain was inviting me to listen deeply, so I obeyed.

As I sat enjoying the rain for a while, I began reflecting on a few words from mama Alice Walker’s poem “Be Nobody’s Darling.”

Be nobody’s darling; Be an outcast Be an outcast; Be pleased to walk alone I felt alone, but not separate. I exhaled. Something sacred was in the midst: an undivided knowing. A deeplyrooted conviction of belonging arose within me. It was as if I was bearing wit-

ness to my boundless love. In awe, I surrendered.

From within this knowing, the following haikus came to me in a very spontaneous, unstructured way. In that moment, life felt both intimate and imminent. A solitude and a fresh clarity caressed me; a moment of effortless meditation unfolding. There was no goal or desire present, just present-moment awareness.

I’m not sure why haiku was the form of writing that came to me at the moment.

Poetry or writing isn’t how I usually express myself after meditation. I may jot down a few notes, but hardly ever in the form of poetry. I tend to prefer to bathe in the natural clarity of mind after moments like this. Maybe haiku emerged due to the natural slowness of pacing and spaciousness that is required throughout the haiku poetic process. Who knows?

With the window slightly opened, allowing the sound of the gentle rain and a soft breeze in, I began to write these haikus.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rashid Hughes is a writer, meditation teacher, yoga instructor, kung fu practitioner, and a restorative justice facilitator. He is cofounder of the Heart Refuge Mindfulness Community, a mindfulness community dedicated to inspiring Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to live with love and courage.

journaling

POETRY

If you don’t understand the meaning of the haikus, that’s OK. The gift of haiku is the patience that is invoked, the wonder, and, on special occasions, the confusion.

You may sense that there are many possible interpretations of a haiku. That’s OK too; let all be both true and untrue. I invite you to take a breath in between reading each haiku.

A different knowing That enters me from beneath.

They frown at me, Shrink!

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I hear them calling In the cool breeze on my feet.

I contract, it’s me!

It’s time to slow down.

What shall my five year plan be?

It’s night time, don’t sleep!

Overcast, light rain.

The sunshine of so much grief Felt within the peace.

Yaaaass, dreadlocks and beard!

The way they stare in the streets Feels like, please don’t shoot!

The leaf’s holding on, Fall, a few yellows and pinks.

No hurry, just be

TRY YOUR HAND AT HAIKU It is my wish that everyone might be able to find joy in writing haikus.

Here are a few tips to get you started.

1

Go for a walk or sit in your favorite seat at home.

2

Observe your surroundings.

Notice the colors, the weather, the sounds.

3

Listen to your heart and sense what is happening within.

4

Without much thinking, in two sentences, pause and write down what is capturing your attention.

5

Then write a third sentence that is not as closely related to the first two sentences.

6

See if you can draw some surprising connection between the first two sentences and the the third.

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Remember, try to really get clear on what insight or message you want to reveal to the reader.

8

If you’d like a challenge, rewrite the three sentences following the traditional haiku structure: three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.

9

Most importantly, don’t judge yourself for what you come up with.

A candle burns bright.

Walking back and forth I think, Tomorrow not now.

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BOOKMARK THIS read…listen…stream

by AMBER TUCKER, AVA WHITNEY-COULTER, BARRY BOYCE, and KYLEE ROSS

SONOROUS DESERT What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks—and What it Can Teach Us Kim Haines-Eitzen • Princeton University Press

Most of us likely think of deserts as barren with no redeeming value. Not so for Kim Haines-Eitzen, who finds a rich soundscape there that promotes solitude. That gift of solitude, she says, explains why some of the earliest contemplative practitioners, the Desert Fathers, sought refuge there. Haines-Eitzen grew up in the Middle East and, from an early age, was taken with the power of the desert, both the simplicity of its landscape and the “sound of desert silence.”

When you sit quietly in a place with seemingly so little going on, you hear the sound of air and animal noises in a way that might escape notice when you’re in preoccupied mode.

