Friday 31 August 2018
Part 2: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening - Tara Brach
We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts. (a special talk from the archives)
Listen to the first part: Part 1: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening
An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. – Adrienne Rich
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Thursday 30 August 2018
Meditation: Awakening Our Energy Body (19:51 min.) - Tara Brach
This meditation scans the body and directly invites the awakening of key energy centers (chakras) in our body. We then rest in the openhearted awareness that includes this ever changing creative flow of aliveness (a special meditation from the archives).
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Wednesday 29 August 2018
Tuesday 28 August 2018
How Educators Can Become More Resilient This School Year
What are your hopes for the new school year? Maybe you want to get better at handling the day-to-day stresses of the job, or be more patient with yourself and your students. One teacher-friend I know says her hope for this year is to learn to “soften more and more into the inevitable chaos and messiness of life.” Can you relate?
The problem is, of course, that it isn’t so easy—this softening thing. Elena Aguilar knows this, which is why she wrote the new book Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators.
“Simply put, resilience is how we weather the storms in our lives and rebound after something difficult,” explains Aguilar. But resilience is more than this, she claims—it’s also “what enables us to thrive, not just survive.”
Last year may go down in history as one of pure “survival” for some of us, but why settle for managing or enduring when we have the potential to feel energized and joyful in our work? After all, it’s not ultimately about us—it’s about our students. They need us, with all of our faults and complexities, to walk into the classroom fully present and alive to them.
If thriving is your goal, Onward is worth reading. Although Aguilar acknowledges how our neurobiology can influence resilience, she reminds us that we can ultimately become much more emotionally resilient by simply changing our daily habits. Onward (with its accompanying workbook) serves as a practical, user-friendly resource for change—a daily guide for teachers’ personal growth and professional development.
Fostering new habits (and ways of being)
With 25 years in education under her belt and a decade as an instructional and leadership coach, Aguilar draws on research in mindfulness, neurobiology, positive psychology, change management, and systems thinking to package a coherent year-long program for developing resilience.
She explains that resilience is influenced by four factors: who you are (genetics, values, personality), what you do (habits), where you are (context), and how you are (emotions, dispositions).
Aguilar teaches you how to work on these factors with her 12 habits of emotionally resilient educators, which include things like building community, being here now, and taking care of yourself. You can choose to read about one habit every month or go straight to the topics that are most important to you, each of which is supplemented by a long list of daily activities and practices in the companion Onward Workbook.
On your journey, Aguilar believes that there are three foundational habits all educators should start with: knowing yourself (purposefulness), understanding emotions (acceptance), and telling empowering stories (optimism).
1. Know yourself. According to Aguilar, to become emotionally resilient, you must begin by exploring the key elements of self: your values, personality, aptitudes, and skills. Aguilar recommends two free online assessments for identifying some of your personality traits and character strengths. If, for example, you can identify one of your personal strengths (like kindness, curiosity, or perseverance) and creatively use your strength every day for a week, you may find yourself happier (and potentially more resilient).
To become emotionally resilient, you must begin by exploring the key elements of self: your values, personality, aptitudes, and skills.
“When you know yourself well, you gain clarity on your purpose in life and work,” says Aguilar. As you begin to understand and embrace your purpose, skills, and areas for growth, your sense of efficacy can increase—and in one research review, efficacy (or self-belief) was one of the personal resources most frequently linked to teacher resilience.
To help you get to know yourself better, Aguilar’s companion workbook includes activities like identifying your hopes, creating a values jar, and crafting a mission statement.
2. Understand your emotions. Once you have a better sense of “who you are,” it’s important to understand “how you are”—what sorts of emotions influence your daily life. By spending time observing your emotions, you can begin to understand how they function. For example, knowing that your fear reaction to an aggressive student (the tensing of your muscles, the increased heart rate, and the tightening in your throat) is both protective and temporary may help you let it go more easily and move toward a more thoughtful response to her anger.
This form of self-awareness is one of the fundamental components of emotional intelligence as described by psychologist Daniel Goleman, and studies indicate that emotional intelligence facilitates resilience to stress and may even lead to less burnout. Although Aguilar doesn’t directly cite emotions studies—in fact, most of the research in her book is implicit rather than explicit—she seems to draw on the work of researchers like Paul Ekman and Dacher Keltner.
