Mindful Magazine February 2023 - Peace of Mind

Peace of Mind

You Are Worthy of Rest and Care

RECLAIM YOUR BRAIN FROM BIG TECH 10 MEDITATIONS TO UNCOVER JOY, INNER CLARITY, AND AUTHENTICITY

BE AWAKE TO THE ADVENTURE OF YOUR LIFE

MAKE MINDFULNESS A DAILY HABIT 4 evidence-based tips for sticking to your practice

Sweet Relief

If the burden of burnout was lifted, how would you be empowered to show up in your world? It starts with you, and connects to all of us. Explore a curated meditation retreat to bring you relief and restoration.

p.58

Love Is Already Yours

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Rest, Renew, Restore

We are not immune from burnout here at Mindful. It takes constant communication for our small but mighty team to feel supported, balanced, fair, healthy—to create the psychological safety necessary for all of us to show up, make mistakes, fix them… and be real together so we can make quality things together.

We use weekly “Too Hot To Handle” check-ins to take each others’ temperature, see who’s “on fire,” and discuss how we can spread the work around to make sure we’re hot enough to keep us warm, not burn us out. Sometimes our systems fail us. Sometimes we take on too much. It takes all of us working together to maintain compassionate systems that support our thriving at work.

This New Year, rather than offering you a “New Year, New You” issue, we wanted to to explore how mindfulness can help with one of the most complex problems of our time: burnout. Because burnout isn’t an individual problem, it’s a collective challenge partially fueled by our disconnection from each other. Burnout happens to people who have been pushing themselves to perform for an extended period of time. It’s a byproduct of passion and drive embedded in unkind systems. But those systems were created by people, which means they can be updated.

I’m excited to share that we just launched a new Mindful at Work program, to help organizations learn the foundational skills of resilience, focus, and self-compassion and foster high-quality interpersonal relationships. And we packed this issue with some of the themes we think are important for healing burnout.

On page 12, public health innovator Jenée Johnson offers a practice to rest, relax, and release stress. On page 24, writer Mara Gulens shares the latest research on strengthening clear, vulnerable communication at work. On page 38, meditation teacher Caverly Morgan reveals how we can remember our belonging. And on page 58, we curated a meditation retreat to help you take your individual practice into your relationships and your community.

Your personal mindfulness practice can help you create respectful boundaries for yourself, connect you to your purpose, and reveal your values. By building that knowledge of yourself, you learn how to more deeply respect others. And when we can build respect for each other, at work, at home, and in our communities, we can create the kind of positive culture change where caring for yourself and others is the norm. And from there, we can begin to repair. Together.

With love and gratitude,

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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Editor-in-Chief

Heather Hurlock heather.hurlock@mindful.org

Senior Editors

Kylee Ross

Amber Tucker

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Ava Whitney-Coulter

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Stephanie Domet

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What Does Your Practice Look Like?

Every mindfulness practice looks a bit different. Here are some of the ways our readers tap into a mindful moment off the meditation cushion.

What did you grow up doing—in your family, culture, or community—that helps you feel mindful?

Hiking and cross-country skiing in the forest

katakerley

Practicing gratitude!

vivekvasantha

Baking/cooking

intendedwell

Sitting outside watching the clouds and just being still dr.bethanyj

positivepowercoach

What activity helps you feel present and grounded?

Meditation maslow40

Looking at the water rolling over rocks at the beach access_stress_support

Decluttering, cleaning, journaling kadikoybornova

How often do you meditate?

What song helps you feel present and grounded?

“Perfect Day” by Lou Reed mindfulskatergirl

“What Do I Know” by Ed Sheeran mjwatson4

“Answer: Love Myself” by BTS ella_lama

“Living in the Moment” by Jason Mraz esin_alptekin

“Annie’s Song” by John Denver wickthechick

“Kiss of Life” by Sade calmbuddybox

“Hallelujah” by KD Lang 1eyed2horned

↑ @christianewolfmindfulness shares a snap from the Berlin Marathon. Check out her piece on resilience and running in our October 2022 issue.

Next Question

How's your relationship with your body?

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

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@sharonsalzberg reminds us that part of mindfulness practice is to notice and let go of the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening. "There’s spaciousness there. And there’s peace there, even in the presence of fear."

↓ @shelby3j shares a moment they felt present and connected.

TOP OF mind

DIAL FOR GRATITUDE

Call the Gratitude Circle Hotline for three choices: Listen to the message of the day, leave a message thanking

a frontline worker, or text a message of gratitude. With your choice, you can savor a moment of gratitude and share it through messages displayed at

hotline.gratcircle. com. Najma Khorrami, founder at Gratitude Circle, says this started as a way to show appreciation to frontline workers and to move toward a more grateful world. “I hope anyone who reads a message shares it and sees the value in it,” she

says. “I hope they get a reward from it, a boost in their morale.”

STORIES THAT SPARK WONDER

Journalist Ambar Castillo and scientist/writer Brittany Trang are the 2022-2023 recipients of the new Sharon Begley Science Reporting Fellowship. Throughout her career, Begley was highly respected for her writing, which appeared in numerous publications,

WELCOME OUTDOORS

including Mindful (her Brain Science column appeared in every issue up to Spring 2021). She was also a tireless mentor to up-and-coming writers. The paid one-year fellowship, with funding raised by Begley’s husband and other donors, carries on her legacy by “diversifying the ranks of science and health journalists and fostering better coverage of science that is relevant to all,” according to STATnews.com.

A new graduate certificate offered through the University of Colorado Boulder aims to equip the next leaders in the outdoor recreation industry with best practices for inclusion and equity, with the goal of making outdoor recreation more accessible to all. Georgina Miranda, a social entrepreneur and activist who is teaching the program’s inaugural course, Foundations of Inclusivity in the Outdoor Recreation Economy, says on the university website: “Cultivating inclusive environments is a daily practice and way of being. It is everyone’s responsibility to create a more inclusive outdoor industry and the world.”

LIKE THE WAY YOU TALK

From “bae” to “side hustle,” Black Americans’ linguistic innovations are widely adopted, but not always recognized. The Oxford Dictionary of African American English, overseen by celebrated historian, literary critic, The

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK HARPUR / UNSPLASH, MIKE MEYERS / UNSPLASH

Root cofounder, and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is slated to publish in 2025. It will elucidate the variety and significance of African American English—offering, as Gates told The Root, “a history of the African American people from A to Z.”

THE ARTIST IS OUT

Conceptual artist Marina Abramović’s latest exploration of present-moment awareness can be found at Modern Art Oxford through March 5, with “Gates and Portals.” Here, visitors don first

noise-canceling headphones, then blindfolds, to help them drop into the moment. They’re invited to stand, sit, or lie down to see how a different position changes their experience. An activity sheet notes the gallery has been “transformed…to help us slow down, spend time being quiet, to listen and feel the world around us.”

MONEY WELL SPENT

Amid increased need for mental health support due to COVID-19, a MindfulnessBased Cognitive Behavioral Therapy center in Manitoba received

$700,000 from the province to expand its reach and reduce barriers to services. Norwest Co-op Community Health says the money will help develop online programs and give access to hospitals and community groups. In the coming year, they aim to train 70 to 100 new facilitators and expand their services to include youth aged 14 to 17. The center also received funding to develop programs specifically for health care and public safety personnel, peripartum people, seniors, youth, and Indigenous populations.

ACTS OF kindness

by AVA WHITNEY-COULTER

When Kira, a college freshman, learned she couldn’t bring her pet betta fish Theo on her flight home for the summer, Southwest Air employees Ismael and his fiancée Jamee offered to fish-sit. After four months of receiving text and photo updates of the happy fish, Kira went back to school and was reunited with Theo.

they made a deal: If the boy returned the backpack he stole, Davis would use his community connections to help the boy change his path. Since then, Davis says the offers for money, education, and mentorship have flooded in.

GOOD TALK

Instead of turning in the 16-year-old who had mugged his nephew, Winston Davis had a conversation with him and learned that the teen had no parents, job, or education. So

MOUSE HOUSE

British grandfather Gez Robinson went viral on TikTok for posting videos of himself hand-feeding flower petals to two families of mice living in his garden. Robinson constructed a “wildlife area” for his little friends, complete with tiny houses. He speaks to the mice daily and even named them: the Honeysuckle family and the Bramble family.

FISH TALE

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Research News

by B. GRACE BULLOCK

Research gathered from King’s College London, Toronto Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto, and University of Utah

GROWING UP KIND

Offer valid until March 1, 2023

Mindfulness interventions using kindnessand compassionbased meditation may be linked to improved wellbeing and behavior. Researchers at King’s College London reviewed 10 studies with 807 youth where encouraging kindness or compassion for others improved stress, anxiety, depression, negative mood, behavior and attention problems, and mindfulness. Analyses of studies using self-compassion meditation found significant positive changes in stress, anxiety, depression,

negative mood, mindfulness, selfcompassion, life satisfaction, resilience, gratitude, and curiosity. Gains in prosocial behavior and cognitive function were also identified in two studies. Overall, results indicate that kindness and compassion can benefit mental health and well-being in youth. These effects were generally stronger in

MINDFUL WITH AUTISM

The feasibility and impact of a virtual, groupbased mindfulness intervention designed for adults with autism was explored by researchers in Toronto. Based on feedback from adults with autism, the MindfulnessBased Stress Reduction

Self-compassion meditation created significant positive changes in stress, anxiety, resilience, gratitude, and more.

research with younger, healthy children and those that used experienced meditation teachers.

(MBSR) program was modified to include six weeks of 60-minute sessions, shorter meditation

practices, and no full-day retreat.

50 adults who identified as having autism were invited to attend the program. Participants chose between activities that suited them—for example, during mindful eating practice, they could use either a raisin or a familiar food. Autism advisors attended each session, and group members were allowed to choose their preferred mode of communication— text, audio, or videoconferencing. In addition to attending online group sessions, they were given workbooks with session summaries, homework, and links to video and audio practices. They were assessed before and after the program and three months later.

37 participants completed the program and found the modified course feasible and acceptable. They reported improvements in levels of distress, self-compassion, and mindfulness

that were generally maintained three months later. One of the greatest benefits they noted was the opportunity to connect with peers with autism. In all, the study suggests that online, group mindfulness courses, designed inclusively with autism communities, may be benficial for adults with autism.

LEGALLY SPEAKING Mindfulness

meditation might help law students better cope with anxiety, depression, and stress, and reduce alcohol use. In a pilot study at the University of Utah, 31 secondand third-year law students were assigned to a 13-week mindful lawyering course for two hours per week. Another 33 students attended another law class of the same duration.

Participants in

the mindfulness group received training in focused attention, body scan, open monitoring, and compassion meditation, and were offered tools to create a regular mindfulness practice. They were also asked to meditate for at least five minutes per day, to be increased gradually until they reached 20 minutes of daily practice. Students recorded their practice in a journal, completed weekly reading assignments on mindfulness and law practice, and wrote short reflection papers during the course. After 13 weeks, the mindfulness group showed significant improvements on measures of stress, anxiety, depression, negative mood, mindfulness, and unhealthy alcohol use compared to students who attended a typical law class. This suggests that a mindfulness course tailored to law students might help them better cope with the effects of stress.

MBSR Foundations

MBSR Teacher Advancement Intensive (TAI)

Curriculum Study Group and Skill-Building

Ethos of MindfulnessBased Programs

Learn

professional.brown.edu

BEGINNER’S MIND Q&A

AN OCEAN OF EASE

QI know I need to rest—but I’m so stressed out I can’t manage to relax. How can I access the kind of relaxation that will allow me to actually rest and release stress?

AStress, trauma, and tension can hamper our ability to rest and relax. Relaxation is a practice, like any other. Try daily relaxation drills—take 20 minutes once or twice daily to deeply relax.

1 Start by sitting upright and comfortably, dropping your gaze. Don’t force yourself to relax, but simply sit quietly and allow your mind to float freely until it settles down.

2 Let thoughts come and go as they please. Don’t exert yourself by trying to block these thoughts. Don’t dwell on them, either.

3 Stay with your breath like the waves of the ocean, coming in to shore and rolling back out. Drop your shoulders, relax the jaw. Unfurrow your brow. Allow your mind to float freely. Until it settles down. Letting thoughts come and go as they please. This is relaxation. This is rest.

Jenée Johnson is a program innovation leader at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, embracing mindfulness, trauma, and racial healing.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY BISHOP / UNSPLASH, COURTESY OF JANÉE JOHNSON

VOICES RISING

BEN PAINTER & SELENA LA’CHELLE COLLAZO

Teaching by Example

by AVA WHITNEY-COULTER

Now is a critical moment to bolster mental health support for school-aged children and teenagers, say Ben Painter and Selena La’Chelle Collazo, two of four partners at WholeSchool Mindfulness. “I think a lot of schools are in crisis mode,” says Painter, who focuses on strategic growth for the organization.

WholeSchool Mindfulness helps schools create, fill, and support the position of a Mindfulness Director— a permanent staff member who works at a school and teaches mindfulness to students, staff, and parents. “We strive to live out justice by partnering with communities to practice joy, equity, and inclusion, so community is woven throughout the way that we think about the work that we do,” says La’Chelle Collazo, who is responsible for outreach and recruitment of Mindfulness Directors. Since 2019, WholeSchool has placed 15 Mindfulness Directors in schools across the US.

