The Breathscape Practice for Cultivating Mindfulness

There is no question that mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom are more important than ever before—even though the essence of mindfulness is and has always been timeless, having to do with our relationship to this moment and to any moment as it is, however it is. The past is only available to us in this present moment. And so is what is yet to unfold in a future we try endlessly to envision and control. If you want the future to be different, the only leverage you have is to inhabit the present moment fully, and that means mindfully and heartfully. Here is a 20-minute meditation to practice tapping into your capacity to be in touch with your experience, and to be awake and aware with no agenda other than to be awake and aware.

The Breathscape Practice for Cultivating Mindfulness

1. Choose your posture. As we enter this period of formal practice together, having carved out this time to be with and by yourself, establishing yourself as best you can in a posture that embodies dignity. Whether you’re sitting on a chair, or on the floor, or lying down, or for that matter standing if you need to be standing. Allowing your eyes to be either open, with the gaze stable and unfocused in front of you, or gently closed.
2. Recognize that my words are merely guides to things you inherently know. And establishing as well that gentle but firm intention to be as awake as possible, to be as in touch as possible with the present moment just as it is, and however it is for you, using my words merely as pointers to your own interiority, your own inner experience from moment to moment, so that what is important is your experience. And you can tune out or drop underneath what I’m saying on this, or any of the other CDs, to feature at any and all times your own experience both as I am speaking and in the stretches of silence.
3. Explore your motivation and your breath. So at this point bringing to mind—or we might say into your heart—what the deep motivation or yearning is for taking this time for yourself in the first place. And as you do, gradually allowing your attention to alight gently on the breath, moving in and out of the body. Featuring as a primary focus some region in your body where the breath sensations are most vivid for you right now. That might be in the belly, where you may be experiencing the gentle ballooning out of the abdomen on the in-breath, and the gentle receding of it on the outbreak. Or at the nostrils, where you are actually feeling the passage of the air as it comes in and out. Or a larger sense of the entirety of each breath moving from the nostrils down into the belly if you will, or any place else in the body that the breath is most vivid for you.
4. Allow your breath to be as it is. And without forcing or striving or efforting, as best you can, just gently riding on the waves of your own breathing, moment by moment, as a leaf might ride on the waves on the surface of a pond. Feeling the sensations in the body associated with the breath coming in and the sensations in the body, wherever your focus may be, on the breath leaving the body. Without pulling the breath in or pushing the breath out, without any forcing whatsoever. Just allowing the breath to be as it is, moment by moment by moment, and breath by breath by breath
5. Allow your attention to be as it is. Allowing your intention to include the full embracing of each and every breath gently, lightly with mindfulness, so that the breath is known, felt, experienced, in the moment of its arising. The full unfolding of the in-breath, and the falling away in the out-breath and the next arising, all that embraced, held in awareness as best you can, moment by moment by moment.
6. Rest in awareness. Just this very moment with the breath moving and the feeling, sensing, knowing of the breath as it is, moment by moment, breath by breath, sitting here, resting in awareness itself. Featuring in this moment this breath.
7. Observe your wandering mind. Sooner or later, it’s inevitable that we will discover that the mind has a life of its own. A very active, busy, inquisitive, sometimes obsessive life. And so even with the strongest of intentions to keep our attention on the breath and sustain it breath by breath, it’s hard not to notice after a while, that that intention may get sidetracked, hijacked, diverted, and we become absorbed in some other activity of mind. The various endless scenarios and stories that play themselves out in the mind: maybe it’s anticipating and worrying about future events, or planning or fantasizing about some future. Or maybe it’s recollecting past events and getting carried away by memories and feelings about the past. Or maybe it’s arguing with ourselves about this or that, or with somebody else for that matter, and objecting to this or that. It could be virtually anything, and in the process the breath that we were paying attention to, this very breath can rapidly disappear from our awareness even though of course it’s still moving in and out of the body.
8. Note when your mind has wandered. And even though we had made the commitment to just be with an awareness of breathing. But in any moment that you discover that the mind is no longer with the breath, or on the breath, not turning that into a problem, or in any way condemning yourself for this lapse in attention. Simply, and open-heartedly and affectionately noting what’s on your mind in this moment. If the breath is no longer center stage in the field of awareness, what is? In the noting, seeing, feeling, sensing what’s on your mind.
   

   Simply, and open-heartedly and affectionately noting what’s on your mind in this moment. If the breath is no longer center stage in the field of awareness, what is?

9. Allow yourself to be aware of the breath again. And then allowing the breath to be part of it right in this moment, because it’s also here right now, and just allowing wherever the mind is moved to be, however it is, and reestablishing the primacy of the attention once again at the belly, at the nostrils, on the fluxing of the breath sensations in the body, in this very moment of now. So when you are recognizing that the mind has drifted or wandered, that recognizing function is already back. That is awareness, awareness itself. We simply pick up on how the breath is in this moment.
10. Ride the waves of the breath. So aiming, if you will, the attention on the breath, and then as best you can sustaining the attention on the breath by riding on the waves of the breath sensations, and when you become aware that the mind has drifted and is no longer on the breath over and over and over again, gently, kindly compassionately just noting what the mind is up to now. Allowing it to be exactly as it is, and just in that reconnecting with the breath, which is also an already here, featuring it once again centre stage in the field of awareness and practicing in this way with the quality of open and affectionate attending to the unfolding of your life as it unfolds right here, breath by breath and moment by moment.
11. Embrace this act of loving-kindness. And perhaps sensing that this very act of attention, this very act of being present in this way, this very act of persisting, in aiming and sustaining, of establishing yourself in a posture that embodies dignity and presence, is a deliberate, intentional act, nothing less than a radical act of loving-kindness toward yourself. That is a radical act of love, just to meet the breath, to embrace the breath and the fluctuations of your own mind in this way.
12. Be awake with no agenda other than to be awake. So sitting or lying or standing as if your life depended on it. Breathing and knowing the breath moving as if your life depended on it, which of course it does, moment by moment by moment by moment by moment, resting here fully awake with no agenda other than to be awake, to be knowing of this breathing. You’re not shutting out the soundscape or anything else in the field of awareness, but simply featuring the breath center stage and allowing everything else to be in the wings.
13. Allow each in-breath to be utterly fresh, a new beginning. Allowing each out-breath to be a complete letting go. Each moment met each breath, met in its original form, us letting go of the past, even the last breath. Letting go of the future, even the next breath, and simply being utterly present with this breath, this moment, this sitting here, this being human, this being awake to your life, expressing itself as breathing. As sitting. Or lying here, or standing. As knowing the breath. And the knowing of the breath, moment by moment by moment.
14. Embrace each breath in this moment. And in the few remaining moments of this sitting, if your posture is collapsed or if your attention has in some way collapsed, seeing if you can re-establish the lightest of touches. And you’re sitting or lying here in your embracing of the breath, in your resting, in awareness of breathing outside of time altogether. Just this moment, just this breath, just drinking in the air. This flowing of the air through the body, this giving and receiving of the air, this unfolding of life, moment, moment by moment, in awareness.

The above is adapted from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Guided Mindfulness Meditation Series 3, available here. These guided meditations are designed to accompany Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Meditation is Not What You Think and the other
three volumes based on Coming to Our Senses.

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A 5-Minute Breathing Meditation To Cultivate Mindfulness

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How to Ditch the Drama in Your Relationships

“You are unimaginably cruel. I could never have done something like that to you.”

One of my clients—we’ll call her Sara—received that in a nasty text from her ex-husband, who was angry because their daughter, a young adult, had excluded him from a milestone event. Instead of confronting their daughter, the ex-husband was pinning his daughter’s actions on Sara.

Understandably, the accusation consumed Sara.

