Summit #3

PDREIMAGINED ISSUE 3

Happy new year!! We hope you got some rest & relaxation over the break, so that you are returning to classrooms feeling energized and refueled! Of course for many of us that is not the reality - while holidays are fun and a chance to see friends and family, everything around it (the expense, the travel, the demands, the busyness, etc.) can also be taxing and energy draining! As such, returning to routine can feel a little sluggish. We get it!

But maybe refueling is less about vacations, and more about what we do in the micro-momentstake mindfulness for instance.

Unless you have been living on another planet - or completely disconnected from news, pop culture, and your local coffee shop - you have likely heard about the many benefits of mindfulness. It is heralded as relieving anxiety and stress, decreasing depression, strengthening emotional regulation, our memory, our relationships and our physical health. Hard to believe that something as simple as mindfulness could really do all that, right?

Well, you may not find staying mindful so simple... Especially in this day and age, with so many distractions constantly vying for our attention. Constant alerts from our email, messages, calendar, social media, and app notifications constantly work to grab our attention. Perhaps it is no surprise then that the average American checks their phones 344 times a day (incredible to believe that this equates to once every 4 minutes!). If mindfulness is about awareness - when was the last time you truly tasted your coffee and felt the texture of your food rather than simply inhaling it between classes? But since we all have a growth mindset we know, all it takes is a little practice and persistence!

In this month’s box you will find many different ways to embrace mindfulness - even if you only have a few minutes. Try them out in short spurtsjust a few minutes every day, create little rituals and see how you feel!

Love from the PDR team

practicing mindfulnessina mindfullworld...

Note that we did not say staying mindful. Because we recognize that our brains are programmed to continue to optimize outputs, so falling into auto-pilot will be totally natural. I cannot tell you how many times I have driven home and not remembered the ride because I was thinking about something else, or eaten my lunch without having truly tasted any ingredient.

But practicing mindfulness for just five minutes a day is enough to make a significant difference.

But if you need incentive to build up to 27 mins, a 2014 Harvard study established scientific proof that such meditation sessions can actually change the brain's gray matter!

So what is mindfulness and how does it differ from meditation? Well we are THRILLED to bring you a pair of epic experts in the field to better to answer this question and more on our next virtual summit!

Our guests are experts in neuroscience and philosophy, have successful podcasts, and have written several NY Times best seller books on the subject of consciousness. One of them even worked for the Dalai Lama!

Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Thingsto thinkabout

When we talk about mindfulness we often think about being "present", however let's take a moment to peel back the curtain and examine what really happens in our brains when we experience something. We observe through our senses - so we see something, we hear something, we feel something, we taste or smell something (yes, even our emotional responses have been shown to have a taste and smell!)

But based on the laws of physics, we observe all these inputs at different speeds, since the speed of light travels faster than the speed of sound for example. So the inputs occur separately, then our brain makes sense of them and binds them together into an illusion of reality.

As neuroscientist David Eggelton points out, this is similar to video editing, “Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.”

In her book Conscious, Annaka Harris explains how reality is really a delayed version. We inherently experience things that have already past so can never fully "be present". Reflect on how this makes you feel? In moments of pain or displeasure it might make it easier knowing the moment has already past!

RIDDLE

Leave me and you will always doubt yourself. Stay in me and you will never be fulfilled.

Activity

You may remember these from their hey day in the 90’s, but the picture below is has a 3D illusion image hidden in it - can you spot it?

Here’s how: Relax your eyes, and look at the center of the image, then hold the image right up to your nose and slowly pull it back as you try to look "through" the image. Once you see the image you should be able to look all around the image!

For this and more images check out magiceye.com!

I think there’s 4 important things in life: Compassion for self and others. Recognizing that others have difficulties in life, just like you, and to treat them as you treat yourself. Allowing and accepting things to be as they are in this present moment. Peace of mind is the highest happiness. (Or just remember the acronym CRAP for short.)