Reflecting on her own education, La’Chelle Colazzo credits her greatgrandmother, Bertha, who loved to learn but was pulled from school in the sixth grade to look after five younger siblings. La’Chelle Collazo now holds five university degrees. She smiles when she remembers the

time that Bertha tried to enroll her in kindergarten at the age of three.

In college, La’Chelle Colazzo struggled with severe depression and mindfulness was the game changer that helped her heal. “I just thought it was going to help me be present. But it really shifted my mental health and gave me a new way to live my life,” she says.

For Painter, mindfulness was part of his education at Middlesex School in Massachusetts, taught by Doug Worthen who later became a cofounder of WholeSchool Mindfulness. Painter says that his practice stayed consistent partly because mindfulness had helped some of his family with mental illness, but mainly because he thought Worthen was cool and relatable.

“I think it speaks to the teacher-student relationship and people embodying the practice in authentic ways—that can be a bit contagious, so these practices will spread at the natural speed of trust within a community,” he says.

“Middlesex was communicating to me that this mental health support isn’t just for some students who need it; this is a kind of foundational learning that we want for all of our students.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY COURTESY BEN PAINTER AND SELENA LA’CHELLE COLLAZO, ILLUSTRATION BY LOGIN / ADOBESTOCK

These libraries celebrate community through programming dedicated to exploring the humanity of readers and creating inclusive spaces—reminding us that we’re all interconnected.

Check It Out

Libraries are community hubs, alive with curious readers and researchers, storytelling, and curated workshop programming. The Library of Things takes community services found in libraries one step further. With locations throughout the United Kingdom, the Library of Things lets people borrow “things” they may otherwise buy or not have access to. The process is simple: Reserve, let’s say, a sewing machine, pasta maker, steam cleaner, or cordless hedge trimmer from the online catalog, pick it up at a local self-service kiosk, use the thing, and return it for the next person to use when you’re done. Sound familiar?

Quiet Time

One Saturday each month from October to December 2022, the Tazewell County Public Library in Virginia has opened exclusively to children with autism and their families

for their new program Autism in the Library. “We decided to design a program specifically for children with autism because they’re welcome in their library,” outreach services coordinator Tammy Powers told WVVA. During the event, the library offers story time, a sensory room with kinetic sand, clay, Lego, building blocks, and a quiet room.

Lost and Found

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a precious family photo, a piece of children’s art, a love letter never sent, or a scribbled note tucked in a library book worth? Perhaps a public exhibition. Ten years ago, Sharon McKellar, a librarian at the Oakland Public Library in California, began collecting the objects left in returned books. Now, the public library displays her collection in an exhibition called “Found in a Library Book,” offering snapshots of the lives of anonymous readers in the community.

PHOTOGRAPH BY FAHRUL AZMI / UNSPLASH

Currently, 92% of the English countryside is inaccessible to the public. Reviving an ancient custom of wandering freely, the Right to Roam campaign seeks change through music, picnics, and joy. Campaigners promote responsible stewardship of the land and broader access to nature’s health benefits.

MINDFUL OR MINDLESS?

by AMBER TUCKER

A man trying to return to New York from Canada via bus is now in the grip of the law after being charged with smuggling three dangerous Burmese pythons. He was hiding them (no metaphors, please) inside his pants. But are they emotional support pythons? We may never know.

An Ontario summer camp brought together rural highschool students alongside healthcare professionals to explore career options in health care, while sharing tools like meditation to maintain well-being in a demanding field.

In California, a law taking effect Jan. 1, 2023, decriminalizes jaywalking where “it is safe to do so.” While lawmakers rightly recognize that jaywalking laws enable racial profiling and penalize lower-income people, it’s hardly radical to say that people shouldn’t get criminal charges for crossing a street.

“Wally does things alligators do not do,” Joseph Henney in York, PA, told The Guardian. And he’d be correct, because Wally is his registered emotional support alligator. Henney adds that Wally is “famous for his hugs.” Adorable, as long as he’s not hugging with his jaws.

There’s a new record for the highest price ever paid for sandals: A buyer ponied up nearly $220,000 USD at auction for a pair of Birkenstocks owned in the ’70s by Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. Sadly, without such a keepsake, most of us have only our smartphones to remember him by. ●

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

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You may know that mindfulness can help you change your habits—but when it comes to building the habit of meditation, questions about how much to practice (and how to stick with it over time) may leave you shrugging your shoulders instead of relaxing them. Here are four research-based strategies to

STICK WITH PRACTICE

By Carly Hunt

If you find yourself struggling to start or keep up a meditation practice, you’re not alone. Although the instructions for basic mindfulness meditation are simple (pay attention to your breathing in and out; when your mind wanders, notice that and gently bring the attention back to your breath), that doesn’t mean meditating itself is always easy. Research suggests that new and experienced meditators alike face barriers to practice.

For instance, a study I published with colleagues in 2020 found that new meditators often question whether meditation will in fact be beneficial, and doubt whether they’re meditating correctly. New meditators may also struggle to find space and time for regular practice, and may worry that meditation conflicts with their cultural or familial norms. Even after people complete a formal meditation course, pitfalls are common: Their meditation frequency often drops; even experienced

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carly Hunt, PhD, is a psychologist, researcher, and educator. She has published on topics in positive and sport performance psychology, taught the science of happiness, and counseled athletes, students, and adults on improving health, well-being, and performance. She is currently a research associate at the University of Virginia and psychologist in private practice at Present Mind Consulting, LLC.

meditators describe how hard it is to face difficult feelings that can arise in meditation, like anxiety.

As a meditation researcher and practitioner myself, I admit that it can be tough to keep up the habit each and every day. Yet, amid systemic oppression, economic instability, the climate emergency, and the frenetic pace of the average workplace, we all need the practice now more than ever. If you want to start or return to a consistent meditation practice, but are feeling stuck or discouraged, read on for some science-backed ways to stay consistent and strengthen your mindfulness habit.

A “Right” Way to Meditate?

The importance of daily meditation practice has been a subject of some debate among researchers in recent years. Does it matter if we meditate at home on a regular basis, or is it enough to take a teacherled course without integrating formal meditation into our daily life?

Researchers have tended to study this issue by asking people enrolled in a formal meditation course, like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s MindfulnessBased Stress Reduction program, to record how much they meditate outside of class on a daily or weekly basis. They then add up

how much each person practiced and look to see if people who meditate more at home benefit more from the course than those who practice less.

Although multiple studies suggest that more practice means more benefits, others report that it doesn’t matter how much people meditate—they’ll improve about the same amount, in terms of clinical outcomes such as symptoms of depression and anxiety. What could that mean? These inconsistent findings signal that meditation practice in daily life could be beneficial, and that factors other than how long we practice can make a difference.

For instance, a factor that could be equally or more important is the quality of practice. Researchers have measured practice quality by assessing the balanced resolve toward receptive, present-moment attention during a meditation session. There are also many sideeffect benefits that come from taking part in any →

RESOURCE

How to Meditate

When we meditate, we inject far-reaching and longlasting benefits into our lives. Let us walk you through the basics in our mindful guide on how to meditate.

mindful.org/ how-tomeditate

New meditators may need to practice every day in order to benefit, and may reap even greater same-day benefits the longer they practice.

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4 Tips to Help You Meditate Every Day

Starting a practice that benefits your well-being, and sticking with it over time, doesn’t have to be a struggle. Here are a few evidencebased tips for integrating meditation into your life.

1

Try meditating in a group, either in-person or virtually

When it comes to health behaviors, research consistently shows that social support and watching other people do what we want to do helps us integrate it into our own lives. Although it’s tempting to practice in isolation using the variety of smartphone applications and readily available online resources on meditation (and doing so can be very helpful), the energy of a group can be sustaining. Look for meditation groups at local meditation or counseling centers, or start your own.

2

Each time you practice, pause and remind yourself why you’re meditating

Is it to live life more fully, be less emotionally reactive, or offer more compassion to others? Research indicates that our behavioral intentions partially drive our actions. If we forget why we intended to do something, it’s easier to start feeling like the behavior is meaningless, and to be thrown off course. Let your deepest intentions guide you.

3

Reflect on the science-backed benefits of meditation

When we believe that a behavior will benefit us, we’re more likely to do it. Research suggests that meditation can increase positive emotions, reduce anxiety, lessen unconscious bias, and even (literally) help us sleep better at night. The benefits may even extend beyond ourselves to our interpersonal relationships and communities, through helping us be more forgiving and compassionate toward others.

4

Nurture positive emotions

Findings from a recent study suggest that people who tend to experience more positive feelings in daily life are more likely to start and keep up a meditation practice. Another study reported that new meditators who experienced more positive emotions during their first few meditation sessions were more likely to continue the practice over time. When you meditate, try to notice any positive feelings, sense of meaning, or other benefits that emerge during and following your sessions. More generally, try to schedule pleasant activities during your day, and intentionally notice positive feelings that may arise. Consider trying this savoring practice to boost your tendency to experience positive feelings in daily life.

class or program designed to support well-being, such as the sense of belonging we get through interacting with fellow participants and teachers.

The Perks of Daily Practice

The method of totaling the time people spend meditating, and seeing if that predicts improved well-being over weeks or months, doesn’t necessarily show us the more nuanced, day-today picture. Will we tend to feel better on days when we meditate, versus on days when we don’t?

A new study sheds light on this issue, suggesting that daily practice is necessary to benefit, at least among new meditators. Researchers asked 82 adults participating in a 21-day mindfulness meditation course to report how often and for how long they practiced meditation each day. Participants also rated various thoughts and feelings expected to be improved by meditation, like mindful awareness and positive emotions, multiple times per day via their smartphones.

This approach, termed intensive experience sampling, is innovative in that it allows researchers to understand people’s behaviors and experiences as they unfold in their real lives, as opposed to asking people

to remember what they felt and did over a period of weeks (our memory often fails us here).

The researchers found that people experienced more positive emotions and mindful awareness during the hours following meditation practice sessions. What’s more, longer sessions produced even better same-day outcomes. This suggests that daily practice matters. Interestingly, they also observed that meditation practice effects did not accumulate over the 21-day period, or carry over to the next day. Taken together, these results indicate that new meditators may need to practice every day in order to benefit, and may reap even greater same-day benefits the longer they practice.

Be kind to yourself if you stray from your meditation goals. Although researchers are actively seeking to better understand how to help people make meditation a habit, one thing is sure: Criticizing ourselves after we fail to behave in ways we’d like actually undermines our ability to change. Appreciate the time you have devoted to your practice, as well as your desire to increase your and others’ well-being through meditation. If you find yourself particularly caught in selfjudgment, consider practicing some self-compassion. Above all, recognize that each moment presents an opportunity to start again. ●

Mindfulness might sometimes feel like just another fad, destined to pass, like oxygen bars and Kardashians. But, Elaine Smookler writes, it takes grit and an ongoing intention toward wellbeing to keep mindfulness from becoming just another failure to make us thinner or less irritable. Instead, it offers a practical way to be awake to the dazzling experience of being alive.

Breathe, and Begin Again

by Elaine Smookler

COURSE Getting Started

Tap into your own natural state of mindfulness with more insight and guided meditations from Elaine Smookler. mindful.org/ start

The silence was crushing. I could hear loud screaming and realized it was coming from inside my head. A friend (?) had signed me up for a mindfulness retreat to help me find some peace. Mostly what I noticed was the not-so-peaceful thought: If the person behind me takes one more diabolical slurp of water, I am going to hasten their impermanence, pronto. If I had been allowed to talk, I would have yelled that if mindfulness was the wave of the future—I could wait! That was 25 years and almost 10,000 hours of practice ago. How on earth did I stick around? And why???

You don’t have to look too hard to see mindfulness popping up in hospitals, schools, around kitchen tables, and in corporations. Burnout is taking us all down. It makes sense that we are looking for help. People like me who feel fidgety, sad, depressed, angry, shell-shocked, or heartbroken have heard the word that something about watching your breath might make you feel better. Who knows why, but it seems to be helping other people, so why not give it a go?

One of the things I discovered was that even after years of practice, emptying my mind of all thoughts was not happening. And if I imagined that I would

no longer feel sad or angry, it turns out that all those dark and feisty energies are still around. Mindfulness doesn’t make any of it go away. But as I continue to practice, continue to endure the irritation and boredom of anchoring my attention in my breath or my body or somewhere equally tedious, bit by bit my thoughts have quieted down. Ahhh. I notice that even when I don’t like what’s going on, learning to live in Now-Ville gives me the opportunity to live less in the world of knee-jerk reactivity, even when angry thoughts are on board. Suddenly, the speeding train of life is going in slow motion. Days are still very

full and busy, but there is so much more space between everything.

When I first started practicing, a few decades ago, there seemed to be a lot more time available and practices could go on for hours. These days, a few minutes might be what’s possible—so that’s what I do.

The practice of mindfulness is as alive as its practitioners. And just like them, the practice is always changing. Once upon a time, mindfulness practice might have meant sitting in a room full of strangers with your eyes closed, trying to find and follow your breath, which might be a perfectly OK way to practice. But if you’re coming to mind-

fulness with a history of trauma, for instance, closing your eyes and focusing on the vicinity of your belly might not feel safe and secure for you, and it’s OK for you to notice that and act accordingly.

You don’t have to close your eyes; you don’t have to sit still. Practice whatever guides you back to the present moment. Privilege the kindest, gentlest way that helps you understand the immensity of being present to your life.