Even when we aren’t provoked by such high-emotion personal conflict, these days it’s hard to escape the daily dramas playing out all around us. Personal dramas are served to us via text and email—and if our own lives are peaceful, we need look no further than Twitter for President Trump’s conflicts, or our smartphones for the latest metaphorical (or literal) trainwreck.

Most of us are, at the very least, distracted by drama. Despite our best intentions, we have trouble looking away. Biologically, we are hardwired to love the novelty, stimulation, and social information that a constant feed of drama provides.

But the 24/7 drama isn’t pointing us towards meaningful lives. And it keeps us from the stillness and reflection and deep conversation that make our lives meaningful.

24/7 drama isn’t pointing us towards meaningful lives. And it keeps us from the stillness and reflection and deep conversation that make our lives meaningful.

There is another problem with drama. Having a constant source of it leads us, unknowingly, to take on disempowering roles in our own lives, roles that hurt our relationships and foster feelings of powerlessness, shame, and superiority.

How does that happen? In 1968, a psychologist named Stephen Karpman developed a social model, the “Karpman Drama Triangle,” to map the dysfunctional behavior we predictably display when we get sucked into interpersonal drama. Karpman recognized how entertaining and addictive our relationship conflicts could be—despite being psychologically harmful.

Karpman teaches that there tend to be three roles in a conflict, hence the formation of a triangle:

1. The first and most familiar role is the victim. This is not an actual victim, mind you; it’s just someone who feels like they are being victimized, or someone who is acting like they are being persecuted. Victims often feel oppressed and helpless. Deep down, they tend to feel shame. They are often self-pitying. They act as though they are powerless, and as such are often our neediest (and most toxic and draining) friends and relatives.
2. Victims typically identify a persecutor, someone whom they believe is victimizing them. Persecutors are made out to be controlling and critical. When we take on the role of persecutor ourselves, often we act angry, rigid, and superior.
3. Every victim has a rescuer who works diligently to save them from mistreatment. Although it can feel good to play a rescuing role—because attempting to help others can make us feel good—rescuers don’t really help. Although their intentions may be good, they are the ultimate enablers, keeping victims stuck in their roles as victims.

All of these roles are tempting because they give us a sense of power (even if it is false power). Victims get to claim innocence, they gain the doting attention of their rescuer, and they avoid taking responsibility for their own lives and their own outcomes. Persecutors get to sit in the power seat, feeling superior.

Rescuers feel righteous anger and empathy, and so they also get to feel superior to both the victim and the persecutor. And while rescuers avoid the negative shadow that hangs over victims and persecutors, the rescuer role is not healthy, either, because focusing on someone else’s conflicts is usually an excuse to ignore their own problems. Rescuers usually have a stake in keeping the victim feeling helpless and weak. In the end, the rescuer keeps the victim feeling like a victim by giving them permission to avoid changing or taking responsibility for their own lives.

These roles are so ingrained in our cultural milieu that we don’t even see them; we just seamlessly (and unconsciously) step into them. But they are like junk food, providing only temporary stimulation and a quick shot in the arm of power, leaving us weaker in the long run.

So, what can we do instead of taking on these dysfunctional roles?

1. Don’t engage

When Sara got that nasty text from her ex-husband, he was playing a victim role, while making Sara the persecutor. (He had engaged a mutual friend as a rescuer, who was also texting Sara, encouraging her to help her ex repair his relationship with his daughter).

Sara needed reminding that getting involved in a drama like this is always a choice. One option was to just ignore her ex-husband’s nasty text, or opt to send her ex-husband straight to the source, telling him to please talk to their daughter directly. And then Sara could silence the text conversation on her phone.

2. Question the prevailing beliefs

Having been pinned as a villain, Sara understandably had a hard time not engaging.  She felt that ignoring the texts coming in by the dozen would only make her ex-husband more justified in his anger. She wanted to defend herself against his unfair accusations.

More than that, though, Sara felt truly sad for her ex-husband, even though she understood (and supported) her daughter’s actions. Sara really felt her ex-husband’s hurt, and she wanted to help him, or at least soothe his pain. She wanted to intervene, even though she’d never been successful in doing so in the past.

Perhaps the most important stress-reduction tactic that anyone has ever taught me is not to believe everything I think. For Sara to stay out of the Karpman Drama Triangle, she would have to question her belief that things would get better if she tried to fix the situation—if she swapped her persecutor role for a rescuing one. I find The Work of Byron Katie, whose simple strategies are similar to cognitive behavioral therapy, works well when we need to question our thoughts and assumptions.

In this case, Sara was a lot less tempted to engage in the conflict when she questioned the assumption that her involvement would actually help. She came to see that her involvement would actually create more distance between her ex and their daughter.

3. Take on a different role in the conflict

We can also always shift the role we are playing in a conflict from a dysfunctional one to a constructive one.

• Victims can become creators. Instead of succumbing to the temptation to wallow in the unfairness of it all, we can go from problem-oriented to outcome-oriented. What is it that we want to gain in this situation or relationship? When we take responsibility for the role we play in challenging situations, and for our lives, we trade the false power of victimhood for the real power that comes from creating the life we want.
• Persecutors can become, or be seen as, challengers. Persecutors are people (or situations) that force the victim (now a creator) to clarify their needs, and focus on their own learning and personal growth. Challengers always tell the truth, even when it is painful.
• Rescuers can become coaches. The key difference between a rescuer and a coach is that the coach sees the creator as capable of making choices and of solving their own problems. A coach asks questions that help the creator to see the possibilities for positive action, and to focus on what they do want instead of what they do not want.

Sara ultimately decided not to try to protect her ex-husband from the truth by making excuses for their daughter, nor did she try to placate him with pictures from the event. By telling the truth, she’d become a challenger instead of a persecutor. And by refusing to soothe and placate, she declined to be a rescuer, even though this made her ex very angry.

She did offer to take on a coaching role, by asking her ex what type of relationship he wanted with their daughter, and then asking him how he might take steps to get there—but he wasn’t actually looking for coaching or to create a new relationship with their daughter. In the end, because he wasn’t getting what he wanted out of Sara, he kicked her out of his drama triangle, leaving her alone in peaceful silence.

For Sara, that silence was a blissful ending to a painful conflict.

This article was adapted from Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

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Saying “Yes” – Meeting Your Edge and Softening - Tara Brach

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Our habitual ways of avoiding unpleasant experience keep us from intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This talk helps us recognize these often unconscious patterns that keep us identified with a separate, threatened self, and offers guidance in saying “yes” to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our unbound, true, nature.

Listen to the accompanying meditation: Saying “Yes” to Life.

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The Gift of a No Good, Very Bad Day

It’s natural to long for a worry-free life, where you win the lottery, spend all your days with people you love, eat good food, and never want for anything. But if you were happy all the time, would you ever grow as a person?

Probably not, says Benjamin Hardy, bestselling author of Willpower Doesn’t Work. In this video from BigThink, he explains how experiencing hardships can actually help you succeed in the long run.

While it may seem obvious to assume that experiencing positive emotions lead to positive outcomes, Hardy says that usually isn’t the case.

“Sometimes, actually, negative experiences, negative emotions, produce some of the best outcomes,” he says. “And so, avoiding negative, challenging, difficult emotions is probably on one of the worst things a person can do.”

He references the poem by Douglas Malloch: Good timber does not grow with ease, the stronger wind, the stronger trees.

Essentially: when faced with challenges, you learn to adapt, and become more resilient.

Essentially: when faced with challenges, you learn to adapt, and become more resilient.

Lean into what challenges you

Knowing that a difficult situation will make you stronger doesn’t make it any easier to approach a challenge you hope to avoid.

Hardy explains that people’s reluctance is usually due to negative anticipation—we imagine something will be more painful or strenuous than it really is.