In her supplementary workbook, you can develop your emotional intelligence by examining your beliefs about your feelings, observing your emotions (see sidebar) and how they affect your body, and learning techniques for relaxation such as the body scan.
3. Tell empowering stories. Aguilar also encourages us to focus on the narratives we create to understand (or distort) our reactions to daily events. When we tell positive, empowering stories about our lives, we are likely to feel more optimistic and resilient as a result.
One study found that people who experience greater well-being tend to tell stories of change and growth about the obstacles they face. For example, if a new teacher reminds himself that he is a lifelong learner who is improving every day, rather than continually telling himself, “I’m just not a good teacher,” he’s more likely to hang in there and keep trying rather than burn out early in his career.
Aguilar draws on work in the field of cognitive behavioral therapy to help you interrupt your interpretations of events, identify common patterns of distorted thinking, and learn how to shift your thinking and core beliefs. When a challenging event happens, our interpretations are often dramatized and exaggerated, but we can shift our thinking by asking ourselves simple questions about the beliefs underlying our thoughts (see sidebar).
The Onward Workbook also features activities for increasing gratitude, fostering optimism, and reflecting more broadly on your life story.
Cultivating resilience to transform schools
Apart from the concrete tips and activities featured, Onward doesn’t shy away from bigger-picture questions about how our context can influence our emotional resilience, which is one of the things I appreciate most about it.
Aguilar does this by prompting us to examine our “sociopolitical identities” and how they function in schools. In other words, which aspects of your identity are most relevant to you and your work—and which are you most aware of every day (e.g., ability, age, education, marital status, language, race, religion, socioeconomic status)?
For example, as a bilingual Latina (woman) who teaches American History, how do you relate to all of the students in your class who are immigrants and refugees? If you are a white woman serving as a principal at an ethnically diverse elementary school, how do you view your position of leadership? Are you aware of your power? Where do you feel powerful and where do you sometimes feel powerless?
“In order to create the just and equitable society that I know so many of us yearn for, we need tremendous reserves of resilience. We must change the macro conditions in which we live and work, and to do that, we’ll need all the physical and emotional resources we can muster,” writes Aguilar. “If we foster our individual resilience first, then we may have the courage to address the more complex organizational and systemic conditions we face in schools.”
So grab a group of colleagues and map out a plan (formal or informal) for sharing this resource. It was designed for teachers, school staff, coaches, and site administrators—“any group that operates in or with our educational system.” For further motivation, pick up the workbook; hop on the Onward website for meditations, handouts, blog posts, and videos; or even join the Facebook page to engage in discussions with the larger educational community. Let’s all work together to create spaces where we not only survive but also thrive this year.
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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Monday 27 August 2018
Friday 24 August 2018
Part 1: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening - Tara Brach
We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts (a favorite from the archives).
If I’m not free to fail, I’m not free to take risks, and everything in life that’s worth doing involves a willingness to take a risk. – Madeleine L’Engle
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. – Rainer Maria Rilke
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Thursday 23 August 2018
Make It Meaningful
Purpose isn’t always obvious as we go through our day. In fact, the routine of daily life sometimes feels like the antithesis of meaning. That’s where intention comes in, says Parneet Pal of Wisdom Labs. “[It] can help you align your conscious thinking with a primal emotional drive…like reward, connection, purpose, self-identity and core values.”Upon rising, before you do anything else, try this:
- Sit up in bed or in a nearby chair. Close your eyes and connect with the sensations of your seated body.
- Take three long, deep breaths. Then let your breath settle into its own rhythm.
- Think about the people and activities you will face today. Ask yourself:
- How might I show up to have the best impact?
- What quality of mind do I want to strengthen?
- In difficult moments, how might I be more compassionate?
- Set an intention for the day. Then, pause to revisit your intention throughout the day. Over time, you might notice how the quality of your communications, relationships, and sense of purpose shifts.
Psychologist and The Power of Meaning author Emily Esfahani Smith spent five years researching what constitutes a meaningful life. Strengthening even one of the resulting “four pillars” will support the quest for greater meaning in anyone’s life, she says.