Haines-Eitzen points out that “we often forget to give sound the close attention it deserves…

Sounds encircle us, reverberate within our bodies, emanate from above and below.”

This is not a religious book. It’s simply about how much we can hear if we listen deeply, “with the ear of the heart.” It asks us to consider learning from the early contemplatives’ appreciation for listening to something other than human-made noises and our internal monologue. “Paying attention to sound,” she writes, “offers us an opportunity to come into our bodies, inhabit our place of being, and understand who we are.”

Throughout the book, QR codes appear. Aiming a smartphone camera at them will lead you to recordings of desert soundscapes that are every bit as captivating as listening to someone talking about solitude and silence—in fact much more so. – BB

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SURVIVING STORMS Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity Mark Nepo • St. Martin’s Essentials

Prolific writer and philosopher Mark Nepo helps us reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, and how we want to grow toward the future and, yes, its inevitable storms. Through farranging prose (on the nature of geological storms, the healing process of “inner triage,” the social effects of reality TV), interspersed with poetry and writing/conversation prompts,

Nepo explores how knowing ourselves deeply can strengthen us to stay resilient and connected to our hearts and to one another. “The heart’s process of renewal and connection is the oldest and most reliable resource we have,” he reflects. “Following the heart as our teacher leads to an inner exploration we each must map for ourselves.” –AT

TUESDAYS IN JAIL What I Learned Teaching Journaling to Inmates Tina Welling • New World Library

Tina Welling has led a journaling workshop at the jail in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the past seven years. Now she’s sharing her experience through a series of anecdotes that highlight the benefit of community-building initiatives in the prison system.

Welling is honest about not having a degree or training that relates to working with

incarcerated people, nor firsthand experience with crime or addiction. But with that honesty comes an openness that she brings to her weekly workshops and to the pages of Tuesdays in Jail. We get a glimpse inside the walls of the jail where Welling learns more about her students, herself, and the human experiences that connect us all. –KR

read, listen, stream

TUNE IN TO

mindful

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE How Mindfulness Can Empower Children and Rebuild Communities Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez • TarcherPerigee

In this book, the founders of the Holistic Life Foundation (HLF) offer a compelling and comprehensive blueprint for radical change that begins with each of us and uplifts all of us. We get to know the Smith brothers and Gonzalez, their best-friendship, and the ways the HLF grew organically from the Smiths’ roots in the rough neighborhood of West Baltimore where they were raised by adults with deep meditation and yoga practices. Today, they offer yoga and mindfulness programming in underserved communities, empowering children and adults alike to become stewards of change.

Early in Let Your Light Shine, the reader meets the lovable and wise Uncle Will, the Smiths’ godfather and mentor to all three authors. He told the boys, “I’m not a teacher, I’m a reminder,” which became a central idea to their programming. “Even if we don’t all know all the details, we feel the facts of American history in our bones and see it reflected back to us, in the societies we live in,” the founders write. Immediately, they lay a groundwork of honesty that they maintain throughout the book. They ask the reader hard questions and keep us accountable. And they don’t over-promise. The authors are clear about the messiness of the journey of first healing oneself, and then the unpredictability of helping to heal our communities, especially when working with children. Rolling with whatever arises is part of the work.

“The ones who are suffering, the ones who make you most angry, or have the most frustration, they’re the ones who need the love most,” they write. “We really need to go out there and spread love. So making a change, making people teachers, empowering them with the practices, is what you do to make a bigger change.” This book offers the practical tools, compassion, and permission we need to help make that change. (Read more on p.32.) –AWC

Visit mindful.org for featured meditations from Vinny Ferraro, Atman Smith, and Jon Kabat-Zinn 3 PRACTICES TO EMBRACE LOVING-KINDNESS

1

Directing Compassion Toward Ourselves

from Vinny Ferraro

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.