For example, think about all the times you’ve hesitated on the edge of a swimming pool before finally plunging into the water that awaits. Once you work up the nerve to jump in, it’s never as cold as you expect it to be, and your body quickly adapts to the change.

“If you anticipate that a task is going to be difficult, you’re probably going procrastinate, or you’re going to put it off, or you’re going to have emotional challenges going into it,” Hardy says. “But if you just recognize that you’re going to adapt to it very quickly, once you actually get into it motivation kicks in.”

For those waiting for the right time to tackle a challenge, Hardy recommends people simply begin, regardless of whether you feel ready—Once you get started, the motivation you need to continue will follow.

Cultivate growth, not just change

As human beings, Hardy says we’re wired to change the way we act depending on our circumstances.

But just because you’re replacing old behaviors with new ones, doesn’t necessarily mean the habits you form are positive.

For example, eating lunch at your desk instead of skipping it altogether isn’t going to benefit you as much as giving yourself a proper afternoon break, away from the demands of your job.

“If you want to grow you must change, but just because you changed doesn’t mean you grew,” Hardy says.

Ultimately, developing the “positive” habits you want takes hard work—they are born out of difficulty.

Video from BigThink

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How Habits Can Get in the Way of Your Goals

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Meditation: Saying Yes to Life (21:53 min.) - Tara Brach

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We are conditioned to scan for “what’s wrong” and contract our body and mind in anticipation of danger. This meditation helps us undo these primal survival habits, and frees us to inhabit the full aliveness, creativity and love our natural being.

In the shared quiet, an invitation arises like a white dove lifting
from a limb and taking flight.
Come and live in truth. Take your place in the flow of grace.
Draw aside the veil you thought would always separate your
heart from love.
All you ever longed for is before you in this moment if you
dare draw in a breath and whisper “Yes.”

“White Dove” by Danna Faulds

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Find Balance During a Moment of Panic

There’s nothing worse than having a panic attack in public, like during a meeting at work or when you’re waiting in line at a market or gas station. Your panic may inflame your body like a raging inferno. Physically, you may feel dizzy or reel with fear and bewilderment. Some people have described a sensation of vertigo or disorientation in their body at these times. The impulse to run out and get as far away from people as possible during a panic attack is undeniably real. You may experience a strong urge to postpone a transaction and rush frantically back to your car or your work station or even a vacant bathroom stall. That’s okay. Just remember, you have other choices, and there are tools that can help you cope with the impulse to escape.

The following version of the S.T.O.P. practice will help you reclaim your sense of balance and strength to follow through with the task at hand, whether you’re surrounded by strangers or people you know. Again, S.T.O.P. stands for Stop, Take a breath, Observe, and Proceed. Try it now.

1. Stop: Begin by taking a pause and giving yourself permission to stop what you’re doing. This is your special time to listen in and nurture yourself.

2. Take a breath: Pay attention to your breath. You may notice that you’re holding your breath or that your breathing is constrained. If so, just let yourself breathe, without forcing it or changing your breath. Gradually, your breath will return and you’ll connect with it more readily. When your breathing begins to feel more natural, normal, and steady, bring your breath into your belly. You may become aware of how your belly expands and contracts, pushing out against your waistline on the inhale and then deflating on the exhale. Take a few belly breaths.

3. Observe: Acknowledge and allow any and all sensations that are coming up right now in your body. Are you feeling the urge to race out or to stay put? Are you dizzy or light-headed? Are you feeling more connected with your body or less connected? Acknowledge the feelings that your body is sharing with you. By allowing these sensations to surface and run their natural course, you’ll start to settle down and recognize that you have more control than you often think. When you recognize the sensations percolating in your body, you create space for change and a way to work through these sensations, breath by breath, moment to moment.

By allowing these sensations to surface and run their natural course, you’ll start to settle down and recognize that you have more control than you often think.

4. Proceed: Remember to breathe and return to being fully present in the now. Move gently forward in your day. Be compassionate toward yourself when panicky feelings arise. They’ll come and go, rise and fall, similar to your breath, and to the clouds overhead, and to the ebb and flow of the ocean.

S.T.O.P. is your free “time-out” ticket—time for just you, time to observe what’s going on inside, and time to breathe. Your mindful awareness of your breath and your body is exactly where you’ll discover your balance and equilibrium so that you can face the rest of your day with calm and ease.

This article was adapted from Calming the Rush of Panic, by Bob Stahl PhD, Wendy Millstine NC.

A Meditation on Working with Anxiety

Calming the Rush of Panic in Your Emotions

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How to Talk to Your Kids About Death

Death is everywhere. The lifeless bugs on the windowsill. The dead mouse in the crawl space.

My preschooler, Opal, started plying me with questions when she was four. “Were you the one who died that mouse?” Or, “Do you think that moth knows he’s dead?” Cute out-of-the-mouths-of-babes comments tossed off as she buzzed on to her next activity. I’d gotten used to her frank, unemotional curiosity about death, but when her questions shifted from light banter to a source of terror, I was caught completely off-guard.

It happened just before her fifth birthday. She and her dad, Jesse, were settled on the couch with a copy of The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, a book we’d read to her a dozen times. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. / I don’t know why she swallowed the fly. / Perhaps she’ll die. Opal suddenly started to cry and said, “When I die, will I still be with you and Mommy?”

Jesse scooped our daughter into his arms and held her as she sobbed into his shoulder. “We love you. We’ll take care of you. We love you,” he assured her.

The next day was filled with more questions, increasing in urgency. Over breakfast, Opal asked, “Mommy, do you still eat when you die?”

I tried to keep my tone matter-of-fact, the way I always had. “No, honey, your body doesn’t need food anymore when you die.”

“It doesn’t? Can you see?”

“No, honey, you can’t see anymore, either.”

At this point in the past, she would have lost interest and moved on to hugging the dog or arranging her stuffed animals on her bed. But not now. “Then how will I know where to find you guys when I die?” The look in her eyes swung to terror and confusion. Then came a rushing stream of tears.

Oh dear, I thought to myself, what have I done? Not only that, I wondered how I, a seasoned mindfulness practitioner, could be so flummoxed by questions about death—the exploration of which is an important part of my practice?

It didn’t matter. I realized I was no more prepared to answer Opal’s questions than many parents of young children, meditators or not. Several other mothers I spoke to with kids around Opal’s age were as confused as I was. One mom told me that her son hasn’t asked about death yet, but she has no idea what she’ll say when he does. Another woman said her daughter is under the impression that “death is something that happens when you are very old, and we’ve just kind of let that assumption ride for now.”

When Opal started asking me about death, I didn’t want to lie to her or overlook the fresh wound of her concern. But I didn’t want to cause her nightmares either.

As it turns out, these moms and I are not alone in our confusion about how to talk to our children about death. Former hospice chaplain Joseph Primo, president of the National Alliance for Grieving Children and author of What Do We Tell the Children?, told me that the discomfort and befuddlement so many of us feel is common in our Western culture. “The fact that parents have to ask that question is really a symptom of a much bigger problem,” he explained. “It’s been multiple generations since we’ve been able to talk about death and dying in an open, healthy, constructive way.” This, he adds, despite the fact that death happens to every single living creature.

What’s more, Primo said, this state of affairs is really unfortunate for kids. “As a result, they wind up making sense of death and loss on their own, when the subject could be a way for adults to give them the tools and resources they need to explore their world, to imagine their life, and to begin wrestling with this part of the human condition.”

When Opal started asking me about death, I didn’t want to lie to her or overlook the fresh wound of her concern. But I didn’t want to cause her nightmares either. I navigated her questions with simple, generic responses and lengthy hugs until I was able to get a better grasp on how to respond.

I began by researching kids’ books on the subject, including Lifetimes by David Rice, and The Fall of Freddie the Leaf by Leo Buscaglia. Both stories focus on the cyclical nature of life. “We all fear what we don’t know,” The Fall of Freddie the Leaf tells us. “Yet, you were not afraid when spring became summer. They were natural changes. Why should you be afraid of the season of death?”