Belonging: This comes from our relationships, from feeling valued for who we are and from valuing others. “It’s a choice—you can choose to cultivate belonging with others.” Purpose: Without something worthwhile to do, we flounder, Esfahani Smith writes. And the key to purpose is using your strengths to serve others. This may be through your career, or it could be in walking shelter animals. What’s the “why” that drives you forward? Transcendence: The moments when we’re “lifted above the hustle and bustle of daily life [and] feel connected to a higher reality” have the power to change us, Esfahani Smith says. In one study, students who contemplated 200-foot eucalyptus trees for just one minute felt more centered and behaved more generously. Storytelling: We each have a personal narrative that helps us to understand who we are. “But we don’t always realize that we’re the authors of our stories and can change the way we’re telling them. You can edit, interpret, and retell your story, even as you’re constrained by the facts,” she says. Can you tease out elements of purpose in your life story? If so, let them help you chart a course forward.
3. WHAT’S LIFE ASKING OF YOU?Instead of worrying about the meaning of life, craft a life that has meaning to you right where you are, advises Chip Conley, the founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre hotels. In Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness & Success, Conley tackles the existential question “What’s the meaning of life?” and concludes that meaning is a DIY job. “Lots of people are so distracted by searching for the light at the end of the tunnel that they cannot see clearly what’s right next to them,” he writes. “Creating an abstract idea of meaning can just become another distraction. What is life asking of you right now? Can you light a figurative candle in your hand to illuminate this moment so that you and those around you can make a difference today?”
PARTING THOUGHTSmall Moments Matter You don’t need a big “aha” moment to spur you to meaningful action. How can you make a difference right now, where you stand? Maybe you can show up at home tonight as a role model for your family. Or perhaps become a mentor at work. “Meaning can find you anywhere—in a park with your kids or in a lunch conversation with a coworker—just be open (and willing) to be found,” Chip Conley writes.
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Meditation: Awake & Open Awareness (21:02 min.) - Tara Brach
This calming meditation practice helps settle the mind with the breath and then opens to the changing flow of experience, letting life be just as it is. (a classic from the archives)
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How Mindful Risks Can Create Lasting Change
Being a stand-up comic was one of my life’s fantasies. So when the owner of a chain of comedy clubs saw my one-woman show and invited me to perform at his venue, I was pretty excited. But as the date drew closer I became increasingly restless. “Why?” I screamed into my pillow. “Why did I decide to put myself out there?!”
Whether you are posting a profile on eHarmony, joining a local ping-pong club, or asking for a raise, moving into new territory takes bravery. This is especially true since there’s no certainty that your courageous act will bring you the approval of others or anything at all that you think you might want.
So what’s the appeal? Putting yourself out there can be the depth charge that breaks you out of harmful habits. The very habits you cling to that may seem like they are keeping you safe are actually just keeping you small. And as Nelson Mandela said, “There’s no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
Step back from your life and recall any moments you couldn’t imagine surviving. Yet you did survive, and maybe your daring even became a turning point for positive change in your life.
Step back from your life and recall any moments you couldn’t imagine surviving. Yet you did survive, and maybe your daring even became a turning point for positive change in your life.
Do yourself—and others— a favorDexter Manley has two Super Bowl rings. He played football in the NFL and faced the embarrassment of the world when he put himself out there and publicly admitted that he was illiterate. At 28, Manley became a role model for adult learning. By putting it out there, he changed the lives of many who, through his courage and success, saw possibilities for themselves. We have an immense power not just to change our own circumstances, but to inspire the people around us.
Putting yourself out there can be dramatic, but it doesn’t have to be. At its core, bravery just means allowing yourself to be vulnerable. I know a psychiatrist who is a very shy public speaker, incredibly reluctant, yet in demand. She told me the story of a recent speaking engagement of hers. Already feeling rocky because of a difficult situation in her family, and not very comfortable speaking in public at the best of times, she suddenly found herself paralyzed midsentence, unable to talk. At all. For several moments.
Do you notice that time never feels as long as those moments when awkwardness hangs in the air? After a not-so-delicious silence, she put herself out there and told the room about what was going on inside her. Many said that moment had the biggest impact of her whole talk. Who knew putting herself out there would include falling apart in public, and that acknowledging it might be the big takeaway for her audience?