2

A Loving-Kindness Meditation for Your Loved Ones from Atman Smith

Relationships can be full of complexity and conflict.

Sometimes it’s difficult to express our love to those we care about the most. Maybe we find ourselves stuck in hurt or disagreement. Yet when we focus on qualities of non-judgment, nondiscrimination, and honesty, we increase our ability to freely send love to the people we hold dear. In this way, we tap into the love we already have around us and within us.

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Loving-Kindness Heartscape Meditation from Jon Kabat-Zinn

Loving-kindness can support us in softening our approach to painful events and emotions. By working with the intention of sending good wishes to others, we observe the presence of difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them. And through compassion, we realize that our emotions don’t isolate us, but connect us to all other human beings.

This guided practice allows us to notice our emotional experience in a way that embodies loving-kindness and compassion, easing our weary hearts. –AT

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PODCAST

reviews

The options for how an economy can operate are as broad as our capacity to imagine them.

FINDING OUR WAY Episode: “Feeling Whole with Sonya Renee Taylor” Returning guest Sonya Renee Taylor joins host Prentis Hemphill to discuss what, to Hemphill, feels like the edge of something. The edge of a paradigm shift. While the pair toss what that means back and forth, the idea of practice becomes central to the conversation. “Systems don’t afford you the space to practice without dras-

tic consequences,” Taylor says. For Black children that often means not being able to practice being an adult, Taylor notes; they aren’t given leeway to get it wrong and be forgiven. The solution, both agree, is complex. It requires breaking down systems, yes, but also infusing our actions, decisions, and reactions with grace. –KR

RETHINKING WITH ADAM GRANT Episode: “Satya Nadella is building the future” To see high-powered mindful leadership in action, look no further than Microsoft’s third CEO, Satya Nadella. Over time he’s shifted the company’s culture from one of intense competition toward cooperation. “I borrowed from Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset,” he says. “It helped us go from ‘know-italls’ to ‘learn-it-alls,’ which gave us more permission to

look inwards.” This techoriented yet broadly insightful conversation, hosted by organizational psychologist Adam Grant, explores our relationship to remote work, well-being as key to productivity, the question of “refraining from weekend emails” as a leader, what makes people want to come back to work, and how managers can show deep care for employees. –AT

BEING WELL PODCAST Episode: “Healing Trauma in a Toxic Culture with Gabor Maté’” Dr. Gabor Maté is an expert on trauma, addiction, and childhood development.

In this episode, he joins podcast hosts Dr. Rick Hanson and his son Forrest for a sprawling conversation about Maté’s new book. The subject matter spans numerous philosophies, religions, theories, and personal stories with a throughline of whole-body, whole-society

66 mindful December 2022

well-being. Maté offers a fascinating perspective on human health as deeply relational in every way, tied to our physical, psychological, and social environment. He offers much food for thought when we consider the medical sector, what it means to be well in today’s Western world, and the harmful effects of suppressing what we really feel. –AWC

BELOVED ECONOMIES Transforming How We Work Jess Rimington and Joanna L. Cea • Page Two

“Why are we trapped in exhausting, harmful modes of working, and what is possible when we innovate out of them?” ask Jess Rimington and Joanna L. Cea. Throughout Beloved Economies, the duo meet difficult questions with skill and optimism. They spent seven years (including a stint as visiting scholars at Stanford) learning how organizations and companies challenge “business as usual” by “prioritizing well-being, meaning, connection, and resilience.” Here, they offer guidance to help us all transform what isn’t working about the way we work.

Cea and Rimington begin by naming how the growth-at-all-costs paradigm drives illness, injustice, and the climate emergency. Their questions feel daring, unbounded, full of love: ​​ “Why shouldn’t we have an economy that makes us feel valued and cared for? Makes us feel safe.