Not a bad start, still I needed more. I needed to know what information was appropriate for Opal’s age group so that I could answer her questions with confidence instead of panic.

 

Keep It Concrete

“School-aged kids don’t do well with symbolism and metaphors,” advised Joe Soma, a psychologist in Boulder, Colorado. “They need concrete details. It’s best to explain death in simple, scientific terms. Everything lives and dies. The trees and animals have to die to make room for new things to be born.”

“But what if saying that makes Opal even more afraid?” I asked.

“You can acknowledge her fear and tell her that adults feel scared, too,” he said. “But always bring it back around to something concrete like, ‘What did you do to take care of your body today?’”

Opal’s first reprieve from death-angst came during a trip to the farm with friends, days into her questioning. Animals and nature were just the ticket; she didn’t mention death for hours. Her daddy and I had talked to her about the cycles-of-life earlier that morning when we found her crying in the bathroom, toothbrush dangling from her lips. She seemed to take in our words, to understand death and rebirth in her five-year-old way. At the farm, I pointed out the baby pig and the fresh leaves on the trees. New life. But, on our way home, in the vulnerable place of post-play emptiness, she whispered, “Mommy, I’m thinking about it again.”

When we returned, Opal took stock of the life spans of everything in the house. “The fish will live the shortest. No, the plants will. Then the dog will die next, then the cat.” She paused to brush a clump of bangs from her eye. “You and daddy are next, right? But not for a long, long time, right, mama?”

Perhaps Opal was trying to escape thoughts of her own death by assembling lists of things she felt she understood. Mommy and Daddy are at the end of the list. The fish, the cat and the dog have to die before we even think of Mommy and Daddy dying. It’s almost as if those names and that list had the power to stave off death for Mommy, Daddy and Opal. Especially if repeated aloud.

Like Joe Soma, New York City psychologist— and my uncle—Richard Zuckerberg also stressed the importance of using concrete details when talking to kids about death. Moreover, he said, sometimes questions that seem to be about death are really about separation, about losing Mommy and Daddy. He thought this might be the case when I mentioned that Opal had been unusually volatile in the weeks leading up to her pressing questions.

He suggested I use concrete details to reassure her by saying, “I understand that you are worried, but remember how we came back after school today? We’ll always come back. We are taking good care of ourselves and plan to live a very long time, but if something ever happens to us, you will be totally cared for.”

I expected those words to breed more fear in Opal, but I was pleasantly surprised. Instead, she wanted to know who would take care of her. I recited a long list of friends and relatives who would be there for her, no matter what. I could see her taking in the names, one by one, as if she were using them to weave a huge safety net around herself.

Model Emotional Intelligence

In my quest for answers, I met with Michele Bourgeois, an educator, social worker, and school counselor in Lyons, Colorado, who teaches yoga, mindful breathing, singing, and art to elementary school children. She believes that, “If you give kids many avenues of expression on an average day, you are laying the groundwork for them to have ways in which to process grief when the need arises.”

Joseph Primo pointed out that, “If our end game is to prepare children for life and to give them the tools they need to be resourceful, empathic beings, then we are required to model warmth, encouragement, and a willingness to not know, yet to be present. We want our kids to know that they can tackle all things when they are surrounded by people who love them,” he said.

“Often, it’s not about us providing them with the answers, as much as creating the space for them to explore their own feelings.”
– Joseph Primo, president of the National Alliance for Grieving Children and author of What Do We Tell the Children?

When Death Is a Reality

So far my talks with Opal were about death in the abstract. But I couldn’t help wondering what to say when she experiences the death of someone close to her. Her 92-year-old Papa Jack and our grumpy but sweet old cat, Gilda, are beloved members of our family nearing the end of their lives.

Joseph Primo offered some guidelines: “The D-word is critical, not ‘passing away.’ To help children understand ‘deadness,’ they need language and facts to imagine it and to wrestle with it.” He added that metaphors and commonplaces can be incorporated into the conversation if they’re important to you, but that’s not the best place to start.

He also recommended saying essentially the same things to a five-year-old as you’d say to a 10-year-old or a teenager. “Name the specific disease or reason for dying, otherwise the child will imagine something worse,” he advised. “Give enough information to help the child understand the situation and what’s happening. That’s the ultimate goal. Then pause, create the space for her to process, to explore, to ask questions. Prioritize how many facts you give. See how the child responds, then say more, depending on what they’re looking for.” Chances are, you won’t go into the same kind of detail with a five-year-old as you will with older children, since younger kids are less able to absorb a lot of information.

When I asked Primo if he could provide me with a specific list of things to say to different age groups, he told me he couldn’t, emphasizing that every situation is different, as is every child.

“There’s a lot of room for judgment calls, and parents making choices with what they’re most comfortable with at the time,” he said. “Ultimately the parent knows the child best, so they have to trust their instincts.” However, letting the child know that their feelings are normal is key. “There’s plenty of room for anger, sadness and confusion,” he added. “Create a space where they can safely discharge their emotions without judgment.”

“So I didn’t traumatize my child that morning over breakfast when I told her that dead people don’t see?” I asked him.

“Hardly,” he replied. “Parents need to be OK with their child being scared and uncertain. Often, it’s not about us providing them with the answers, as much as creating the space for them to explore their own feelings.”

My friend Misty Lebowitz is one of the moms I spoke to during the course of my research. She learned the importance of telling children the truth about death the hard way. When her own father died when she was just 14, no one in her family talked to her about it, leaving her heartbroken and confused. So when her sons’ grandfather was diagnosed with cancer when the boys were eight and 12, Misty delivered the news straight. “Your grandfather has cancer,” she told them. “The doctor said he would live only for a few more months. He loves you, but he doesn’t want any visitors. So let’s make him some videos to tell him we love him.” Misty set up the video camera and gave the boys privacy to express themselves. “There were a lot of tears after Grandpa died,” she told me, “but at least we knew the boys were aware of what was going on.”

Two years later, she recounted, the family’s beloved dog, Maddox, died unexpectedly late one night. She was rushed to the vet, but nothing could be done to save her. Misty insisted on waking up the boys so they could see their dog before she died. “My mom told me I was crazy,” she said, “but I knew it would be worse if Maddox just vanished.” The boys got to hold her and kiss her before she took her last breath. “They were grateful to get to say goodbye to her and to see that she wasn’t in pain,” Misty said. Months later, her 14-year-old son wrote a heart-wrenching poem about Maddox, and the grief and loneliness he felt without her. He read it to his entire school.

Still, I wondered, what about kids and funerals? Should we take them or not?

In What Do We Tell the Children?, Primo writes, “Funerals can help kids do their grief work if the children themselves have a voice and a choice.” He explains that some kids will not want to attend, which is fine as long as they have the information they need to make that decision. But if children think they’d like to go, it’s important for parents to let them know exactly what to expect.

He elaborates: “The majority of children, however, will want to be there every step of the way. And they will want to talk about it, explore the meaning of it, question the process, and revisit the ritual in the future.” On the other hand, he says, kids who are not involved in the process may harbor resentments and feelings of exclusion well into adulthood.

Primo recalls a story of a little girl who, at three, requested to hold the body of her newborn brother, who had died of complications during birth. Her mother honored her request. “She held him tight, kissing his forehead over and over. Then she returned him to the table and asked, ‘Mom, can we go get ice cream now?’”

Luckily, the subject of death continues to be hypothetical for Opal. Not long ago she brought it up again while I was slipping a sundress over her head, but her tone was far less anguished than before. Her focus had shifted, too, from the act of dying to what happens afterward. “So,” she said, as if re-visiting a topic to review for an exam, “tell me what happens after you die.”