The future of mindfulness is up to you. Once you see what it means to be awake to the adventure of your life, mindfulness is what accompanies you to your last breath. ●

No Wasted Moments

On busy days, you might only have the time it takes to walk to the bathroom to practice. Use those few moments to activate your connection to your senses. Come out of your head and make sure that you are operating in the here and now.

If you can feel your feet making contact with the ground, congratulations, you are present, because the present moment is the only time you can experience the sensations of touch. Everything else is just a memory.

A FEW OPTIONS FOR THE PRESENT MOMENT

1 You could be curious about how your mood affects your thoughts.

2 You could choose to anchor in nowness by watching your breath go in and out, or connect to your senses—you could give any number of present-moment experiences your full attention, rather than blindly marching off to war.

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.

Busy days are great days to be intentional about watching the thoughts that rile you up. As soon as your thought parade starts to heat you up, you can be mindful. In other words, pay attention to what’s cooking with you.

3 You could notice what happens to your irritation when you give yourself and the situation a little bit of curiosity and a lot more room to breathe.

PHOTOGRAPH BY UNSPLASH / CARLOS RUIZ HUAMAN

MANAGING STRESS TOGETHER

by Mara Gulens

When it comes to workplace wellbeing and stress, mindfulness can go beyond the individual level. Research suggests that strengthening clear, vulnerable communication and working from the knowledge that we’re in this together can help transform the way we work.

COURSE

Mindful at Work

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

First-generation mindfulness interventions, for the most part based on MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), are designed to improve personal well-being and help individuals feel grounded, even in chaotic circumstances. But it’s “quite medieval,” says Dr. Jutta Tobias Mortlock, to imagine that a personal meditation practice is all that’s required to help individuals work better together.

We now know, says Mortlock, that spending a lot of time in solitary contemplative practice “is not necessarily a guarantee that one learns something, especially as it pertains to understanding what helps me relate to you.” We can’t always access the insights we need through our solo practice.

The interpersonal dimension of workplaces is “a huge and under-studied stressor,” says Mortlock. “The absence of interpersonal conflict makes everything else doable.” It’s the potential of mindful communication in group settings to help people forecast and manage conflict that Mortlock seeks to draw out through team mindfulness.

Smoothing daily interactions and resolving conflicts before they start may sound like pie in the sky to some leaders. However, according to Mortlock, mindfulness can help us do just that—although the tools needed to get there may look a little different from the mindfulness we’re used to.

“It’s nice if I can help people change their relationship with themselves,” says the senior lecturer in organisational psychology at the City University of London, UK. “But that feels toothless when there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way your organization works.”

The focus of Mortlock’s research is to generate sustainable well-being and performance for people together at work. She has introduced over 11,500 adult learners, including many mindfulness skeptics, to mindfulness, and is dedicated to investigating and embedding innovative mindfulness interventions into organizations. Now, through collaboration with active military staff in the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces, her research is helping to develop transformative mindfulness training strategies for high-stress work environments.

FROM ME TO WE

Individualistic attitudes can be a barrier to understanding and cooperation, not only in the mindfulness

community but in workplaces and society in general. While Jon Kabat-Zinn delineated meditation as just one of many ways to become mindful, over the past 40 years meditation has become the tool to independently manage one’s well-being.

“But our world is not independent,” points out Mortlock, whose interest is rooted in management science. “Especially in workplaces—our actions are not independent, they’re interdependent.”

“There’s wonderful literature on mindfulness in the space between people that we haven’t yet translated into mindfulness interventions,” says Mortlock. “MBSR is brilliant, but my argument is that it was designed to help patients with chronic pain.” Most workplace problems are about our relationships with each other.

NO “I” IN TEAM

Mara Gulens launched her journalism career at the Medical Post, but an injury sustained many years later brought her to mindfulness. A seasoned writer and editor, her stories have appeared in publications such as Advertising Age, Chatelaine, and The Globe and Mail Mara lives and works in Toronto.

Mindfulness is in the space between people. “In workplaces, or anywhere you have relationships with people, both the source of stress and the source of relief is quite often in the people,” she says. “The task or the job at hand is not the problem.” When people reframe how they relate to stress, so that they become more interdependent, she notes, “they come to understand they’re not alone, which changes how they feel in response to their stress.”

Mortlock suggests mindfulness meditation and training be supplemented by training people to be caring and considerate, and to have one another’s backs. The curriculum she’s developing, Team Mindfulness Training (TMT), teaches that planning for and responding to stressful circumstances is the responsibility of the collective.  Management science literature is based on the understanding that when members of a group or community perceive their

Individualistic attitudes can be a barrier to understanding and cooperation, not only in the mindfulness community but in workplaces and society in general.

interdependence with one another, much like a flock of birds flying in unison, good things happen. For people in organizations, this means bringing mindful awareness into our communication strategies in very intentional ways. “Recent studies have

practice

Navigate Stress as a Team

Dr. Jutta Tobias Mortlock outlines how anticipating stress as a team and responding collectively can transform workplace challenges.

shown that when teams have this shared team mindfulness, then conflict happens more skillfully and people don’t undermine each other,” Mortlock explains.

Mortlock describes stress management as a social action. The simple act of

caring about somebody else lowers a person’s stress. “It calms me down to listen to you. Humans are designed that way. We can use the fact that you and I having a conversation, where we’re actively listening to each other, calms my body down. This is good for us, so let’s do more with this.”

MEETING STRESS TOGETHER

Two pilot studies, led by Mortlock and published in Frontiers in Psychology in June 2022, brought together high-stress personnel from the UK’s Ministry of Defense to understand whether Team Mindfulness Training

1 Prepare as a team

Brainstorm around your challenges.

As a leader, share a personal concern about an upcoming challenge and invite team members to reciprocate. Where do concerns overlap and diverge? What do individual team members focus on? How can the team prepare to master the challenge together?

Get to know each other’s needs and stress triggers. Strengthen personal connections by helping team members understand each other as human beings and learn how to support one another in times of need. One way to do this is to have team members share “manuals of me,” whereby individuals complete sentences such as “I do my best work when…” or “When I’m stressed, the best way to help me is…”

“Through this training, we’re helping people talk about stress, make it less taboo, share strategies, and learn how to see that they’re not alone.”

DR. JUTTA TOBIAS MORTLOCK

can support individual and collective stress management skills. These studies offer insights into how leaders could start incorporating mindfulness into their organizational systems.

The most important component of the study involved inviting participants to share upcoming work challenges with other group members. In this way, military personnel got to know each other as real people, not just as a person in uniform. “A bit of compassion starts to happen,” Mortlock says. “This is all part of anticipating stress, but anticipating it together.”

The second part of the training dealt with responding to stress. Mortlock says

people tend to be quite hierarchical when dealing with challenges, which can limit communication within the group. TMT trained individuals to talk with each other to solve problems among themselves, instead of hiding conflict, or telling a superior.

“People need to talk about difficulties and challenges together,” says Mortlock. “Mindful organizational management always has these two parts: first, anticipating challenges, and then asking, how do we respond? How do we pool our resources?”

While it’s called Team Mindfulness Training, Mortlock stresses that individuals needn’t necessarily

belong to the same team or workplace department. In fact, it’s sometimes better to start working in small groups that allow people to extend their social networks and become more cross-organizationally connected. “Through this training, we’re helping people talk about stress, make it less taboo, share strategies, and learn how to see that they’re not alone,” she says.

Mortlock plans to make her TMT curriculum available online and open for feedback. “I want us to see more of how we can combine different types of mindfulness practices to get not only techniques that help me,” she says, “but techniques that help us.” ●

Empower everyone to communicate.

Regularly check whether all voices are heard by creating a visual map of who talks to whom during meetings. Does everyone speak and listen in equal proportion? Who dominates the conversation, and who needs encouragement to speak up more regularly? Social contact between team members creates a microculture of collective ownership, so make space for informal chat as well as work talk.

Talk more, not less. Resist the impulse to shut down communication and work in isolation during times of stress. Invite people to share more information, especially about what’s unclear, difficult, or contradictory.

Appreciate team heroes. Reward individuals who actively help others, whether through public recognition or financial incentives.

RECLAIM YOUR BRAIN From Tech

By Erica B. Marcus • Illustrations by Edmon de Haro

If we can pause, pay attention, and tap into our values, we can create habits that not only serve our interests, but support connection and meaning.

You click out of Netflix after watching a whole season of a show, only to realize how late it is and that you have to go to work the next day. What happened to the time?

Many aspects of technology hijack our attention so that we become disconnected from the present moment. We can easily lose track of time and our surroundings. We might

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erica B. Marcus is an author of young adult nonfiction based in Portland, Maine. She is a certified Mindful Schools instructor, Kripalu yoga teacher, and WholeSchool Mindfulness director for an area middle school.

be caught up in habitual reactions rather than making time for thoughtful responses. We might communicate in ways that do not actually serve our basic human needs or those of others. We can start to have a sense of not being fully connected to our lives and the people in them. We can lose our connection to our bodies. We can lose ourselves.

Furthermore, many of us actually use technology to disconnect on purpose. Our phones and computers are easy portals to other worlds. Humans have an innate drive toward comfort and ease, and there’s nothing wrong with having

some escape routes when things get too hard or overwhelming. But that drive toward ease may prevent us from doing the hard, messy (and necessary) work that it takes to turn toward what is uncomfortable.

A Healthy Tech Diet

I find the analogy of food useful when I’m thinking about what it means to use my technology in a healthy way. If you eat too much of any food for your body, whether it’s baby carrots or cake, you will feel like crap. But you can eat until you’re stuffed sometimes, and you

can eat some junk food too, without totally obliterating your overall health.

One thing we know technology can do is rapidly fill our minds with content. Following the old adage “you are what you eat,” it is true that whatever we put into our minds is what we’ll think about. We need to be aware that what we feed our minds creates our mental landscape. Questions we can ask ourselves as part of this journey: What do I put into my mind? Is what I am putting into my mind feeding the kind of psyche I want to have?

It’s not just the what, however, but how much. Just as we can overfill our →

bodies with food, we can overfill our minds with content. Our minds need time to rest, digest, and decompress. If we constantly consume content in every spare minute of our day, there’s very little opportunity for that rest-and-digest state. Aha! moments bubble up in those spaces. Big-picture ideas can weave together in those spaces.

Technology use has lots of nourishing aspects. We can easily connect to friends and family; we can learn about any topic we are interested in; we can create and share our talents, interests, and joys with others who feel similarly. Our lives can absolutely be enhanced through technology, if we make healthy choices. After all, it doesn’t just matter what you do in front of a screen, but what you do when you’re not in front of a screen.

Mindfulness and Tech Habits

A little neuroscience refresher can help us unpack the connection between mindfulness and habits. Neurons are cells in our brains that pass messages among themselves, across synapses, using neurochemicals. They shoot those messages out of a part of the neuron called an axon, which helps transmit electrical impulses from one cell to the next, and collect the messages with their dendrites (the protruding “arms” of a cell that receive information

from other cells). With a repeated behavior or thought (a habit), the axons are myelinated, meaning a sheath forms around the axon, allowing the messages to travel faster and faster. We barely even notice some of the habits we’ve formed, because neurons that are wired together just take such good care of us and make sure it happens.

Now, imagine we want to do something new. Say I don’t want to check Instagram on my phone every time I feel even an inkling of boredom. The good news is that our brains can rewire through a process called neuroplasticity. Once we start noticing our impulse to reach for the phone, we can pause. What’s tricky is that the urge is going to be strong because our neurons

are all myelinated up and are like, “Hey, this is what we do next! Let’s go!” Instead, we must consciously choose, for example, to take a breath in response to that urge. In making that new choice, we start down a new neural pathway. Over time (and, if this is a deep habit, this can really take time and repeated new choices), we can begin the process of rewiring.

Because our impulses and urges are often unconscious and quick, learning how to pay attention to the sensations in the body and thoughts in the mind can help us notice the stimulus to a reaction before we do anything. In the classic sci-fi movie The Matrix, the lead character famously dodges bullets because he is able to focus so completely that it seems as if time has slowed. With mindfulness, we can

“Meditation and exercise helped me a lot, but the biggest thing that helped with the cravings was becoming aware of them.”

CAM ADAIR, founder of Game Quitters

see the mental “bullet” coming and make a choice rather than just being hit by the impulse and reaction. If we regularly practice mindfulness and thus feel better in general—happier with ourselves, more grateful, more at ease—then the urge to change that state won’t be as strong. Our baseline is more chill.

The Craving Mind

While using mindfulness as an approach to supporting healthy tech habits is relatively new, strong research demonstrates how mindfulness can be used to break other habits. Judson Brewer, addiction expert, researcher, and author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love—Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits (2017), found that a mindfulness program was twice as effective as a gold-standard treatment program in helping people to quit smoking. Another colleague in the field, Jean Kristeller, found mindfulness to be an effective treatment option to help people who were struggling with binge eating.

In 2016, researchers Manuel Gámez-Guadix and Esther Calvete found that teens who self-reported greater mindful awareness preferred in-person interactions, didn’t use the internet to feel better as frequently, and didn’t have as many problems related to their internet use as other teens. →

Get Real About YOUR TECH USE

How honest can you be about your use of technology? Try this journaling practice to get clear about your intentions and aspirations around your tech, and how your actions align with them. See how honest you can be—no need to judge yourself. The intention of this practice is to become clear about the habits that serve you and those that don’t. Once you have that information, you can make informed choices about your tech use.

m

GO DEEPER

The Environmental Impact of Tech

Knowing the impacts of our buying habits (like getting our hands on the newest, fastest, shiniest smartphone) is the first step to becoming a more mindful consumer. mindful.org/ tech

Dig Deep 1

Think about what’s really important to you. What do you want to have seen or demonstrated as part of your life? Choose the five values that are most important to you.