Start small, go bigThere are other ways that we can put ourselves out there that might not have the same adrenaline-triggering qualities, but can bring change anyhow, and strengthen our bravery muscle. We can simply say hello, or good morning, or take other small acts of daring kindness toward strangers. We can put ourselves out there by agreeing to chair a committee. We can put ourselves out there by letting people see us grieve or go gray. We can put ourselves out there by standing up or standing down for the greater good.
According to psychologist Rick Hanson, the primary way to cultivate resilience, compassion, happiness, gratitude, and confidence is “to have experiences that get encoded into lasting change in our neural structure or function.” In other words, if you want meaningful, lasting change in your life and you are seeking a way to open up to a wider band of color and choice, and if you are tired of settling for a life that keeps you small, you actually have to be somewhat outrageous. You have to take risks. And when we break the habit of playing small, we create possibilities for something new in our lives. Sometimes, when we take a leap, it leads to flying. But unless you put yourself out there and open to the possibilities that come with new experience, you’ll never really know for sure.
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What Is Interpersonal Meditation?
Q. I heard meditating while looking into someone else’s eyes can be good for developing empathy. Do you think that’s true?
A. I first experienced this “interpersonal meditation” exercise when I brought my then-fiancée to a Jack Kornfield talk in Santa Monica, about eight years ago. We paired up, and it wasn’t long before she was overcome by emotion and tears were streaming down her face as we two lovebirds gazed into each other’s eyes. She says she fell in love with me all over again during that exercise.
These practices are often introduced to give people a direct, felt sense of loving-kindness, compassion, and empathy. They can be very powerful and often quite emotional (as my now-wife can attest!).
These practices are often introduced to give people a direct, felt sense of loving-kindness, compassion, and empathy.
What’s less clear is if engaging in such practices develops these qualities in an ongoing, sustainable way. It’s also been reported that people who have experienced trauma have found the exercise of enforced empathy with strangers less than comforting, which suggests that it may be a practice that should be introduced only in contexts where people are prepared for and have signed on for such a thing.
The good news is that we’re able to cultivate loving-kindness and compassion all by ourselves by often calling to mind loved ones or people we admire or people we know are suffering or struggling and directing good wishes toward them for happiness and freedom from suffering. Doing so helps cultivate good will—not necessarily good feelings—and allows us to tap into our natural capacity and desire for happiness and freedom from suffering. No eye-gazing required!
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Bringing Mindfulness to the US Air Force
Jannell MacAulay knows a thing or two about the hard-driving life. A combat veteran and former commander with over 3,000 flying hours, MacAulay served in the US Air Force for 20 years before retiring in June 2018. But her hard work and ambition eventually led to burnout. 14 years into her career, she began doctoral studies on human performance and encountered self-care practices like yoga and mindfulness. What began as academic research soon became a personal practice and, ultimately, a professional crusade: She brought mindfulness to her squadron and then to some 2,500 members of the 58th Special Operations Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Do you remember your earliest encounter with yoga or mindfulness?
Around 1999, I took my first yoga class, and I didn’t like it. My mind didn’t stop moving—it just kept accelerating through my worries, my to-do list. I felt that slowing down with yoga would be detrimental to my performance.
You were more comfortable with hard work?
My parents—my dad, a retired police lieutenant, in particular—instilled in me a drive for hard work. My father used to tell people I was going to be a submarine warfare commander or a fighter pilot. In the 1980s those jobs weren’t open to women, but I had no idea about limits. I just knew that if I worked hard enough I could achieve my dreams.
And that approach worked—until it didn’t?
That message from my parents was incomplete. Somebody looking at me from the outside might have thought, “Man, she’s successful.” But inside I was really struggling.
What happened?
My husband was on a one-year deployment in the Middle East. We had a two-year-old daughter, a house, a dog. And I was responsible for a flight-training unit. I was trying to be perfect and I was completely burned out. I had been flying for 13 years, but I still hadn’t realized that I needed to secure my own oxygen mask first.
When the Air Force sent me back to school for two years, I started studying how we can perform better under high-stress situations, like combat. The research was compelling, and the idea of slowing down to speed up intrigued me. Mindfulness became my oxygen mask.
The idea of slowing down seems antithetical to the military mindset.