“People believe different things happen when you die, sweetie. We believe that even though your body stops working, your spirit…” I paused, knowing she was not familiar with the word spirit. “Love, your love continues to live on in another body. We believe you are born again. And all the goodness you create in this life will follow you to your next life.”

Opal smiled. “So,” she said, “we come back as babies? I love babies. They are so cute! It’s like all of our hearts are connected by a rainbow. One long thread of a rainbow. I get it now.”

Later that day, she strolled into the kitchen after watching one of her favorite cartoons and announced, “It’s time for me to have a sister! How do we get one, Mommy, pleeaase!?”

I looked up from my computer, took a long sip of tea and thought to myself, wait—can’t we talk about death?

This article also appeared in the October 2015 issue of Mindful magazine.

Go Toward What Hurts

Mindful Kids Practice: Coming Back to the Positive

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Mind Vs. Brain

Let’s try a little experiment. Using your right index finger, point to your brain. Now using the same finger, point to your mind. Not so easy. We don’t necessarily think of our brain and mind as being exactly the same thing. One is not as easy to pinpoint, and this has led to two distinct ways we have of talking about mental activity: mind talk and brain talk.

To those of us without a degree in neurobiology, it seems completely natural to refer to the mind. We talk about feeling this way and thinking of that, of remembering one thing and dreaming of another. Those verbs are examples of mind talk. Using mind talk, we would say, “I recognized my first-grade teacher in the crowd because she was wearing the necklace with the beetle scarab, which was so unusual I still remembered it after all these years.”

We would not say, “A barrage of photons landed on my retina, exciting the optic nerve so that it carried an electrical signal to my lateral geniculate body and thence to my primary visual cortex, from which signals raced to my striate cortex to determine the image’s color and orientation, and to my prefrontal cortex and inferotemporal cortex for object recognition and memory retrieval—causing me to recognize Mrs. McKelvey.”

That’s brain talk. That there is an interplay between mind and brain may seem unremarkable. The mind, after all, is generally regarded as synonymous with our thoughts, feelings, memories, and beliefs, and as the source of our behaviors. It’s not made of material, but we think of it as quite powerful, or even as who we are.

The mind, after all, is generally regarded as synonymous with our thoughts, feelings, memories, and beliefs, and as the source of our behaviors. It’s not made of material, but we think of it as quite powerful, or even as who we are.

The brain, the three-pound slab of tofu-textured tissue inside our skull, is recognized (by scientists, at least) as the physical source of all that we call mind. If you are having a thought or experiencing an emotion, it’s because your brain has done something—specifically, electrical signals crackled along a whole bunch of neurons and those neurons handed off droplets of neurochemicals, like runners handing off a baton in a relay race.

Neuroscientists don’t object to mind talk for casual conversation. But most insist that we not invoke the mind as if it is real, or distinct from the brain. They reject the notion that the mind has an existence independent of the brain (often called Cartesian dualism, after René Descartes of “I think, therefore I am” fame). Obviously, avoiding mind talk would be a problem for a column about the science of the mind in a magazine called Mindful.

I fell afoul of the no-mind rule last year during a talk I gave in Salt Lake City on neuroplasticity—the ability of the adult brain to change its structure and function in response to outside stimuli as well as internal activity. I was talking about mind changing brain, a possibility that intrigues scientists who have investigated the power and effects of mental training, including mindfulness. I used examples such as people with obsessive-compulsive disorder practicing mindfulness to approach their thoughts differently, with the result that the brain region whose overactivity caused their disorder quieted down. Ta da: mind changing brain.

Not so fast, said one audience member. Why talk about something so imprecise, even spooky, as mind? Why can’t the explanation for the OCD patients be that one form of brain activity (that taking place during mindfulness) affected another (the OCD-causing activity)? Why do we need mind talk?

Well, we need mind talk because although most neuroscientists reject the idea of a mind different from brain, most civilians embrace the distinction. This competing view of things gets expressed in the real world in stark and startling ways. Take, for example, how the mind-brain dichotomy can play out in the criminal justice system. Neuroscience holds that the brain is the organ of the mind. If something goes wrong with behavior, then it’s because something has gone wrong with the brain (in the same way that if something has gone wrong with, say, insulin secretion, it’s because something has gone wrong with the pancreas). We can probably all agree that criminal assault and downloading child pornography both count as something “going wrong” with behavior. Yet in these and other cases, judges presented with evidence that the behavior had a biological basis have meted out more lenient sentences than in cases where no such evidence was presented.

To which neuroscientists reply, are you out of your mind? Why are you relying on such a distinction? What else is behavior but the result of brain biology? Yet the fact that criminals are treated more harshly if their mind (motives, anger, antisocial feelings…) made them do it than if their brain (aberrant activity patterns, pathological circuitry…) did shows just how deeply average folks believe that mind and brain are distinct.

This dualism gets at a profound philosophical issue that has divided scholars for decades: what is the most productive and helpful level of explanation for mental activity? When do we go too far in reducing mental matters to physically observable activity? Is it more illuminating, for instance, to explain why Teresa loves Dave by invoking their personalities and histories and tastes, or their brain neurons? Consider trying to explain confirmation bias, in which people remember examples that support their point of view—“You never take out the garbage!”—and forget counterexamples. Is it more illuminating to explain it as the result of the human need to shore up our beliefs or by invoking synapses and neurochemicals?

One case for mind talk is that we have access to our mind. We can recognize and describe what we know, remember, and think. We do not have access to our brain: we cannot tell which regions (my hippocampus? my anterior cingulate?) are active during particular activities.

One case for mind talk is that we have access to our mind. We can recognize and describe what we know, remember, and think.

But many neuroscientists say mind talk is just hand waving. As a result, you can hardly call yourself a psychologist or neuroscientist (cognitive, affective, social, or otherwise) unless your research uses brain imaging. In a 2012 study, researchers performed fMRI scans on volunteers playing a made-up game in which they had to decide how much money (given to them by the scientists) they wanted to share with others—a test of their altruism. (fMRI pinpoints areas of the brain that are more active, or less, than the baseline during a particular mental function.) The researchers found that a region involved in perspective taking—allowing us to put ourselves in other people’s shoes—is more active in the most altruistic individuals.

I don’t know about you, but learning that people who are good at understanding things from someone else’s perspective tend to be more altruistic doesn’t tell me much about altruism that I didn’t already suspect. I mean, did anyone think altruistic people would turn out to be bad at perspective taking?

The mind–brain debate is not about to go away anytime soon, so in this column I will be keeping an eye on the dialogue between brain talkers and mind talkers and to keep exploring what the latest science has to teach us about our minds and our brains. For example, can brain biology alone “define, predict, or explain the emergence of mental phenomena,” as Alan Wallace, a pioneer in the scientific study of the effects of meditation on cognition, behavior, and physiology, has asked? What kind of scientists are willing to talk about mind, and to what extent? What qualifies as “proof” that a practice like mindfulness is improving our lives? Are scientists finding ways to make mind talk like “thought” and “emotion” more rigorous, so we don’t have to be embarrassed around them when we talk that way? And above all, how can what scientists are learning about both mind and brain help us make our way a little better in a challenging world with the tools we have available, whatever names we choose to call them?

This article appeared in the April 2013  issue of Mindful magazine.

How the Brain Changes When We Practice Knowing Our Minds

The Magnificent, Mysterious, Wild, Connected and Interconnected Brain

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Does Mindfulness Meditation Really Make You Kinder?

Mindfulness meditation proponents often tout it as a way to create a more compassionate society. But that claim seems a bit dubious upon first glance.

After all, meditation is an internal affair—focusing on our own experiences, emotions, and thoughts—and people generally meditate alone. What does that have to do with how we treat anyone else? While some meditation practices directly aim for increasing compassion—such as loving-kindness meditation—others focus more on creating mindful attention, a focus on one’s present experience. This seem less likely to automatically impact how we relate to others.