2 Take each of these values and do a free write on what they mean to you. For example, if authenticity is a value you chose, what do you mean by that? What does that look like and feel like in your life? Go through each one and get clear on what you’d like to be guiding your choices.

1What do you love about your technology? What are the reasons and ways you use it? 2

What is the impact of technology on your life, both positive and negative?

3

Consider how an ideal day might look for you. Write it out in as much detail as you can, including how you’d use technology. What will you do? How will you do it? How will you feel?

3 Choose one of those values and think about a time when you really lived it. What did that feel like in your body? What kinds of thoughts did you have?

4

In what ways do you live your values while using technology?

5 In what ways might your technology use be misaligned with your values?

6 What changes, if any, would you make to really support living your values? (Think about what you might want to do more of and what you might want to do less of.)

Hope has a home: The University of Michigan

Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Program

Tune

February 16, 2023 at 7:00pm EST

Learn more at prechterprogram.org/events

Questions? Reach out to Lisa Fabian at fabianl@umich.edu or visit prechterprogram.org.

Even those who identify as being addicted to technology have used mindfulness to investigate their behavior.

Cam Adair, former gamer and founder of Game Quitters, said:

Meditation and exercise helped me a lot, but the biggest thing that helped with the cravings was becoming aware of them. I started to feel the sensation in my body and recognize that it was controlling me. The more I craved it and didn’t feed the craving, the more it validated that I shouldn’t be gaming.

While this may be an extreme example, all of us have technology habits we can explore. All of us can benefit from cultivating kindness toward ourselves and our investigation. All of us can use support in doing this, knowing we are not alone. Begin your investigation into your own habits and consider discussing what you notice with friends or family.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide what works for you and what doesn’t. Consider this a giant science experiment on yourself. What can you learn? What happens when you really start paying attention? Are there subtle shifts you can make to feel more alive in your life? More connected? Better rested? Less distracted? Less stressed? As my mindfulness teachers often say, don’t believe me. Don’t believe a single word I say. But do try it out. Do be honest with yourself. Do see what happens. ●

RESOURCE

Habit Change

Learn about the mechanics of habit formation and observe them at work in your mind and body by injecting curiosity and kindness into the process.

mindful.org/ habit-change

Excerpted from Attention

Hijacked: Using Mindfulness to Reclaim Your Brain From Tech , by Erica B. Marcus. Text copyright © 2022 by Erica B. Marcus. Reprinted with the permission of Zest Books, a division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this text excerpt may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

Everyone deserves a coach who believes in them. We all do better when we have someone rooting for us.

In collaboration with leading neuroscientists, Mindful has created a one-on-one coaching experience to help you develop tangible, easy-to-apply habits tailored for your individual life.

ARE YOU READY?

SIGN UP AND DISCOVER WHAT’S TRUE FOR YOU.

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“You are enough. Our dreams are enough. This is imagination work. A portal opens when we slow down.”

TRICIA HERSEY

belonging

LOVE IS ALREADY YOURS

When love feels scarce, we are conditioned to slip into survival mode. We cling to our beliefs about who we are in order to feel safe, to compensate for the belief that we are lacking. But seeing these conditioned habits for what they are can help can create pathways for returning, for remembrance, for releasing into our inherent belonging—into the heart of who we are.

By Caverly Morgan

Paulus could, at a minimum, be described as quirky, though some would say he was wildly eccentric. No cell phone. No email account. Making clay pinch pots that he returned to the Earth instead of firing and selling, Paulus was a pipe-smoking, barefootin-summer-grass, NPR-loving, committed to-slow-and-savor hermit of sorts. He was a queer artist living the simplest life I’d ever touched—or, better said, that ever touched me.

But Paulus did more than live differently. Paulus revealed new worlds. This world revolved around a profound love of craft, but not just any craft. Craft that centered around connection, belonging, reverence for the Earth, and beauty. Craft that was about process over product. The how, not the what.

When I first met Paulus Berensohn, I was 16 with a fresh-off-the-press driver’s license and a world that could still be packed into my knapsack. I knew nothing of his book Finding One’s Way with Clay. I knew nothing of his work that furthered the notion that creativity is universal. I knew nothing of the thousands of lives he’d touched through his teachings. To me, he was my fairy godfather (a title he coined and lived into with grace), and he was magic.

His house was full of precious

handmade objects, altars, color, music, and stillness. It was here he introduced me to journal making, working with clay, poetry, qigong, and so much more. Spending time with Paulus was like entering an alternate reality. Everything he created and did felt infused with sacredness. His life was a prayer, a poem, a hymn. Of all the influences he had on my life, what of this new world affected me most? His deep engagement with life and the uplifting joy of his unconditional love. With Paulus, anything felt possible. In experiencing Love, that’s how it goes. In unconditional love, possibility is born. There it sings. In unconditional love, possibility thrives. I was at a Gen X Dharma Teachers gathering in the middle-of-nowhere Colorado when I intuited he was dying. A phone call confirmed it. Expectant and heartbroken, I was

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caverly Morgan is a meditation teacher, author, and visionary who founded Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. She is also the founder of Presence Collective, a community of cross-cultural contemplatives committed to personal and collective transformation.

IN UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, POSSIBILITY THRIVES.

in the middle-of-nowhere North Carolina by the next day. As I entered his post-stroke hospital room, I found him in awe. Completely consumed in wonder. Reciting poems without words. Being moved by music I couldn’t hear. This wasn’t my first experience being with someone who had begun the process of transitioning from this earthly realm, but I had never seen anything like it. Paulus didn’t say he had a stroke. He said, “I’ve been stroked by life!” Eyes open, in every sense of it, Paulus had been stroked by life—and by Love, by awe. He was awake.

I spent the last week of his life with him, over 30 years after our first meeting, and his engagement with life shone more brightly than ever. I will forever be moved by the lack of resistance he displayed as he explored various levels of consciousness with ease and grace. He taught me, even from his deathbed, without words. He taught me about patience and acceptance. Most profoundly, Paulus taught me about Love. →

WHEN LOVE FEELS SCARCE, HOW ARE WE CONDITIONED TO SURVIVE?

The Heart of Who We Are

In so many cases, how we do anything is how we do everything. For many of us, as death calls, we can be found clamoring, clawing, clinging to what we know. Grabbing what we deem as “mine.” Grasping for what we believe we deserve. Gripping the paper doll of identity. This, of course, is not required.

We are deeply habituated to fear death. Our reaction to death can be a mirror for how we face the challenges of our lives. Do we open? Or do we turn away in moments of difficulty? When love feels scarce—when we feel cut off from our very being—how are we conditioned to survive our lives?

Survival strategies (in the sense of preserving a part of our inner self, our beliefs about who and what we believe ourselves to be) are compensations for the felt sense of separation, the perception of falling from grace, when love feels out of reach or an overall belief that we are lacking

takes hold. They are the strategies we develop, the actions we take, to not only move away from the pain of a felt sense of separation but also to attempt to return to feeling whole. We think we need to do something to get love because we have falsely believed that Love is not inherent. That we must do in order to belong.

Survival strategies keep in place the felt experience that we are a separate self. There is little thriving here. Plenty of surviving, however. These strategies—thoughts, beliefs, and actions—offer us just enough to keep our head above water as we navigate the circumstances of our lives. Survival strategies arise on behalf of the ego, and much is woven into their fabric. The inner critic, personal and collective conditioning, our traumas— all become part of the tapestry of who we mistakenly assume ourselves to be.

Seeing these strategies for what they are can create pathways for returning, for remembrance, for releasing into inherent belonging— into the heart of who we are.

As Paulus moved toward his death, he displayed an easeful divestment. Gently and with great openness, he shed layers of himself that were not fundamental to his being. When moving through life, he left no stone unturned. Bringing curiosity and inquiry to his experience was his way. As he moved toward death, this continued to be so. He took his time. He listened. He opened toward rather than shrinking away. He didn’t rely on survival strategies. Even in death, Paulus chose wonder. He chose Love.

Recognizing Survival Strategies

As a monastic, I learned to recognize survival strategies. This allowed me to clearly see the ways I learned to keep my sense of self intact in times when my inner critic was at its worst, when I felt isolated, when I felt my survival was threatened—not physically threatened but existentially; when belonging felt inaccessible. This seeing, the recognition of how I survived my life, has been an invaluable contemplative technology for me.

When our survival strategies are revealed, we see clearly that these strategies are actually keeping us from wholeness, from thriving. They promise a return to what is inherent, but they cannot deliver. Thriving comes when we are seated firmly in ourselves, when we recognize our inherent wholeness, when we feel and know our inherent belonging.

To use one of my own survival strategies as an example: I learned at a young age that if I did things well, if I got things “right” (according to the conditioned standard around me, of course), I would receive favorable attention. That lens made getting things “wrong” more and more unbearable. That’s not simply because I was granted positive attention as I did things well, but also because I perceived disdain, scorn, and rejection as the result of not doing things well. Somewhere along the way, “well” slid into a conditioned vision of “perfection,” and “failure” became the final nail in the coffin. Not doing things perfectly revealed my innate unworthiness, my inherent wrongness. Again, all this is according to a conditioned standard. →

Seeing how we have survived our lives is important because it shows us that maintaining our survival strategies is an inside job. In terms of our growth, it can be paramount to see this and fully understand how survival strategies—while perhaps sparked by and validated through external events and circumstances— actually live within. They arise out of distortion and maintain distortion from the inside out.

The good news about this? We cannot control the circumstances and events of our lives. We can have stewardship over our interpretation and therefore our experience. Consider the Chinese Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu’s empty boat:

If a man is crossing a river

And an empty boat collides with his own skiff, Even though he be a bad-tempered man

He will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, He will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, And yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is somebody in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty, He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat

Crossing the river of the world, No one will oppose you, No one will seek to harm you.

When we are identified with a conditioned survival strategy, our boat is full. Whether identified with the “perfectionist” in an attempt

to know our inherent goodness, or the “helper” we think will make us lovable, or the “achiever” that will validate our worthiness, such strategies have one thing in common: They begin with the distorted view that we are not already fundamentally good or right, inherently lovable, and intrinsically worthy.

Each survival strategy is an expression of a limited mental perspective on reality. From this perspective, what’s inherent has been veiled. The labels “perfectionist,” “helper,” “achiever” are from the model of the Enneagram, a tool I’ve found to be particularly powerful for personal and collective transformation. The Enneagram is a useful framework of nine distinct strategies for relating to the self, others, and the world, but survival strategies can take countless forms.

Imagine that, as a child, you were reprimanded for having needs. You might have learned to survive by showing the world that you can take care of yourself. You’re self-sufficient and self-reliant. Perhaps, though, you became hyper-independent at all costs. Or perhaps you were raised in a “Don’t be a crybaby!” environment and you had nowhere to bring your upset. Little opportunity to be seen and held. You might have learned that you need to be tough, to hide your emotions, to push forward no matter your internal experience.

A question for you to reflect upon: Who did you become in order to survive your life? There’s no right or wrong answer here. If you consider the experience of presence, being fully here and now, as being an empty boat, ask: Who did you become in →

Caverly Morgan offers writing prompts that allow you to explore any reactivty that may be arising for you, how it’s rooted in your survival strategies, and how you can instead meet your unmet needs with selfcompassion.

mindful.org/ belonging

mAUDIO Journaling to Heal

SEEING OUR SURVIVAL STRATEGIES CAN CREATE PATHWAYS FOR RETURNING TO THE HEART OF WHO WE ARE.

order to manage the stress of life? What form filled the boat? Think of this form (or forms—for certainly there can be more than one) as compensations, forms that came into being as you felt you lost something that is, in fact, inherent.

The same is true of survival strategies. The original impulse to engage in these strategies arises out of our deep longing to connect with what’s most primary and most fundamental—our very being. The distortion that we are separate fuels the strategy. We feel cut off. We try to reconnect. The original delusion is that, on a fundamental level, we do not belong. We cannot experience our inherent freedom and be identified with this distortion at the same time.

Recognize Your Unmet Needs

Beneath every survival strategy lies an unmet need. Consider when you were a child. What kinds of unmet needs were present? And what behaviors did you engage in out of an attempt to meet those needs? Do any of these behaviors continue today? Some unmet needs that people I’ve worked with have articulated over the years:

To feel loved

To be accepted

To know that I’m worthy

To be seen and valued

To belong

Take some time to add your own. What’s important to recognize about survival strategies is that they are not you. Just as you are not your thoughts. Just as you are not your negative self-talk. You are not your survival strategies.

THE ORIGINAL DELUSION IS THAT WE DO NOT BELONG.

In our original training manual for teachers at Peace in Schools, we made this essential clarification: “This is not a free pass for unjust, harmful, racist, etc. behavior. For example, ‘I did that harmful thing but that’s not who I am so I’m off the hook.’ This just re-creates and reproduces suffering and violence; this is another breach in the recognition of our shared being. The purpose of recognizing that we are not our conditioning is to empower us to bring our actions into alignment with who we authentically are, to have our actions embody the recognition of our shared being and inherent interconnection.” What’s also important to recognize is that we’re habituated to try to meet our unmet needs through external sources. It’s a game changer when you realize you can meet your own unmet needs—that the healing happens within. ●

THE JOURNEY TOWARD BELONGING

Caverly Morgan felt a call to reconcile the wisdom that arose from her mindfulness practice with the systems of oppression at work in our world. She explores that reconciliation in The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together. In this conversation with Mindful contributing editor Stephanie Domet, she shares what she’s learned about our inherent freedom.