Seen. Inspired.” Taking cues from civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Virgil A. Wood, the authors call this a beloved economy. They recommend seven practices to align with this vision: Share Decision-Making Power; Prioritize Relationships; Reckon with History; Seek Difference; Source from Multiple Ways of Knowing; Trust There Is Time, and Prototype Early and Often.

The following chapters flesh out each practice with real-world examples. Collaborators include RUNWAY, an Oakland-based financial firm that implemented UBI for Black entrepreneurs early in the pandemic; the Creative Reaction Lab in St. Louis, MO, that helps institutions redesign to embrace equity and diversity; and Buffalo, NY’s popular education programs that uplift the region’s vibrant histories. All demonstrate that transformative leadership isn’t about having the answers, but rather about imaginatively reorienting ourselves, one decision at a time, toward radical connection, respect, and belonging. –AT

Holiday SWEEPSTAKES

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PRIZE PACKAGE INCLUDES • The Set Boundaries Catalogue from Nedra Tawwab

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• Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Live: My Essentials Mindfulness Journal from Parallax Press

• Choose Growth: A Workbook for Transcending Trauma, Fear, and Self-Doubt from Penguin Random House • Patricia Greer’s Whispers of the Soul: New and Selected Poems

Enter online by December 12, 2022 for your chance to win!

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read, listen, stream

T IM E L E S S • AU T HE N T I C • T R A NSF OR M AT I ONA L

Discover newfound freedom in life’s ever-changing flow of endings and beginnings with the wise words of Pema Chödrön, beloved Buddhist nun and bestselling author of When Things Fall Apart.

Using the lens of ecopsychology, Returning the Self to Nature shows that the pervasive and extreme forms of narcissism we find in many modern societies are fundamentally the result of alienation from the natural world.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Gorgeously illustrated 52-card deck and guidebook with empowering archetypes of the sacred feminine to amplify your innate knowing and invigorate your potential. The feminine creates and transforms, adapts and abides, loves and consoles.

Your own potential is reflected in her many faces.

Experience the powerful, revitalizing, feminine “lunar” energy at the heart of Kundalini yoga practice, through this beautifully illustrated guide with over 170 examples of asana, pranayama, mantra, and meditations for practitioners of all levels.

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HOW WE GROW THROUGH WHAT WE GO THROUGH Self-Compassion Practices for Post-Traumatic Growth Christopher Willard • Sounds True

How We Grow Through What We Go Through offers the reader the latitude to explore how trauma shows up for us as individuals, then the opportunity to consider a personalized path forward with an array of options at our fingertips. Christopher Willard welcomes readers in with a compassionate and easy-tofollow breakdown of the latest neuroscience of trauma. He normalizes and explains the ways traumas and triggers can show up in our bodies, minds, and hearts, offering dozens of mindfulness

practices to help each of us tailor our journey to fit what we need in the moment.

“That’s what we can do: We can love ourselves and keep going forward. We may not forget, but we can reset, restart, and rebuild a life stronger for what we’ve been through,” Willard writes. This is a straightforward, unpretentious guidebook for anyone looking to understand their trauma and how sciencebacked mindfulness practices can help us open our hearts to both ourselves and others in order to heal. –AWC

REST IS RESISTANCE A Manifesto Tricia Hersey • Little, Brown Spark

In reading what Tricia Hersey calls a field guide to navigate the reality of capitalism and white supremacy, a metaphorical pillow, a map for “rest as resistance,” what is prominent is her continual nods to the work she draws from.