Yet evidence is mounting that mindfulness meditation proponents might be right. Though the science is far from conclusive, it points to the likelihood that mindfulness meditation does lead to “prosocial” (kind and caring) feelings and thoughts, and more compassionate behavior towards others. And it may do so by training people in mindful awareness.

“Almost any approach for cultivating care for others needs to start with paying attention,” says Stanford researcher Erika Rosenberg. “The beginning of cultivating compassion and concern, or doing something for the benefit of others, is first noticing what something or someone means to you.”

A gateway to caring behavior

One recent study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology took a stab at figuring out the relationship between mindfulness meditation and prosocial behavior.

Daniel Berry and his colleagues randomly assigned some participants to either a brief mindfulness training or a training in controlling their attention. The mindfulness training involved focusing on momentary inner experiences: the breath, thoughts, feelings, and body sensations; the attention training involved focusing on important goals in your life.

Then, participants played an online game called Cyberball. “Players” (represented by colored dots) tossed the ball to each other; but after a few tosses, two of the players excluded the third. Though participants were told the dots represented real people located in other rooms, the interactions were actually pre-programmed.

Initially, participants simply observed the game in action. Afterwards, they were asked to write emails to each player in the game, saying “whatever they wanted.” Their responses to the excluded victim were coded by independent raters for warmth, which served as one measure of prosocial behavior. In addition, researchers surveyed how concerned participants were for the victim and how distressed they themselves felt after the game.

Participants then played a second Cyberball game with the players they’d just observed. How often the participant threw the ball to the previously excluded victim was considered a second measure of prosocial behavior.

The findings showed that participants who had trained in mindfulness reported feeling more empathic concern for excluded players—meaning, they felt more tender, sympathetic, and compassionate toward them—but not more distress themselves, compared to simple attention training. They also expressed more warmth in their emails to victims and threw the ball more frequently to them, demonstrating that these feelings were tied to compassionate action. The results also held among a different group of people who didn’t receive any training, but reported on surveys that they were more mindful to begin with.

Berry was not surprised by these findings.

“From the philosophical and religious traditions from which mindfulness comes, it’s been long understood that practicing meditation, and cultivating mindfulness, in particular, can conduce to virtuous action,” he says.

So how did mindfulness impact prosocial action? When the mindfulness training induced higher levels of empathic concern in people, they helped the victims more—providing one potential explanation. Increased attention alone, on the other hand, didn’t seem to play a role. This means that mindfulness must be doing more than just increasing how much people notice that someone is suffering, Berry explains; it must be actually increasing their concern.

This means that mindfulness must be doing more than just increasing how much people notice that someone is suffering, Berry explains; it must be actually increasing their concern.

These findings fit well with Rosenberg’s views. While paying attention is the “gateway” to more caring behavior—allowing you to notice that someone is suffering or that your actions are hurting someone—it’s not enough to elicit action. “You still have to have the motivation to care,” she says.

In additional experiments, Berry and his colleagues ruled out other potential explanations for the positive effects of mindfulness. For example, they compared mindfulness training to a progressive muscle relaxation training, and found the same results favoring mindfulness. They even tried measuring whether mindfulness meditation increased outrage toward the perpetrators in the game, rather than concern for victims. But these factors didn’t change the outcome: People who received mindfulness instruction still felt more empathic concern, and in turn acted more compassionately.

“I think there’s evidence to suggest that the default state of humans is to be focused on the self,” says Berry. “Perhaps what mindfulness does is temporarily break us from that self-focus so that we can be other-oriented.” Indeed, one recent study found that more mindful people are also less concerned with goals that protect their self-image, such as getting recognition from others or avoiding showing any weakness. They care more about compassion-oriented goals—like giving only constructive comments to others or avoiding doing any harm to others.

Mindfulness meditation makes you kind

Of course, Berry’s study was done in a lab with college students, and we don’t know if these findings translate into the real world—or how long the caring feelings and behavior will last after such a short mindfulness practice. But other research seems to point in the same direction.

In her own research, Rosenberg has found that when people practice meditation over a longer period and are then exposed to videos of people suffering, they not only have increased prosocial emotions like compassion, but they have lower “rejection emotions,” like disgust and contempt. This held true even when meditators witnessed someone suffering who was more difficult to find compassion for—like American soldiers bragging about killing Iraqis.

“It’s one thing to show compassion for the victims, it’s another level—really getting it—to show compassion for the perpetrators,” she says.

In a 2015 study, students who used a meditation app for three weeks were more likely to offer a chair to a distressed student entering a waiting room on crutches—even when other students didn’t offer help—than a group who had used a brain training app. Berry points to a study that found mindfulness can decrease aggressive behavior, and to another finding that even short trainings in mindfulness can reduce implicit racial and age bias.

In recent review of research in the area, Christina Luberto and her colleagues found that mindfulness training indeed appears to make us kinder toward others. Analyzing only studies that used randomized controlled experiments, they found that meditation training had significant effects on people’s self-reported feelings of compassion and empathy, and also on objective prosocial behaviors—such as increased giving in an economics game or helping another person in distress.

They found that meditation training had significant effects on people’s self-reported feelings of compassion and empathy, and also on objective prosocial behaviors—such as increased giving in an economics game or helping another person in distress.

Remaining issues for mindfulness research

One thing everyone seems to agree on: There is still much to be learned about the benefits of meditation, including what is most effective and for whom, especially when it comes to prosocial behavior. And while studies like Rosenberg’s and Berry’s may have been carefully constructed, some researchers criticize meditation research in general—often with good reason—for being biased or poorly designed.

Many mindfulness studies are correlational rather than experimental, which means they are less helpful in nailing down mindfulness as the cause of any observed benefits. Also, many researchers insert their own bias into the design, sometimes employing a coauthor as the mindfulness instructor. Rosenberg worries about this as well: When you work with a charismatic teacher, she says, it’s less clear if the effects of the program are due to the tools being taught or something about the teacher that makes students more committed. Issues like these and others, delineated in another recent research review by Ute Kreplin and her colleagues, can lead to overly generous interpretations.

Another problem is that much of the early research on mindfulness—and even current research, including Kreplin’s and Luberto’s reviews—uses multi-component interventions, which can make it hard to tease out the effects of mindful attention alone. For example, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction often involves a mixture of focused breathing, loving-kindness meditation, yoga, and walking meditation within an eight-week program. The program’s excellent results are promising for people who want to take it, but how can we know that mindfulness itself accounts for its effectiveness?

Still, Rosenberg says, it’s important not to go too far down this path of trying to whittle down meditation into its smallest units. After all, mindfulness meditation came to us via a long tradition of contemplative practice, and all of the practices are ultimately used to increase our attention and our ability to control our reactions to experiences. The practices were probably meant to build on one another, not be performed in isolation.

“There are many scientists, and I’m beginning to be one of them, who think that it doesn’t make any sense ecologically to separate out the components of meditation, because they’re intimately linked.”

Berry’s study avoids many of the problems outlined in Kreplin’s review. His mindfulness intervention was solely focused on mindful attention and devoid of instructions in kindness or compassion; the prosocial outcomes were objectively measurable; the intervention was done by someone other than the researchers; and the study was experimental rather than correlational, including many controls. That bodes well for its significance, though Berry is still cautious, taking Kreplin’s meta-analysis seriously.

“At this stage, this area of study is just taking off,” he says. “Some of the findings from the meta-analysis may be based on only two or three studies. If anything, it points to the need for more research and more rigorous research.”

What to make of all of this? While more research does indeed need to be done, there appears to be increasing evidence that mindfulness meditation helps people be more prosocial.