STEPHANIE DOMET: What makes this the right time for this book—what feels urgent?

CAVERLY MORGAN: I don’t think I’m just projecting onto others when I recognize that in myself there was a type of turbulence that didn’t let me move through the world on behalf of my deepest love and understanding, on behalf of my deepest knowing. It feels authentic for me to say that others in this time, too, long for a way to reconcile that. The questions I was asking were: How does my personal mindfulness practice, which has brought me a lot of peace, a lot of benefit, that I know “works”—how does that directly relate to injustices in the world, the massive

structural processes of othering that lead to tremendous harm? Are those two things separate? Am I creating a dent in these larger issues if I’m just finding some personal stress relief within? What else is possible for me?

That feels like such an intrinsic question for right now. Maybe your mindfulness practice starts by waking up to yourself, but then the more you practice, the more you see it’s not about me, it’s about all of us, and as we often say at Mindful , moving from me to we to us.

Absolutely. And thank goodness that personal stress relief isn’t enough, that it won’t satiate our deepest

longing—which is for true freedom. And that true freedom is never going to happen inside the distortion of I as an isolated, fixed form. It’s only going to happen when we remember the truth of us It’s like deepening layers of shared being, realizing there isn’t even an us—there is only this shared being. Now, we can see what happens if we’re acting in the world on behalf of the recognition of that shared being, versus on behalf of I in the egoic sense of it.

Can we talk about those egoic survival mechanisms, how we can recognize them, how they show up in our lives?

I like to think of survival mechanisms as what’s veiling authentic experience. So if I’m caught in my survival strategy mode of being a perfectionist, I’m forgoing something really authentic. And that authentic experience could be summed up as being able to rest in what already exists. We miss the very thing that’s already in place, like inherent wholeness, or inherent belonging. We think we’ll achieve these through different coping mechanisms—if I can just be perfect, then I’ll have a rightness of being. But of course, the rightness of being that I long for is untarnished by that whole drama. →

Right. It’s outside of all that trying and striving.

That’s why this kind of selfimprovement program that we’re all tempted to fall for, especially in the wellness industry or in the mindfulness world, it doesn’t end up working because it keeps us inside that story. And it’s a faulty story out of the gate.

I’m just a few years into my mindfulness practice. So, I feel like I can just grasp the edge of understanding. But when you say that, I feel like I can take my heavy knapsack off for a minute and rest in that space, in that freedom, and I want more of that.

And it’s so important for us to acknowledge more of that doesn’t come from more work in our practice. It comes from a commitment to rest in what we already are. So actually it has very little to do with time in the linear way that we think of time. It’s not like, if you just put two more years in, then you’re going to get to take

even more out of that knapsack. Taking the knapsack off is an instantaneous process. And yes, mindfulness practice helps steady us so that we can keep our attention on how much we value the remembrance of our very being. But let’s not confuse that with, if we work harder, then we get more free. We are inherently free and we do a whole lot of shenanigans to keep us from experiencing that. And survival strategies are just some of those mechanisms that operate as knapsacks.

Tell me about this Taoist verse about the boats. What draws you to that?

Probably how much it has supported my own practice to see all the ways that I am conditioned to be a full boat. When I first heard that image, I was so familiar with that place of: You poked me? Oh, then I’ll punch you in the face. And it was such an important practice for me to see that

I could tap into an inherent emptiness that we lose touch with when we have a knapsack on or we’re busy caught in our survival strategy. Let’s say, for example, another one of my survival strategies is to be right. But if I’m caught in “to be right” and you’ve just poked me, well, now I’m just going to come at you to prove that I’m right. And then we’re just going to be in a battle, and we’re not going to have very much fun together.

I feel like I am a full armada of overloaded boats at all times. So how do you start to empty that boat without losing your mind?

Parts of you feel identified with these various processes all the time, but it’s not yet another part of Stephanie that’s going to come in and then do the work of emptying the boat. The boat has always been empty. These parts of you that are in the boat are holograms. They’re little fictitious characters that have a particular reality to them, especially if we’re identified with them. But on the most fundamental level, they aren’t actually who you are.

Which takes off so much of the pressure. I don’t have to maintain the empty boat. It just is. You talk also in this excerpt about our unmet needs. What changed for you when you realized that you could meet your unmet needs?

Honestly, I sound melodramatic, but absolutely everything. When I first began to touch that experience, I was training monastically, and it had never occurred to me before that training, basically before mindfulness practice, that those needs would never be met by the external contentment that I had been chasing after. Whether that’s the way I would seek approval from others, whether it’s the new shiny object. I thought I would get it from outside my own intimate, direct experience of being. So that is a game changer as we practice, because without that turn, we’re going to think we could even get it from our mindfulness teacher, or our therapist.

My mindfulness teacher often points out my own wisdom, and I shy away from it because it feels braggadocious.

We are taught that expressing “our own” wisdom is bragging because we’re taught that wisdom is something that the ego owns. As wisdom comes through, the only appropriate response is thank you And then for us to recognize that we never owned that in the first place, because the minute we think we owned it, then we’re going to feel like shit on the days that wisdom is not there.

Our practice helps steady us so that we can keep our attention on how much we value the remembrance of our very being. But let’s not confuse that with, if we work harder, then we get more free. We are inherently free.

BY KORKENG / ADOBESTOCK

So, for you, now. You’ve recognized your unmet needs were never going to be met externally. So is that done and dusted for you or is this an ongoing process of like, oh, this is a survival strategy from way back. And here it is again, showing up.

I think it’s incredibly important to acknowledge that the hand-dusting motion that you just did is part of the storyline that if you work hard, then you finally become enlightened, and then practice is just no longer relevant because you’ve reached some experience and it’s about you attaining something. In my experience, there’s absolutely nothing to attain. In truth, getting to see these survival strategies and learning about these unmet needs within is like learning that there is a young person in your life who’s been ignored and you get to realize that you adore them, and it’s an unfolding experience of love, to become more and more intimate with them. Can you feel how this is about deepening intimacy and letting love grow? It’s not about wiping the hands clean. That’s why I don’t like the word transcendence in spiritual practice, because it implies that you’re going to get over these parts of yourself rather than: Love envelops these parts of yourself. And practice is the door to allowing love to envelop everything. ●

LET GO OF YOUR LIMITING HABITS

BY CAVERLY MORGAN

Encountering the people, places, and things that activate us out in the real world can feel like too much all at once. For example, when our nervous system rehashes an old pattern of feeling unsettled or unsafe, because that’s how we felt the last time X happened, it’s difficult to take a step back from that and stay present right now. That’s one reason journaling is such a powerful tool. A mindful journaling practice provides a quiet space for us to intentionally explore what is arising, how it’s rooted in our survival strategies, and what we can give ourselves instead to meet our needs in a wise and loving way.

In your journal, with gentleness and over time, explore:

• Where in your life does “power over” versus “power with” manifest? What is the cost?

• What survival strategies were you indoctrinated into within your family of origin?

• What survival strategies can you name that operate on the level of the collective?

Examples of places to look: “We must win at all costs.” “We should follow the rules and play the game.”

“They need to be kept in their place lest we lose ours.” “Don’t acknowledge what’s really going on, just maintain the status quo.”

• What else can you name?

• How do you intersect with these strategies? How do they live within you?

• What collective judgments keep these survival strategies in place?

• How would you describe the unmet need underneath these collective survival strategies?

• And what do you envision would meet this need?

• What, for you, brings about the experience of inherent belonging?

• What might invite a direct experience of belonging for any collective you identify with? How might you bring this to form? How might it get expressed personally and/or collectively?

Take your time with these prompts. These questions may take weeks, months, years to truly unpack. Share your observations with a friend or with a trusted group, if you would like to.

Excerpted from the book The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Togethe r by Caverly Morgan. Copyright © 2022 Caverly Morgan. Reprinted with permission from the author and the publisher, Sounds True.

This mindful journaling practice guides you in bringing any judgments or unmet needs into your conscious awareness, where they can be healed.

Learning to Disagree… More Agreeably

In the often heated, sometimes chaotic halls of the UK Parliament, scholars, thinkers, politicians, and policy-makers have been weaving in threads of mindfulness. The result: not a change in ideologies but a shift toward more positive and productive relationships across parties.

BY CAREN OSTEN GERSZBERG

get real

Just imagine for a moment a room full of politicians from opposing government parties, sitting in the same room together, in silence, meditating. It’s hard to fathom such a vision in a time of worldwide political upheaval, punctuated by war, social media scandals, and a climate emergency. In the United Kingdom, however, this image has become a reality. While not a remedy for all problems—simple or complex, political or personal—mindfulness has gained government support in the UK in an effort to help politicians manage their stress levels, regulate their emotions, and improve their overall well-being, as well as that of their constituents.

Mindfulness first made its way into the historic halls of Westminster—the building complex where both Houses of Parliament meet—in 2013, when 22 cross-party members from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords (think House of Representatives and Senate in the United States, but in the UK, House of Commons is an elected body and House of Lords is appointed) attended an information session about a course on mindfulness. Sitting in an oak-paneled room on squeaky wooden chairs assembled in a semi-circle, with a large window looking out onto the Thames River, the politicians in the room—many wary about being connected to a mindfulness-related event—had been promised that their identities would be kept private, and that there would not be any sort of mindful movement that may make them look uncomfortable amongst their colleagues— friend or foe. “Some politicians felt they may be perceived as mentally weak if they attended →

ILLUSTRATION BY VICKY VAROTARIYA / ADOBESTOCK

mindfulness sessions, and we wanted to respect their concerns,” said Chris Ruane, who was then a parliamentarian and who is largely responsible for bringing mindfulness into the UK’s legislative body.

Once the parliamentarians attended the opening session on mindfulness and neuroscience—learning its potential for improving mental health—the hope was that they’d agree to sign up for the remaining seven classes. “We felt fairly confident that we had a way of presenting this work that would not be frightening,” said Mark Williams, who co-taught the class and is professor of clinical psychology emeritus at Oxford and a cofounder of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). “We wanted to provide a gateway that they’d feel comfortable with to expand their awareness of what mindfulness is and its possibilities.”

What Mindfulness in Parliament Looks Like

Ruane first discovered mindfulness while helping his daughter research an assignment in her high school class on comparative religion. As he listened to meditations and dharma talks on his train commutes to London, Ruane wondered whether he could bring the benefits of a daily mindfulness practice—and his own discoveries around awe, gratitude, curiosity, and present-moment awareness—to his workplace. As a politician, he especially came to recognize the impact of self-regulation in his high-stress

work environment. “Something would come to my mind and it was out of my mouth before I knew I said it,” said Ruane. “I am now master of my emotions, including anger, which is key in politics, where there can be so much hypocrisy.”

It’s been nearly 10 years since Ruane, along with several members of the House of Lords, invited two mindfulness experts from the University of Oxford to teach an eight-week MBCT course. Now, the course has been taken by more than 300 parliamentarians and over 800 staff members. A core group of about 20 attend a weekly drop-in class and participate in twiceyearly silent retreat days.

The course, which is still being taught, is based on the book Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World, co-authored by Mark Williams. The curriculum—the same taught to Oxford students—introduces interested politicians, policy makers, and their teams to the foundations of mindfulness, covering topics such as the difference between doing and being and how to face challenging emotions. Each class also incorporates practices, including breath meditations, body scans, mindful eating and walking, self-kindness, and compassion.

The benefits of mindfulness for politicians— similar to those of any high-stress environment—have been making their mark on a growing number of parliamentarians and UK policies. Jamie Bristow, codirector of the Mindfulness Initiative, a policy think tank, reports seeing an improvement in the decision-making process. The politicians who took the course began to speak more civilly to one another, to disagree better. Polarity reduced. Even those with diametrically opposed views could “still develop better working relationships,” he said.

Opening practice at Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group hearing on blue-light (emergency) services.

“I got the sense they became less identified with their own beliefs, so were able to have their beliefs criticized without taking it personally.”

Originally, a larger number of left-wing parliamentarians signed up for the mindfulness class, but eventually, politicians from other parties joined too. “There was a sense of acknowledgment where natural enemies recognized each other from the mindfulness class, and said how lovely it is to meet one another in the corridor,” Williams said.

Mixing Practice and Policy

After seeing for themselves the benefits that come with mindfulness practice, the initial group of newly mindful politicians grew interested in the science of mindfulness and began thinking about how to fit it into policy-making.

In 2014, the Mindfulness Initiative helped this group of cross-party politicians create the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group (MAPPG)—a parliamentary club made up of co-chairs from several political parties—to review the scientific evidence and current best practice in mindfulness training, develop policy recommendations for government based on these findings, and provide a forum for discussion in Parliament about the role of mindfulness and its implementation in public policy.

The MAPPG subsequently set out to explore the potential impact of mindfulness on four

areas: health, education, criminal justice, and the workplace. It combined academic evidence, reporting on existing mindfulness-based interventions, and assessment of societal needs for each area, resulting in a 2015 report titled “Mindful Nation UK,” which included recommedndations to Parliament and case studies from each of the four areas—so real voices could be heard along with evidence and research findings. Finally, nine hearings were held in Parliament with academic experts, school children, ex-offenders, and mindfulness teachers to provide evidence to members of parliament.