Each chapter begins with a spacious invitation to slowly read quotes, poems, rest meditations, and acknowledgments to her inspiration: Afrofuturism, Womanist theology, intergenerational wisdom, and Black Liberation theology, to name a few. Hersey reminds

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us that the possibilities for rest are endless (even if that requires deprogramming from the fear embedded in “hustle culture”). For you, rest might be accepting Hersey’s invitation to take a nap in the middle of the day. For someone else, rest might be taking a break from social media. We each get to choose what serves our mind and body most, within the restless dominant culture—and Hersey’s gentle call to lie down while reading her book is a modest place to start. –KR ●

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Mindful, ISSN 2169-5733, published bimonthly. Subscriptions: $24 US, $34 CDN, $44 Intl. Mailing address: 515N State Street, Suite 300, Chicago IL. 60654. Central Business Office: 5765 May St, Halifax, NS B3K 1R6 Canada. Publisher: Bill Corsten; Founding Editor: Barry Boyce; Editor-in-Chief: Heather Hurlock. Publication mailing address: 515 N. State Street, Suite 300, Chicago IL. 60654.

Headquarters: Mindful Magazine, 5765 May St, Halifax, NS B3K 1R6 Canada. Total no. of copies: actual 66,725, avg 69,599; Mailed outside-county paid/requested subs: actual 33,354, avg 35,829; Mailed in-county paid/ requested subs: actual 0, avg 0; Paid dist. outside the mails including sales through dealers and other paid dist. outside USPS: actual 11,329, avg 11,958; Paid dist., other classes: actual 0, avg 0; Total paid/requested dist.: actual 44,683, avg 47,787; Free or nominal rate outside-county: actual 406, avg 401; Free or nominal rate in-county: actual 0, avg 0; Other classes mailed through the USPS: actual 0, avg 0; Free or nominal rate outside the mail: actual 709, avg 737; Total free or nominal rate: actual 1,115, avg 1,138; Total dist.: actual 45,798, avg 48,925; Copies not dist.: actual 20,927, avg 20,624; Total: actual 66,725, avg 69,599; Percent paid: actual 97.6% avg 97.7%; Paid electronic copies: actual 2,549, avg 2,955; Total paid print copies and paid electronic copies: actual 47,232, avg 50,742; Total print dist. and paid electronic copies: actual 48,347 avg 51,880; Percent paid (both print and electronic copies): actual 97.7%, avg 97.8%.

December 2022 mindful 71

point of view

THE ILLUSION OF INTIMACY

by BARRY BOYCE, FOUNDING EDITOR

m

72 mindful December 2022

You already feel like you know them so well—after all, they’ve been residing in your living room, on your phone, in your computer, at your dentist’s office, and on your coffee table—that all the get-to-know-you small talk goes straight out the window. “So, what do you do?...Oh, right.”

Research results about the phenomenon are mixed concerning how detrimental such a relationship may be. It’s likely harmless, and practically unavoidable, in small and medium doses. It’s clearly problematic, though, when it rises to the level of stalkerish obsession. It

known, it’s also natural that we’ll feel a parasocial connection with them. As with all beneficial features of life, though, there is a downside. A distortion takes place with those we admire at a distance: These objects are much, much farther away than they appear. We don’t know the whole person, just a slice of them blown all out of proportion. Yet we begin to trust them and rely on them, as if they provided what an actual friend or actual community could provide.

That’s one thing when a basketball star is endorsing a color printer, but when it comes to mental health, for

A distortion takes place with those we admire at a distance: These objects are much, much farther away than they appear. can also turn toxic when fans support blatant bad behavior simply because the celebrity they’ve bonded to has become so much a part of how they give meaning to their existence.

These egregious forms of celebrity worship, seemingly born of loneliness and isolation, are not the only reason to take a moment to consider the effects of the cult of celebrity. The rapid rise of an economy where our attention has become the main product for many enterprises relies on an ever-growing cadre of celebrity influencers. We live in a time when it’s very likely that someone will feel they know more people through media than they know on their street or in their building.

As far as we can tell, we humans have always celebrated heroes, created icons we could admire and emulate. And because they’re widely

example, relying largely on advice gathered in a one-way relationship is not sound.