And that’s good news. As mindfulness continues being promoted as a way to boost our personal well-being, it’s refreshing to know that it may just be helping us create a more compassionate society, too.

This article was adapted from Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

Where Does Kindness Come From?

A Kinder, Gentler World

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What Is It Like Being You? - Tara Brach

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Compassion is hard wired in our organism, and can be cultivated. This talk helps us identify the blocks to compassion—our outmoded survival equipment—and using RAIN, offers practical guidance in mindfully attuning to others’ emotional experience and awakening our natural tenderness and care. This talk includes a short introduction to the meditation: The RAIN of Compassion.

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The Importance of a Breakdown

Human beings are experts at showing up for the demands of the world. We keep driving forward—for our boss, our parents, our partners, or even ourselves—trying to live up to what’s expected of us, as defined by those around us.

Until suddenly, one day, we break.

Experiencing a breakdown can be inconvenient, uncomfortable, and even frightening, but it comes with an important message. In this video from School of Life, philosopher Alain de Botton explains how breakdowns provide you with an opportunity to learn what you really need from life.

What is a breakdown?

Breakdowns can take many forms, ranging from the inability to get out of bed, to becoming depressed, developing social anxiety, or feeling compelled to do something completely scandalous, or even dangerous.

Whatever it may look like, breakdowns cause you to deviate from your regular routine. Often, people rush to fix the problems they face so that they can return to their daily responsibilities—but doing so can lead you right back into the routines that caused you to break down in the first place.

Often, people rush to fix the problems they face so that they can return to their daily responsibilities—but doing so can lead you right back into the routines that caused you to break down in the first place.

“A breakdown is not merely a random piece of madness or malfunction, it is a very real, albeit very inarticulate, bid for health,” de Botton says. “It is an attempt by one part of our minds to force the other into a process of growth, self-understanding, and self-development, which it has hitherto refused to undertake.”

While medication is sometimes necessary to overcome mental health concerns that arise from a breakdown, such as anxiety and depression, it is also important for you to take a moment to reflect on what your body and mind are trying to say.

“What the breakdown is telling us, above everything else, is that it must no longer be business as usual; that things have to change,” de Botton explains.

Why do breakdowns happen?

Change is good for us—so why does it take a breakdown for you to realize you need to make adjustments to your lifestyle? Likely for the same reason you avoid going to the dentist: the conscious mind is reluctant to experience discomfort, De Botton explains.

“The reason we break down is that we have not, over years, flexed very much. There were things we needed to hear inside our minds that we deftly put to one side, there were messages we needed to heed, bits of emotional learning and communicating we didn’t do – and now, after being patient for so long, far too long, the emotional self is attempting to make itself heard in the only way it now knows how.”

De Botton compares a breakdown to a civil revolution: small things build until one day, it is simply too much to handle anymore. Often, your body’s legitimate needs cannot be addressed or discovered until it is too late, and you are already in crisis mode.

How do we recover?

A breakdown can be inspired by many things: perhaps a need to slow down at work, to end a relationship, to make more time for your family, or to truly accept an aspect of yourself you’ve kept hidden, such as your sexuality.

“A crisis represents an appetite for growth that hasn’t found another way of expressing itself,” says de Bottom. Whatever the reason, the best way to become well and prevent it from happening again is to learn from it, and start to listen to what your body and mind is telling you.

“Our crisis, if we can get through it, is an attempt to dislodge us from a toxic status quo. And it represents an insistent call to rebuild our lives on a more authentic and sincere basis,” de Botton concludes.

Get Your Mind and Body Out of Crisis Mode

Five Ways to Find Time to Pause

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A Mindfulness Practice to Cultivate Nonjudgmental Awareness

There’s a space that opens up for yourself when you can sit with your thoughts and sensations and practice observing them without reacting to them—without trying to fix them or ruminate over them. It’s sort of like remembering your most horribly embarrassing moment and appreciating the pings of regret and shame—just finding some room to let yourself be human for a little.

The more we practice sitting with our whole selves nonjudgmentally (the good, bad, beautiful, and painful), the better we get at opening ourselves up to every kind of moment with discernment and acceptance, rather than judgment, reactivity and remorse.

Meditation gives us the opportunity to sit with discomfort—bored, achy, restless, and distracted, we choose to stay with it, anyway. We can find ourselves caught up in fear, disappointment, and self-criticism in any part of our day. That’s all common and normal. Meditation is the chance to practice giving ourselves permission to feel exactly what we feel, even when we’re not as okay as we’d like to be.

Meditation is the chance to practice giving ourselves permission to feel exactly what we feel, even when we’re not as okay as we’d like to be.

We don’t have to be falsely happy about anything, but we do need to openly face reality. Over time, we can more easily accept our challenges and navigate whatever we find from a place of equanimity, built through the practice of mindful awareness.

Nonjudgmental Awareness Practice

To allow you to fully experience this meditation, we recommend that you listen to the audio version. However, you can also simply read the text below. If you choose to do so, read through the entire script first to familiarize yourself with the practice, then do the practice, referring back to the text as needed and pausing briefly after each paragraph. Take about fifteen minutes for the practice. You can do this practice in a seated position.

Sit for a few minutes, focusing on the sensation of breathing. Your mind will stay busy. Assist it in settling by noticing thoughts as thoughts, and then patiently returning to the breath. 

Now bring to mind something you don’t like that much about yourself, or that you wish you didn’t have. Choose something uncomfortable, but not overwhelming. 

Notice what arises. It might be a sense of physical discomfort, or an emotion, or an anxious thought. Give attention to all of it: the facts, your reactions, emotions like disappointment or frustration, and anything else that comes up.

If the practice becomes too uncomfortable, take care of yourself. Allow yourself a break, seek out support, and let go of the practice for now. Come back to whatever feels most appropriate in this moment.

As we continue a longer period of silence, sustain awareness. This is how things are. Each time you get distracted, come back to your practice. 

Acknowledge this aspect of experience right now as best as your able, without any need to fix or change anything for this moment. 

For the last few minutes, take time for self-compassion. On each in-breath, be aware that this is a challenge for you right now, and all people have challenges. On each out-breath, wish yourself the same happiness and wellness that you’d wish for your best friend. Perhaps: may I find strength and happiness in the face of adversity today.

On ending, come back with several breaths. End with a few minutes of meditation, simply feeling your breath move in and out, noting thoughts and letting them go. Set an intention to move forward with both acceptance and resolve.

Prescribing Awareness

The Difference Between Healing and Fixing in the Practice of Mindfulness

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Meditation: Breath by Breath – Inviting Relaxation and Ease (16:47 min.) - Tara Brach

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This meditation invites relaxation and ease. We begin with a long deep breathing that helps calm the body and mind. Then we release tensions that might be held in the body, and settle our attention in a receptive way with the breath. The intention is to discover the relaxed wakefulness that expresses our natural being.

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Seven Lessons from Mister Rogers That Can Help Americans Be Neighbors Again

Fred McFeely Rogers was a shy, somewhat awkward, and sometimes bullied child growing up in the 1930s. After going to college for what he called his “first language”—music—he prepared to enter seminary and study for the ministry. But on a visit home for Easter, he saw television for the first time. He hated it—people on the program were throwing pies in each other’s faces, and Fred found that demeaning. Nonetheless, he sensed instantly television’s capacity for connection and enrichment. That moment changed his life—and the lives of millions of Americans.

Fred Rogers, of course, went on to create Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which aired nationally for over 30 years. Beginning in 1968 and continuing until (and beyond) the end of production in 2001, untold millions of children grew up under Mister Rogers’ steady gaze and faithful care. Those children now make up much of the American public, and now many of them are flocking to theaters to see the documentary of Misters Rogers’ life, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Somehow, over 15 years after his death, we seem unable to stop turning back to Mister Rogers again and again—with a feature film that will begin filming in Pittsburgh this fall, and a biography that will be released in September. It seems we sense that Mister Rogers, whom we used to know so well, who used to seem to know us so well, may have something to say to us in our divided, contentious, often-painful cultural and political climate. Here are some of Mister Rogers’ teachings that could help us weather today’s ups and downs, stand up for what we believe in, and come together across our differences.