The Mindful Nation report, which was quickly shared around the world (and since translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Croatian), led to a host of politicians in other countries asking how they can do something similar. In an effort to share their knowledge, progress, and best practices, the MAPPG, along with the Mindfulness Initiative, hosted the first international “Mindfulness in Politics Day” in 2017—a gathering that was attended by 40 politicians from 14 countries. Led by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the attendees practiced mindfulness and discussed its significant effects on public policy and political processes—more specifically, how politicians can hone skills for disagreeing better and bring greater cognitive awareness into adversarial spaces. Since then, several countries, such as Denmark, France, and the Netherlands, have launched their own Parliamentary mindfulness courses. →

It’s hard to bare your soul to people from different political parties in the evening and then be nasty the next morning.

CHRIS RUANE

PHOTOGRAPH BY SHAI DOLEV © THE MINDFULNESS INITIATIVE, ILLUSTRATIONS BY BLUELELA / ADOBESTOCK

Five Mindful Lessons from the Halls of Westminster

In a report by the UK’s Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group, mindfulness was described as “one of the most promising prevention strategies” for addressing mental health issues and encouraging the flourishing and well-being of a healthy nation. Here are some key takeways from MPs who have been learning and practicing mindfulness in a heated workplace environment.

PAY ATTENTION TO TASK SWITCHING

A politician’s day is filled with an extreme overload of information and changing tasks, requiring them to shift and navigate what takes priority. Mindfulness has proven deeply beneficial with demands on attention and prioritization, offering a greater ability to regulate attention and focus. “I found the course extremely helpful in focusing my mind, reducing stress and improving concentration,” said a parliamentarian.

MAKE TIME FOR REAL REST AND REFLECTION

Mindfulness has helped politicians recognize the need to take breaks, using them to relax and restore their energy. These moments of quiet and calm are important for them to reconnect with themselves and touch base with their values so they can align with their inner compass. One parliamentarian said, “Mindfulness need not be thought of only as a ‘cure’ for those in need; it also helps one to know how to…enjoy living a life of service.”

TRANSFORM RELATIONSHIPS WITH SELF-COMPASSION

In the life of a politician, words and actions are analyzed immediately and often remembered for a long time via the media. The result is often a deep sense of self-criticism, which can be disabling and affect performance. Parliamentarians have found that mindfulness has helped them manage negative thoughts, and self-compassion has empowered them to recognize their humanity and show greater kindness to themselves.

EMBRACE THE POWER OF THE PAUSE

Using the practice of mindfulness has helped many politicians practice impulse control, implementing the skill of responding versus reacting. “Many political careers have ended due to something said impulsively,” said Jamie Bristow, “and taking a pause before responding has enabled many to think with greater compassion and thus to disagree better.”

MEDITATE WHERE YOU WORK

The halls and rooms of Parliament are filled with distractions—there are the frequent sound of bells and flashes of light throughout the building, alerting politicians to come to vote—making it far from ideal for practicing mindfulness meditation. “This is exactly the place to practice mindfulness as it brings your awareness right into the business of daily living and working,” says Mark Williams. “It’s precisely why mindfulness is now done in the workplace.”

PRACTICE Mindful Listening

When we think we already know what there is to hear, we are simply moving a little too fast to really listen. That’s where mindfulness comes in. mindful.org/ listening

Practice Isn’t Perfect

While mindfulness continues to permeate the halls of Westminster and beyond, the reality remains that the number of politicians practicing is relatively small. “Although some of the parliamentarians are quite visionary about what mindfulness could be to them and to politics, what’s seen in the debating chamber is still a minority, and for some who have taken the course, it’s far from a daily practice,” said Bristow. “As I like to say, the petals of a flower need to open all at once; you can’t put it on one petal.”

A politician’s day involves constantly switching from subject to subject, focusing on constituents and their problems, concentrating in the chamber, and fielding thousands of emails. “We hear from politicians that mindfulness is able to bring them attention regulation, compassion for constituents, self-forgiveness, resilience, and an ability to keep things in perspective,” says Bristow. “Using mindful awareness to stay tuned in to their inner compass can keep them on the right track.”

In a 2019 article in Current Opinion in Psychology, Bristow addresses some of the unique challenges faced by an elected representative, which, he writes, may explain the growing appeal of mindfulness practices for politicians. Mindfulness, he explains, is helpful in the areas of attention and focus, as 24-hour newsfeeds, social media, and a plethora of briefing papers can overwhelm one’s concentration. An ability to better self-regulate and tame reactivity—in order to avoid regrettable responses in the face of the public eye and debate skillfully (read: respectfully)—is another well-reported benefit. Including kindness and self-compassion as priorities has played an effective role for parliamentarians who report greater empathy for the public, as well as improved coping skills for times they’ve made mistakes. Lastly, Bristow points out the impact of meta-cognition—thinking about thinking—and how politicians express how mindfulness helps them keep perspective and create some space between a thought and “the truth.”

BY

Even with a minority of the country’s politicians practicing mindfulness—the UK has one of the largest legislative bodies, with 650 members of the House of Commons and another

778 in the House of Lords—the transformation to accepting it as a tool for improving mental health and reducing daily stress levels has gained momentum. Powerful non-practitioners have voiced support for the initiative, such as Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the current Speaker of the House of Commons, who in response to what he described as “disgraceful behavior in the chamber,” in February 2022, later tweeted: “Our words have consequences, and we should always be mindful of that fact.”

Disagreeing, Agreeably

Since its debut, the zeitgeist around mindfulness has morphed, bringing a sense of deeper interpersonal connection. “The people who continue to practice together sometimes open up about issues from their childhood or about bereavement,” explains Ruane. “It’s hard to bare your soul to people from different political parties in the evening and then be nasty the next morning.”

The parliamentarians who have gone through mindfulness training have been very open about their stress, according to Mark Williams. “It was more than simply a job, but also the worries of social media, death threats, and the necessity of security detail in their homes,” he said. “These are people with highly pressurized jobs looking for something that gives them a sense of peace and insight into the cascading mind, and to have the resources to do the job they mean to do.”

The adversarial nature of the Parliament, with lines of benches facing each other, does not lend itself to mindful listening. →

BLUELELA / ADOBESTOCK

But after sitting and practicing in small mindfulness groups—where there may be members of both Conservative and Labour parties, mixed in with Liberal Democrats and members of the Scottish National Party—some politicians are able to listen and even disagree better. “People who practice together in silence learn that there are no boundaries, and that what you have is human beings talking about what it’s like to be human,” says Williams. “You can disagree but you can disagree agreeably and with kindness.”

Mindfulness makes it seem possible for some of these politicians to simply understand one another for the greater good of a common goal. Bristow quotes Baroness Ruth Lister, a peer of the House of Lords and a vice-chair of the MAPPG, as saying, “We talk about mindfulness being better ‘out there,’ but what about how mindfulness can help ‘in here,’ in Parliament?”

The benefits of clarity, slowing down, and communicating more mindfully have clearly been profound for those who apply the teachings to both their professional and private lives. “Mindfulness changed me from a rowdy heckler into a calmer, more reflective politician,” said Ruane, now chair of the Global Network of the Mindfulness Initiative. Initially, the mindfulness training was paid for by the politicians’ donation, and now, it is the House of Commons who covers the expense. “It has full endorsement, is appreciated and has gone from strength to strength,” says Ruane.

One parliamentarian told Bristow, “Mindfulness doesn’t make me less ideological. I still strongly believe in what I believe, but I am more civil and able to have positive and productive relationships with people in other parties.” And yet another said, “I bring more of myself to the job.”

“For members of all parties, this weekly mindfulness drop-in group is an oasis of trust and friendship—something very important in our adversarial politics,” said Lord Alan Howarth, peer of the House of Lords. “It is a very great help for my focus, energy, perspective, and sense of proportion and balance.”

Tracy Crouch, a Conservative MP and former Minister for Sport, has shared publicly how mindfulness helped her manage her anxiety and depression. “If we can normalize talking about mental health, then we will normalize talking about tools like mindfulness to deal with mental health conditions,” said Crouch.

The media and its impact on public opinion have also affected some politicians’ decision to voice their support of mindfulness. In the past, some parliamentarians said they’d join the mindfulness effort if it was kept strictly confidential. “There was a real worry that right-wing newspapers would use this as a salacious story,” said Bristow, “but at least twice it has passed the ‘Daily Mail test,’ where they couldn’t find anything negative to say about mindfulness in politics, so they just reported its existence.”

Opening Up to a World of Possibilities

Of course, the work of bringing mindfulness into the threads of British society is not without both its challenges and triumphs. There have been successes in areas such as health care, where mindfulness is now provided by the National Health Services as a way to combat recurring depression. The UK’s Ministry of Defense has rolled out training in mindfulness, and any member of the military is given free access to the Headspace app. In the area of education, however, the Parliament decided to hold off on expanding mindfulness because according to Bristow, “the competency of teachers was not achieved when trying to scale it up in a big way.” A seven-year research project studying a mindfulness intervention to improve mental health in early adolescents, employed in 100 UK schools— called MYRIAD—demonstrated that a great deal more work is needed before the most effective means of incorporating mindfulness practices at various stages of development can be found. In the area of criminal justice, as well, the evidence for mindfulness implementation hasn’t been strong enough, so further research is needed.

On the global front, mindfulness is making its way into the climate conversation. A recent Mindfulness Initiative report from May 2022 suggests that a key element that is missing in the global response to the climate emergency is an exploration of the human heart and mind. Compassion and empathy are what’s needed to remedy some of the environmental catastrophes, reads the report, which argues that the climate emergency is “rooted in a failure to acknowledge the wholeness of our world and act as if we are a part of it.”

BY SHAI DOLEV © THE MINDFULNESS INITIATIVE, ILLUSTRATIONS BY BLUELELA / ADOBESTOCK

This notion came to light in Brussels last May, when European Union (EU) officials came together for forest walks and meditation sessions as part of an effort to explore ways to tackle the climate emergency. An article published in The Guardian reported that the gathering was attended by politicians working on the 27-country bloc’s green deal climate policy. As part of the EU training, attendees were taught mindfulness practices and then presented with hard facts about the climate emergency. Discussions followed about how they personally relate to the issues that can feel daunting. Jeroen Janss, cofounder of the Inner Green Deal, who led the mindfulness training, told The Guardian that participants experienced many difficult emotions, from deep sadness and frustration to a sense of hopelessness. Practicing mindfulness helped them learn how to manage these emotions, find their role in making change, and move forward with greater agency.

Back to traveling in a post-COVID world, Ruane continues to advocate for mindfulness in government as part of a global initiative. Meeting with politicians from other countries,

he shares his vision for the role that parliamentarians and government institutions can play in employing mindfulness to develop policies to promote compassion in action, well-being, and human flourishing.

It is safe to say that mindfulness in the UK has made great strides. Its impact on parliamentarians has created pathways to greater empathy and understanding, both as individuals and members of a team that is meant to work for the larger whole. It is the hope of many, it seems, that open-heartedness and collaboration emerge as something more attainable. “I have seen some hearts soften both on the left and right,” said Ruane. “Sitting together is great, but there are big decisions that have to be made. Difficult or not, if they’re made from a position of equanimity, it’s going to be better than a position of imbalance.” ●

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.

Left: Parliamentarians practicing at a Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group hearing on mindfulness

Right: Jon Kabat-Zinn attending an International Congress of Mindful Politicians, Westminster, 2017

PHOTOGRAPH

The Calming Waters of Relief

When it feels like the world is on fire, and us along with it, mindfulness can cool the flames. Our pain points are collective, so our solutions will be, too. May this curated meditation retreat offer some relief and restoration, to collectively nourish our awareness, so that we have the opportunity to build authentic, trusting relationships, and from there, work together to create a kinder world—while receiving the loving care we all deserve.

Introduction by Heather Hurlock

Fire has four stages: ignition, growth, full development, and decay. Sometimes fires are cleansing, creating fertile ground for new growth. And sometimes fires consume everything in their path until they run out of heat, fuel…oxygen.

If the latter sounds like something you can relate to, you’re not alone. Burnout has become so prevalent, it’s being talked about as “the new normal,” with some studies showing 77% of workers saying they have experienced burnout at their current job. Healing burnout is past the point of being a collective imperative. We all need to take a beat. Breathe. And find ways to skillfully use our resources to replenish and renew.

Healing burnout isn’t about selfcare—it’s about systems.

All of our systems—in the workplace, in our communities, in our families, in our friendships, in our technology, in our finances—were built by people. Which makes them fallible. Especially if they’re rigid. That’s not a critique. That’s a fact.

In order to find relief, we have to be able to see the larger systems we’re a part of, how we contribute to them (whether through resistance or support), and how they affect us and those around us. In order to heal burnout, we need to be brave and vulnerable enough to recognize what isn’t working, have the courage to admit when we’re adding fuel to the fires burning around (or within) us, and then be adaptable and nimble enough to change.

Rest is essential. Rest is an imperative. It is also a radical act to slow down, shift, restore, and regenerate.

Creating space for relief

The American Psychological Association (APA) describes burnout as “physical, emotional, or mental exhaustion accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance, and negative attitudes toward oneself and others.” They add, “It results from performing at a high level until stress and tension, especially from extreme and prolonged physical or mental exertion or an overburdening workload, take their toll.”

In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” resulting from “chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed” resulting in “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance or cynicism related to your job, and reduced efficacy.”