Especially since the pandemic, we have lots of mindfulness and mental health resources available at a distance, and that is good, but at a certain point, we all need companionship, support, and guidance that is not delivered in a one-way relationship. If mindfulness is to integrate itself further into our societies and advance beyond its status as a fad—a celebrity of sorts—it needs to be fostered in community and in real intimacy. It has to be social, not just parasocial. ● ABOUT THE AUTHOR Barry Boyce is the founding editor of Mindful and Mindful.org and author of The Mindfulness Revolution. He has been an avid mindfulness practitioner for over 40 years.

ILLUSTRATION BY TOM BACHTELL

Julia Child—the celebrity chef whose life has lately been chronicled in an HBO series and a CNN documentary—was surprised to find that when her gawky, quirky public television cooking show became a hit, viewers seemed to think they knew her. More than that, they wanted to show up and be part of her life. She needn’t have been so surprised by all this since, only a few years before, sociologists Richard Wohl and Donald Horton had stumbled upon this phenomenon, calling it “parasocial interaction.”

These fancy words describe something we’re all familiar with: the feeling that we truly know someone we’ve been repeatedly exposed to (or magnetically drawn to) on television, or nowadays through myriad forms of social media, and yes, even through magazines. Psychologists point to parasociality as a one-sided relationship where the celebritee pours time, emotional VIDEO energy, and COURSE commitment into Come As the celebrity, who You Are doesn’t know them at all. It’s an Barry Boyce odd relationship leads a 7-day to say the least. self-paced Like most of us, mindfulness I imagine, I’ve retreat. had a handful of encounters over mindful.org/ the years with a diy-retreat celebrity—all a bit awkward. It’s just incredibly hard to treat them as normal people.

RAMA SPEAKS THE TEACHINGS OF RAMA – DR. FREDERICK LENZ “A brilliant and wonderful distillation of Rama’s recorded talks.”

–James F. Chiles, Software Systems Consultant

This beautifully organized synthesis of Rama’s core teachings, with commentaries by long-time student Lawrence Borok, has just been published.

Print and eBook editions available both on Amazon and in bookstores

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING American-born Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz practiced and taught a radical pathway to Enlightenment. He adapted the venerable Eastern practices of Tantric Buddhism to a modernday Western setting. Larry Borok does a wonderful job of organizing and distilling Rama’s core teachings in a manner that preserves their original essence while retaining their nuance, depth, and humor.

– Andrew Jurkevics, Director, The Adi Da Foundation I was especially drawn to feeling the subtle energies of the actual words of Rama that are presented in each chapter.

Lawrence Borok’s comments act as a guide layered on top of a very large body of knowledge.

The combined effect is like riding a powerful ocean wave.

So, this meticulously rendered book has turned into quite an adventure for me!

– Jeff Cohodas, Meditation Teacher

The longer we can stay in the thoughtless state, the more the obscurations are washed away, because when we stop thought a tremendous amount of energy is released. That energy purifies the mind … _________________ A teacher shows you how to refine yourself until you’re able to enter into nirvana on your own. Then no more teacher. Guess what? Only Enlightenment everywhere.

— Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz

WHO I S RAM A? Dr. Frederick Lenz (1950–1998), known to his students as Rama, taught several hundred Americans an unusual blend of spiritual practices for 20 years. It was a combination of insights and techniques shared by Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Hindu Vedanta and Yoga, and Native American mysticism. These were implemented through a unique approach to living in the modern world, and built upon a foundation of meditation and mindfulness. It was all directed towards Enlightenment.

Enlightenment means the dissolution of the finite self into the infinite mind, but how is that actually done? It is quite a long and complex process. Rama explained to us, in detail, how the process works, with its many interdependencies and stages.

This book consolidates the material contained in 120 audio tapes he recorded into a single book. In these talks Rama teaches this pathway to Enlightenment, carefully breaking down the steps and how to do them in our modern world. While many of the things he taught can be found in spiritual books, many cannot, and none all in the same place.

The book is full of extended quotes from these tapes in which he discusses each part of the Enlightenment process in depth. As the title of the book says, the idea is to let Rama speak directly to you.