1. It’s okay to feel whatever it is that we feel

From 1955 to 1961, Fred Rogers was puppeteer and organist for The Children’s Corner, a popular, live, local Pittsburgh show that he co-created with Josie Carey. During his years on that show, Fred often spent his lunch hour taking classes—first at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (then called Western Theological Seminary) and later at the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied child development. It was through his studies that he met child psychologist Dr. Margaret McFarland, a member of the Pitt medical school faculty.

Margaret and Fred became good friends, and Margaret worked as chief psychological consultant for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood from the time it began until her death in 1988. It was Margaret who helped Fred get in touch with his own childhood memories, who helped him anchor the scripts, songs, and set of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in child development theory, and who said to him repeatedly, “Anything human is mentionable, and anything mentionable is manageable.”

In other words, whatever we feel, it’s okay to feel it—even if our feelings seem chaotic and complex. And naming our feelings, speaking them out loud, and exploring them with those we love are all good ways, as Mister Rogers might say, of growing on the inside.

2. But our feelings aren’t an excuse for bad behavior

The famous video of Mister Rogers’ 1969 testimony before a Senate subcommittee shows up on my social media feeds every time government funding for PBS or NPR is threatened. But while my friends and I are busy trying to score political points, it’s easy to miss the substance of the testimony itself.

The young Fred, just a year into the national run of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, doesn’t talk, as I once assumed, about ensuring that educational television is equally available in all zip codes. He sits calmly, speaks slowly, and talks about feelings.

Specifically, he talks about anger. He quotes, at length, his song, “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?” which gives suggestions for how to channel anger: “punch a bag,” “pound some clay or some dough,” “round up friends for a game of tag.” His favorite part of the song, it seems, talks about what he calls the “good feeling of control”:

It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong, 
and be able to do something else instead and think this song:
I can stop when I want to, can stop when I wish. 
I can stop, stop, stop anytime. 
And what a good feeling to feel like this, 
and know that the feeling is really mine, 
know that there’s something deep inside 
that helps us become what we can. 
For a girl can be someday a woman, 
and a boy can be someday a man.

Mister Rogers and his Neighborhood constantly affirmed the coexistence of self-expression and respect for self and others, and this was in no way a passing interest—the song that Fred quoted in his Senate testimony appeared in 38 episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, including an episode filmed 30 years later, in 1999.

Mister Rogers and his Neighborhood constantly affirmed the coexistence of self-expression and respect for self and others.

When Fred was asked in an interview toward the end of his career about television’s responsibility to children, he replied, “To give them everything that we possibly can to help them grow in healthy ways, and to help them to recognize that they can be angry and not have to hurt themselves or anybody else, that they can have the full range of feelings and express them in very healthy, positive ways.”

3. Other people are different from us—and just as complex as we are

In a time when people on the left and the right dread family holidays with each other in equal measure, we’re hyperaware of differences between people. Our media diets, our social media feeds, and even our in-person relationships lock us into silos of agreement, where it’s easy to demonize and oversimplify those with whom we disagree.

But Mister Rogers showed us another way. As if he had spent a Thanksgiving or two around a family table, he wrote a song that said, “It’s the people you like the most who can make you feel maddest. It’s the people you like the most who can manage to make you feel baddest.”

In another song sung frequently on the Neighborhood, he reminded his television neighbors,

Sometimes people are good, and they do just what they should, 
but the very same people who are good sometimes 
are the very same people who are bad sometimes.
 It’s funny, but it’s true.
It’s the same, isn’t it for me…

Isn’t it the same for you?

However tempted we may be to call others “bad,” however tempted we may be to call ourselves “good,” all of us are more than we seem. Fred Rogers’ favorite quote from his favorite book was this: “L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.” In English: “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

4. It’s our responsibility to care for the most vulnerable

Mister Rogers was as gentle and loving in real life as on screen, but he also had an iron will and perfectionistic standards, and he kindly and firmly demanded excellence from himself and from all who worked with and on behalf of children.

Fred Rogers built his life and work on a bedrock of conviction. Though he studied and appreciated many religious traditions, he was, at his center, a Christian deeply committed to the values he read in Christian scripture. He believed in—and worked every day to emulate—a Jesus who welcomes children, loves us just the way we are, and calls us to love self and neighbor.

An ordained Presbyterian minister with a one-of-a-kind charge to minister to children and families through the mass media, Fred took seriously the scripture mandate to care for the most vulnerable. He worked with prisons to create child-friendly spaces for family visitation, sat on hospital boards to minimize trauma in children’s health care, visited people who were sick or dying, and wrote countless letters to the lonely.

In a 1991 speech to the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, an organization of lawyers, judges, educators, and counselors whose work included arbitration of custody disputes, he said,

“The problem is that when we deal with a group of people—one or more of whom is a child—we just can’t be impartial. None of us who have anything to do with families with young children can.”

Just last month, Megyn Kelly asked Fred’s wife Joanne Rogers what Fred might say to America in 2018. Joanne replied, “It would be about the children. It would be about the immigrants who are having children taken—the children themselves. It breaks my heart, and I know it breaks everybody’s heart.”

5. We can work to make a difference right where we are

As Michael G. Long points out in his book, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers, Fred’s work for the greater good did not take the form of marching, rallying, or picketing. He occasionally wrote a note to a member of Congress, and of course he testified before that Senate subcommittee.

More often, however, Fred did his work in and through his own context. Fred didn’t march against Jim Crow; he cast black actors on his program. He didn’t travel to Birmingham or Selma in support of integration; he set up a pool and invited Officer Clemmons (played by black, gay actor François Clemmons) to soak his feet and share his towel.

Marching, writing, calling, and organizing are all good ways to make change, but Fred’s life reminds us that we can work for the well-being of the most vulnerable wherever we may be, in whatever work we do. In other words, “There are many ways to say ‘I love you.’”

Fred’s life reminds us that we can work for the well-being of the most vulnerable wherever we may be, in whatever work we do.

6. It’s important to make time to care for ourselves

Fred was a vegetarian, he didn’t smoke, and he rarely drank alcohol. When he traveled, whether for business or pleasure, he never changed his watch—or his personal schedule—to local time.

Wherever he was, he began each morning with prayer and Bible study, followed by lap swimming at the local athletic club. Swimming, as Mister Rogers sometimes shared with his television neighbors, was a way he could express emotion, especially anger. What he didn’t tell his television neighbors was that he often stood beside the pool and sang a quiet hymn before diving in. Fred also made time, almost every day, to sit and play the piano.

Fred spent his life giving of himself—on screen and off, to those he knew very well and those he met only in passing or in the pages of a letter. But he could only do so because he was absolutely committed to doing what he needed to take care of himself. Making time for self-sustenance meant he had more to give away.

7. We are neighbors

Mister Rogers didn’t call us “acquaintances” or “friends”; he didn’t call us “boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen.” He called us neighbors.

When Mister Rogers called us neighbors, when he hosted us in his own Neighborhood for over 30 years, he was calling us—gently but firmly—out of our structures of power and our silos of sameness, into lives of mercy and care for one another.

Admittedly, maybe he was overly optimistic. Maybe he was calling us something better than we actually were. But maybe he believed that if he got to us while we were young, if he told us, again and again, that we were good, that we were lovable, and that we could extend mercy, maybe we could grow into real neighbors to one another.

Maybe we still can.

Lyrics by Fred Rogers provided courtesy of The Fred Rogers Company.

This article was adapted from  Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

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