It’s the “workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed” part of the WHO definition that makes people think beating burnout is only about helping workers manage their individual stress levels. Yes, we are responsible for taking care of ourselves. But if we leave it there, we’re not taking into account the part of the APA’s definition that indicates that burnout affects people who have been “performing at a high level” to the point of exhaustion. Because if “high level” performers are working themselves to a state of decay, then the workplaces they’re in and the systems they’re part of aren’t caring for them or providing the conditions for thriving. In other words, our workplaces are creating systems where, in the hustle to be considered a “highlevel” and valuable performer in their workplace, people increasingly have to ignore their need for real rest and relief.

With that framework in mind, there are two things to consider when addressing burnout:

One: All people, whether on the brink of burnout or not, require rest, recovery, and the tools to help them recognize when they’re working in unsustainable systems.

Two: Organizations need systems that are kinder to human physiology, and to our mental and emotional health. Period. Workplaces (read: managers and executives) need to interrogate their internal systems (as well as how they are implicated in those systems) in order to take the necessary steps toward change.

In both of these cases, individually and organizationally, mindfulness can help.

Teetering on the edge of burnout

In the mindfulness community, we often describe the practice as moving from “me” (my individual practice) to “we” (our relational practice, how we show up with others) to “us” (how we show up collectively for each other, the planet, and future generations).

In other words, your individual mindfulness practice serves all of us, relationally, collectively. When we train our awareness to notice—notice how our bodies feel, notice when we’re slipping into old patterns that harm ourselves and those around us, notice how it feels to pause and allow some space between our reactivity and our activity—we give ourselves the opportunity to get things done together that otherwise might seem impossible.

None of this is easy if you’re teetering on the edge of burnout. And if that’s where you are, the first thing to

remember is that burnout is not your fault. While you need to recognize it, so you can take steps to heal and repair, you also need to know that burnout is a collective challenge, not an individual one—and be supported in that understanding.

The second thing to remember is that rest is essential. Rest is an imperative. It is also a radical act to slow down, shift, restore, and regenerate. That’s why rest can feel uncomfortable in a culture that places so much worth on productivity. Our mindfulness practice can help us sit with that discomfort.

The third thing to remember is that if you’re alive, your breath is always with you. And just three breaths can help shift your perspective. Try this three-breath practice from mindfulness coach Jason Gant: Take three breaths. With the first breath, just pay attention to how it feels to breathe. With the second breath, relax your body. Drop your shoulders. Relax your jaw. And with the third breath, ask yourself: What’s most important right now? Then, use that wisdom to inform the next thing you do.

We’ve put together a mini meditation retreat for relief and restoration in the next few pages. These meditations are meant to take you from “me” (connect with your practice), to “we” (connect with your relations), to “us” (engage in the unique ways that are available to you). We hope this relief package helps you nourish your awareness, bring kind curiosity to your thoughts and experiences, and receive the care you deserve.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Heather Hurlock is the editor-in-chief of Mindful magazine and mindful.org. She's a longtime editor, writer, musician, and meditator with deep roots in service journalism.

CREATE YOUR FOUNDATION

Restoring ourselves can start with the recognition that we are all naturally mindful. And when you intentionally tune in to thoughts and emotions for a few moments each day, you’re reminding your busy brain how to cultivate calm and presence.

mindful.org/renew

5 MINUTES

Unwind From Stress

Stress often arises from stories we create in our minds. Try this simple inquiry practice to shift your perspective.

BY NATE KLEMP AND ERIC LANGSHUR

Beneath every stressful emotion sits a thought—a thought that may or may not actually be true. Once you question the validity of the thought, the accompanying stress in the mind and body starts to fall away. That’s the basic insight of the practice of inquiry. The simple act of questioning the thoughts that shape our reality (especially when they create stress, anger, or frustration) opens the door to living a life with more compassion, ease, and openness to new possibilities.

You can integrate this practice into everyday life— standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for your plane to take off, or waiting for a doctor’s appointment—with the simple steps of Notice, Shift, and Rewire. Like letting the air out of a tire, inquiry is an inner technology for gradually deflating the beliefs and stories that create stress in our lives.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nate Klemp is a founding partner at Mindful and coauthor of The 80/80 Marriage and of Start Here, a New York Times bestselling guide to mindfulness in the real world.

NOTICE when you feel upset or irritated. Use these emotions as your reminder to take a step back and shift out of your ordinary habits.

SHIFT your perspective.

Once you notice that you’re caught in a stressful emotion, shift by asking a reframing question like, "How does this situation support my learning and growth?" "How would my rebellious adolescent self view this situation?" or "How would my best self respond to this?" This question might open new possibilities. It might even lead you to feel excited, instead of overwhelmed, by the challenge.

REWIRE. Take just 15 seconds to savor this alternative perspective. Remember that this simple practice is activating new neural pathways in the brain. See if you can stay with the experience to strengthen this new habit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Langshur is an author, public speaker, entrepreneur and investor. He is co-author of The New York Times bestseller Start Here: Master the Lifelong Habit of Wellbeing

Watch Your Mental Weather

Feel the freedom of noting your thoughts and emotions, then releasing them as they shift like clouds in the sky. 1

BY MARK BERTIN

Our mental habits can be both useful and far from useful. In order to tell the difference, we first have to notice them. While practicing mindfulness, we guide ourselves out of reactive stress mode and pause. From there, we observe how we think more clearly without judging ourselves as flawed for whatever we find. We can set new intentions moving forward with ease and even a little kindness.

In this practice, we sit for a moment and note thoughts as they come and go, just as we might lie back in the grass on a warm autumn day and watch the sky. Later, you may choose to problem-solve or run with a creative idea you had during this practice. But for just a few minutes we let it all slide, give ourselves a mental rest, and observe the thoughts as they pass by.

Take a few minutes right now to observe your thoughts. 2

As thoughts surface, ask yourself: Is it true?

Negative thoughts might arise: I’m not good enough to handle this. Or, If I don’t get my act together I am not going to get a promotion. But, are those things true? So much of what feels fixed or permanent turns out to be assumption, conjecture, or fantasy. After you’ve asked yourself Is this true? of a particular thought, see if you can then gently let the thought go.

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Note the directions your mind tends toward. Are there specific storylines you tell yourself? Or thoughts? Are you bored? Are you hungry? Are you thinking about the past? Are your thoughts about the future? 4

Become aware of storylines, then note them as habits. Let go of your thoughts. Touch in and then gently let them roll on by.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Bertin is a pediatrician, author, and mindfulness teacher specializing in neurodevelopmental behavioral pediatrics.

NOURISH YOUR ROOTS

The present moment is where togetherness, play, and fun live. Choosing to be present allows us to offer genuine care for our friends, family, and coworkers, while also helping us be receptive to others’ compassion—a virtuous cycle that refills our cup.

mindful.org/renew

Drop Into a Mindful Moment

When we practice being in the present moment, we give ourselves the option of witnessing and responding, and even redirecting, rather than being on automatic pilot.

BY JASON GANT

The present moment is where togetherness, play, and fun live. By cultivating presence, we become more conscious of all the goodness in our lives—we discover we have a choice of what we pay attention to in any moment. Even in times of challenge and adversity, we can access a sense of ease, relaxation, and calm. Presence also allows us to show up fully for other people with kindness and care (even if we don’t always agree with them). By helping others feel seen and heard, we nurture a sense of safety in which discussion and collaboration, instead of conflict, can become the norm.

Here are two ways to practice mindfulness in “stealth mode,” meaning you can practice at any time, anywhere, under any circumstances, without anyone even noticing.

TAKE THREE FULL BREATHS

First breath: Bring your full attention to breathing.

Second breath: Relax the body. Drop your shoulders.

Third breath: Ask yourself: What’s important right now?

HEAD, BODY, HEART, CHECK-IN

Take three full breaths, scanning one area of the body with each breath.

First breath: Scan the head, representing thoughts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Second breath: Scan the body, representing emotions and sensations.

Third breath: Scan the heart, representing values and intentions.

Jason Gant is an athletic mental skills coach at VillageTribe and Kaiser Permanente and trains, teaches, and coaches inner skills for resourcing.

Let Compassion Open Your Heart

This gentle practice helps you embrace the fact that you are inherently worthy of love.

BY SHARON SALZBERG

We tend to focus all our love on the people we care about—yet, to connect more deeply with others, we must turn toward the one person we keep on the shortest leash: ourselves. We often reject other people’s care or attention when we believe we don’t deserve it. This practice reminds us that there’s nothing special we must do to deserve love. You are worthy of love simply because you exist.

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Begin to imagine you’re encircled by people who love you. As you sit comfortably with your eyes open or a soft gaze, imagine yourself in the center of a circle made up of the most loving beings you’ve met. There may be some people in your circle who you’ve never met, but who have inspired you. Maybe they exist now, or they’ve existed historically, or even mythically. 2

that express what you most wish for yourself, not just for today but in an enduring way. For example: May I be safe, happy, and healthy. May I live with ease of heart. 3

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sharon Salzberg is a worldrenowned meditation teacher and is the New York Times bestselling author of Real Love and Real Happiness, Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, as well as the forthcoming Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom (Macmillan, April 2023).

Receive the love of those who love you. Feel your heart receiving the energy, attention, care, and regard of all of these beings in your circle of love. Silently repeat phrases of loving-kindness

Notice how you feel when you receive love. All kinds of different emotions may arise. You may feel gratitude and awe, or you might feel uncertain or shy. Whatever emotion may arise, just let it wash through you. Your touchstone is those phrases of lovingkindness: May I be safe, happy, and healthy, or whatever phrases you’ve chosen. 4

Open yourself up to receiving love. Imagine that your skin is porous

and this warm, loving energy is coming in. There’s nothing special that you need to do to deserve this kind of acknowledgment or care. It’s available to you simply because you exist. 5

Send loving care to the people in your circle. Allow loving-kindness and compassion and care to flow right back out to the circle and then toward all beings everywhere, so that what you receive, you transform into giving. These qualities can become part of you, and part of what you express and return to the world. When you feel ready, you can lift your gaze to end the session.

AWAKEN YOUR HEART

A beautiful thing about mindfulness is how it comes alive in community. Our own practice ripples out in countless ways to benefit the people and beings around us, empowering us to speak and act from a place of generosity, understanding, and knowing our deep interconnectedness with one another.

mindful.org/renew

Turn Awareness Into Action

Strengthening our ability to be self-aware, self-actualized, and self-determined can help us co-create a better world together. Try this guided meditation for taking wise action. 1

BY MICHELLE MALDONADO

It is easy to feel overwhelmed and confused about how to engage with the world from a place of strength, groundedness, and calm.

Try this awareness practice to foster three key insights: clarity of intention; understanding of our power, presence, and impact; and opportunities for wise actiontaking. We don’t have to know all the answers. We are simply inviting in reflection and introspection to allow insights and awareness of body and mind to arise. Whatever arises, see if you can meet it with selfcompassion and curiosity.

First, let us bring our attention to our heart space by gently placing a hand over the heart, allowing it to simply rest there. Placing a hand over the heart can often bring us comfort when we explore difficult thoughts, emotions, or experiences. 2

Next, see what you notice: perhaps the weight of your palm against your chest, or a temperature difference in the space underneath your palm, or maybe even the sensation of each heartbeat as you expand your awareness. Take it all in with a gentle inhale and exhale.

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Over the next few moments, invite yourself to consider these three things: How did I show up in the world today? How did my privilege show up through me? What actions can I take, and what questions can I open to, to help become more aware of my privilege and its impact on others?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michelle Maldonado is coauthor of A Bridge To Better: An Open Letter To Humanity & Resource Guide, and founder of Lucenscia. She is a former corporate attorney and a certified mindfulness and emotional intelligence teacher and practitioner.

Connect in Conversation

With time, we discover how bringing mindfulness out into the world and to our interactions with others can help us all thrive.

BY DIANA WINSTON

Mindful speech can be defined as speaking authentically from our heart. Usually, we just open our mouths and let whatever comes out come out. Often we speak when we want to fill the space, when we’re uncomfortable, when we don’t know what else to do. When speaking mindfully, however, we choose our words with a bit more care and intention. Invite a family member, friend, or partner to explore this practice with you. Communicating this way may feel clunky at first, but over time, listening and speaking mindfully will start to be second nature, and the sense of understanding, acceptance, and happiness in your relationships will deepen.

When you’re listening: Give your full attention to the other person. Become aware of your body (breath, feet, hands, etc.) from time to time to help you stay present. When your attention wanders, bring it back to being present with the person.

When you’re speaking: Speak authentically about what is true for you. Become aware of your body (breath, feet, hands, etc.) from time to time to help stay present. Occasionally you can verbalize what you are aware of as you are talking.

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Find a willing partner. One person will speak first, and the other will listen—start by deciding who.

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The first speaker will speak for 90 seconds on a topic you both choose. For example, your topic might be something like, “What brings me joy?” The listener can nod and smile and show that they are interested, but not interrupt.

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After 90 seconds, ring a bell and take a silent pause to feel the impact of listening or speaking in that way. Then reverse roles and let the other person speak on the same topic for 90 seconds.

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After the other person speaks, ring a bell, and take a pause. Then reconnect for a few minutes (with no rules!) to share what it was like doing the exercise and to follow up on anything you want to ask or say, based on what your partner shared. ●

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Diana Winston is an author and the director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center.

BOOKMARK THIS read…listen…stream

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

THE MINDFUL TEEN WORKBOOK

Patricia Rockman, MD; Allison McLay, DCS; and M. Lee Freedman, MD • New Harbinger

Nothing can kill the spirit of genuine mindfulness more quickly than a one-size-fits-all attitude, and nowhere is that illustrated more potently than with teenagers. If you impose a fixed idea of anything from above and try to impose it—subtly or overtly—teens will reject it and rebel against it.

Why?

Because they should know better?

No.

Because they do know better.

The energy of inquisitiveness and questioning that is a hallmark of mid-adolescence—about 16 to 19 years old, since adolescence lasts from roughly age 12 to 24—is a developmental and societal necessity. Otherwise, no dynamic change would emerge from the next generation of people who will inherit what’s been left for them. If you’re going to teach folks from this age cohort anything, you have to do it in collaboration.

That’s what so refreshing about The Mindful Teen Workbook . It’s far from the first mindfulness manual for teens, but it’s definitely an outstanding contribution to the existing literature, and it stands out for its inviting tone. Each chapter is filled with helpful prompts, such as exploring a time when you were really mad and what the sensations felt like. The journey is about inquiry, finding your own path, not indoctrination.

The book emerged from programs developed at the Centre for Mindfulness Studies in Toronto, and it shows. It feels fresh yet also road-tested— you can hear the teachers listening on the page. And for adult helping professionals, there’s a downloadable guide they can use in leading groups of teens in exploring mindfulness. – BB

THE HEART OF WHO WE ARE Realizing Freedom Together

Caverly Morgan • Sounds True

“This book is for you,” Caverly Morgan emphasizes throughout its chapters. “Thank you for picking it up. For being in this conversation. For saying yes to this relationship.”

That’s what reading the book feels like: a relationship. A meaningful discussion with a friend on privilege, societal conditioning, Love (with a

capital L), belonging, and how we move “from the personal to the collective.” Morgan tells stories from her life as if we’ve known her for years (read more on p. 38) and includes contemplative practices in each chapter for those practicing on their own, as well as instruction on how to practice in community. – KR

DEI DECONSTRUCTED

Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing It Right

Lily Zheng • Berrett-Koehler

Since the antiracist activism of 2020, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) interventions have received renewed interest and urgency. But DEI practitioner Lily Zheng observes that this complex work is frequently diluted to a once-and-done measure, instead of facilitating real (often uncomfortable) change. They don’t sugarcoat it: “Our organizations, and certainly our world, continue to be unacceptably inequitable,

exclusive, and homogenous,” they write. Asking why that is leads into challenging topics: how to go beyond performative allyship; why unjust power dynamics may be invisible to people with privilege; what accountability, “the holy grail of DEI work,” really looks like. Grounded in current research and radical honesty, Zheng’s No-Nonsense Guide empowers all leaders to take action toward truly effective DEI. – AT

NAVIGATING GRIEF AND LOSS

25 Buddhist Practices to Keep Your Heart Open to Yourself and Others

Kimberly Brown • Prometheus Books

With compassion and humility, teacher and author Kimberly Brown offers a hospitable respite of a book for anyone experiencing grief and loss. In this inclusive and kind volume, Brown uses heartfelt examples from her own life and relatable scenarios from others’ lives to illuminate kinds of grief we might be facing—whether as the result of a death that’s sudden or expected, the loss of a job, a marriage, or even the loss that arises when we realize our family doesn’t have our back the way we hoped they

would. Though Brown references Buddhist teachings and practices here, she also provides secular interpretations that make this book truly useful and welcoming for any reader. The 25 practices she includes are delivered approachably and with beautiful encouragement, meeting readers wherever they may be. Brown is real about her own sometimes difficult journey with mindfulness meditation. She makes it clear that she has walked the walk—and that none of us need walk alone. – SD

endings read, listen, stream

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.

WHY WE MEDITATE The Science and Practice of Clarity and Compassion

Daniel Goleman and Tsoknyi Rinpoche • Atria Books

In each chapter of Why We Meditate, the ball begins in Rinpoche’s court. With warmth and candor, he invites the reader in with a compassionate and personal introduction to a common obstacle to well-being, such as the quick pace of modern life or unhelpful habits we’ve formed. He shares a Buddhist perspective on the topic at hand and skillfully folds in secular concepts and examples that keep the content clear and relatable for any audience, and offers detailed instructions for a meditation practice. Then, Goleman offers his own

personal connection to the topic and grounds Rinpoche’s wisdom and advice with a deep dive into the neuroscience behind the practice.

Beginning with the foundations of meditation, the content of this book builds to deep healing practices informed by Buddhist tradition, secular mindfulness, and the latest science. The coauthors offer a balanced, expansive, and profound dive into meditation for practitioners of every level, equipping the reader with a toolbox to go forward and bring their practice with them out into the world. – AWC

A heartfelt call and primer for community-oriented models of wellbeing in our age of polarization and turmoil. Drawing inspiration from the Black liberation tradition and from stories from various religions, Ayo Yetunde recasts Indra’s Net as the network in which we all have the choice either to succumb to our impulses toward division and brutality or renew our civility and love for each other.

A fascinating explanation of the significant, often symbolic role that numbers play in yoga philosophy—by beloved yoga teacher and writer Richard Rosen.

To live kindness is to express the essential Buddhist wisdom of selflessness. Through stories from the ancient Pali canon of Buddhism and personal reflections on modern life, Dharma teacher Kevin Griffin reveals the richness and multifaceted nature of loving-kindness, or metta, on the Buddhist path.

PODCAST reviews

HIDDEN BRAIN

Episode: “A Better Way to Worry”

“Our stock response when we hear a blaring alarm is to do one of two things,” host Shankar Vedantam says. “Turn it off or run in the opposite direction.” In this fascinating conversation with clinical psychologist and Future Tense author Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, Vedantam explores what happens when we engage with our internal

alarms with curiosity. DennisTiwary offers a third response to a blaring alarm in your mind: Anxiety doesn’t need to be soothed. Instead, it can be honored. The paradox of anxiety, Dennis-Tiwary says, is that when you unpack the information anxiety presents, and take wise action based on that information, anxiety dissipates. – KR

ON BEING WITH KRISTA TIPPETT

Episode: adrienne maree brown, “We are in a time of new suns.”

AWE

The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

Dacher Keltner • Penguin Press

WORKWELL

This friendly conversation between host Krista Tippett and influential author and steward of compassionate change adrienne maree brown is abundant with wisdom for our times. brown is a deep believer in the power of imagination to change the world, but also a realist about the challenges before humanity right now. The way Jennifer Moss, author of The Burnout Epidemic and Unlocking Happiness at Work, says we need an “ecosystems approach” to burnout. “There’s certain personalities at risk of burnout for sure,” she says, “But then there’s also organizations that need to play a role.” In this discussion with Deloitte Chief Well-Being Officer Jen Fisher, Moss ac-

she navigates the duality of hope and anxiety with grace in this conversation offers a strong reminder that we can hold space for both at once. She says, “We have no idea what we could be, but everything that we have been is falling apart. So it’s time to change. And we can be mindful about that. That’s exciting.” – AWC

Episode: “Understanding and Overcoming Burnout with Jennifer Moss”

knowledges that shifting the entrenched causes of burnout is a tall order for managers. Still, she says, making “tiny, incremental changes” based on listening and empathy, that give employees greater agency and flexibility, can help a lot. So can the compassionate boundaries we choose for ourselves, to savor our whole lives, not just our jobs. – AT

“Awe is about our relation to the vast mysteries of life,” writes Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor, researcher, and founding director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Amidst the positive psychology-led study of various emotions, awe—that expansive feeling we get from watching a baby take their first steps, or singing with a choir, or gazing into a dark sky rich with stars—was long ignored, until Keltner began investigating its significance. What he has learned over the last nearly two decades, and what he shares in this book, is vital to the science of human flourishing. “How does awe transform us? By quieting the nagging, selfcritical, overbearing, status-conscious voice of our self, or ego, and empowering us to collaborate, to open our minds to wonders, and to see the deep patterns of life.” Awe itself represents one such pattern: Through collecting “awe stories” from 2,600 people around the world, his research team found that we all share similar sources of awe (e.g. nature, moral goodness, birth and death), regardless of factors like culture and language.

Keltner’s book explores awe from four perspectives: the scientific, the personal, the cultural, and “the growth that awe can bring us when we face hardship, uncertainty, loss, and the unknown.” Awe is self-transcendent, reducing activity in the brain region that perceives ourselves as separate and self-interested. If we were instead more in touch with our “small self,” the self that exists within a wondrous universe, how would our orientation to purpose change? Our sense of love and belonging? What societal transformation would be within reach? Keltner takes us through all these and more possibilities in this book that is not only scientifically rigorous, but heartfelt and thoroughly inspiring. – AT

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3 PRACTICES TO COME HOME TO YOURSELF

Between our inner critic and external messages about what a “good” body looks, feels, and acts like, we can be so hard on ourselves. But our bodies do so much for us. With this practice, we take a moment to offer gratitude for the body that will accompany us through life. Elaine Smookler guides a lighthearted and compassionate body scan to bring a spirit of curiosity and appreciation to what’s happening in our body right now.

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When we try to ignore or push away strong emotions, they have a tendency to hang around uninvited in our tense shoulders, shallow breathing, and tight jaws. With this practice from Sharon Salzberg, we gently turn toward uncomfortable sensations and feelings. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but when we bring nonjudgmental awareness to difficult emotions, we can see how they arise, change, and go.

A

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to Remind Yourself That You Are Enough

Self-criticism and doubt does a number on most of us at many points in our lives (and in some cases, at many points throughout a typical day). Finding our way back to compassionate connection with ourselves is often a winding and unpredictable path, but it can begin here. In this practice, Jenée Johnson guides us through five affirmations that can help us let go of comparison and remember our inherent worthiness. – AWC ●

A Guided Meditation to Give Gratitude for Your Body from Elaine Smookler

Guided Meditation: Notice How Sadness, Loneliness, and Anger Show Up in Your Body from Sharon Salzberg

Meditation

from Jenée Johnson

Visit mindful.org for featured meditations from Elaine Smookler, Sharon Salzberg, and Jenée Johnson

IN THE SWIM OF THINGS

by BARRY BOYCE , FOUNDING EDITOR

As a teenager, I had some pretty severe sports injuries—to my ankle, foot, and knee—so swimming became my exercise of choice. I can’t say I always love it. It’s refreshing when you first hit the water, but lane swimming is a lot of back-and-forth. You go nowhere over and over again. Naturally, then, it lends itself to a form of meditation practice, and that’s the part I think I do love.

As I’ve spent years going back and forth in pools one thing has stood out for me: the line (usually blue) on the bottom of the pool. That line is the reference point to let you know you’re on track. It’s what the attention returns to. There are also buoy ropes on either side that define the lane, guardrails as it were, but the blue line is the thread of attention that pulls you along.

The restless and restlessly wandering mind does not disappear when you enter the pool. In fact, it intensifies, because there’s nothing to provide engagement or entertainment. There are headphones you can wear in the pool now, but I don’t bother with that. Swim time is a time away from all that. All you hear are splush splush and the muffled sounds above the surface. All you feel is the wet.

And all you see is your immediate surroundings—and the blue line.

In the pool, I’ve discovered over the decades, everything that comes up in life, that comes up in regular meditation practice, comes up in the pool. With no other stimulus to take my mind off whatever is consuming it, this simple blue line takes on different qualities depending on what’s emerging in my mind. It’s always just a blue line, and yet it isn’t.

If I find that I’m angry and resentful, that I’m simply not getting what I want, people are not behaving the way I want them to, and it’s

happens, whatever I get or don’t get, is workable. Resilience rules.

If I’m agitated, anxious about the future, worrying about the worst kind of outcomes, the blue line is trust, an embryonic feeling that while the worst can indeed happen, it hasn’t yet, and if and when it does, with the help of others, together we will bring the best of our resources to bear.

The blue line is there too when I get out of the pool. It’s not the actual blue line, but the sense that reminders are available to bring attention to immediate conditions and surroundings. Not because becoming

bothering me something fierce, the blue line can be gratitude. It’s a reminder that rather than complain about my life, I could appreciate what I do have and even appreciate the opportunity to be grateful in the face of angry feelings, to have a journey of mindfulness, to cultivate compassion by not resisting and rejecting the people and circumstances I want to shun and shy away from.

If I am finding myself wallowing in depressive storylines, down and pessimistic, the blue line is cheerfulness, taking simple enjoyment in the coolness of the water and the chance to move freely, weightlessly.

If I’m feeling jealous, that others are getting what I should get, that I’m not getting enough, or that I am not enough, the blue line is equanimity—the sense that whatever

distracted makes you a bad person, or because the mind should never be permitted to wander or to ponder the past or the future. The value of anchoring our attention is not in being an Olympic Attention Champion.

Attention is not one-dimensional, a gold star for not committing the crime of spacing out. Attention is rich and luxurious. It’s a doorway, a portal to freedom, freedom from fixating on what’s over there, away from what’s actually happening. Attention takes many shapes and gives many gifts. When we return to the blue line throughout our lives, we find peace and power waiting there for us. ●

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.

Attention is not one-dimensional, a gold star for not committing the crime of spacing out. Attention is rich and luxurious, a portal to freedom.

VIDEO COURSE Come As You Are Barry Boyce leads a 7-day self-paced mindfulness retreat. mindful.org/ diy-retreat

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