In a culture like the military, no one wants to be told, “Hey, you need help.” When I was in that go-go-go mentality, I know I didn’t want to hear, “You need help slowing down.” People would say that I was making my unit weak or “just making people feel good.”
My answer was “Is there a problem with making people feel good? If they feel good, they’re going to perform better.” So I focus my message on performance. We all can use more tools and resources to get better at what we do. Mindfulness is another resource to make you even more badass or more high-performing than you already are. That resonates with people.
We all can use more tools and resources to get better at what we do. Mindfulness is another resource to make you even more badass or more high-performing than you already are.
How did you introduce mindfulness to your squadron?
I started by just exemplifying the behaviors of a mindful leader—someone who took care of herself, who was present in conversation. Eventually, we began to meditate at our monthly commanders calls and weekly leadership meetings. As a squadron, we practiced together once a month and, for people who saw me more often, once a week.
How can mindfulness help performance?
Maybe a student pilot doesn’t have the best landing. The student takes off again and comes back around for the next one. As the instructor, I can tell if the student is still thinking about the previous landing. If they can’t get that first landing out of their head, the second landing won’t go well. You need a skill to help you recover. That’s what mindfulness does: It brings our awareness back to the moment so we can perform at a high level, despite the mistakes we made two minutes earlier.
What will you do now that you’ve retired from the military?
The number one thing is being more present with my two young children and my husband. And I’ll be consulting with the Air Force and other organizations on performance-related programs. I am passionate about building a culture that’s more focused on performance and that recognizes mindfulness as a performance-enhancing tool. I’m also passionate about integrating self-care into our leadership model.
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Make a Change that Lasts
Making meaningful changes to create a life more aligned with who you want to be isn’t that hard: To be more fit, you can exercise; to be a better writer, you can write more; to be more mindful, you can practice mindfulness. We know making these kinds of changes is good for us and even feels good. But making them stick? Well, that’s another story.
To make lasting change, we need more than desire and willpower. It requires an understanding that our brains are wired to create obstacles that hinder us from making healthy changes, and that, thanks to technology, it’s harder than ever to maintain focus. Maybe most importantly, we need to understand that we are not islands, and that our social and physical environments can make the difference between ongoing motivation and incessant procrastination. Once you understand these obstacles, you can begin to take simple steps to organize your life in a way that inspires the sustainable changes you want to make.
Here are the biggest threats to our well-intended efforts to change, and how to counter them mindfully.
Negativity rulesFrom the dawn of our species, the human brain has been on the lookout for danger. Why? Because before you can work on being happy, you need to survive.
It’s called negativity bias, and it still rules today. For example: You have a great idea for a new project. You ask 10 people what they think and nine of them say things like, “This is fantastic,” or “This can really make an impact in so many ways.” But one person says, “What’s wrong with you? How could you ever consider this? This idea is sure to fail.”
Which comment is stickier?
The brain’s first job is to scan the horizon and anticipate any danger—and “danger” in brain-speak can be anything that causes even momentary discomfort, which also happens to be a natural and integral part of change!
In order to ensure your security (in this case, the status quo), the brain will conjure up all the potential pitfalls of this idea, from anticipated failure to doubt that it’s going to make a difference. Well, from thoughts come actions, and from actions come consequences, so you have doubt and fear of failure showing up as laziness, procrastination, or “forgetting” to do the thing you planned to do in support of your change. This just leads to more thoughts confirming that you couldn’t really make this change anyway. And… your motivation disappears.
What can you do? First, recognize that this old wiring is part of the human experience. Be on the lookout for negative thoughts in response to your plans, and remember Thoughts aren’t facts (not even the ones that say they are). When they arrive, soften your body and take a deep breath. Ask yourself, “Do I know this thought to be absolutely true?” If not, visualize how you will feel after having made the change you want to make. Allow that feeling to propel you forward.
Be on the lookout for negative thoughts in response to your plans, and remember Thoughts aren’t facts (not even the ones that say they are).
Our fractured attentionJust while writing this sentence, my phone has lit up twice, stealing my attention. (Yes, I’ll put it away now.) Anybody with a smartphone knows the experience of continuous partial attention: It’s what happens when you quickly switch between tasks—and the brain drain that can occur as a consequence. In our constantly connected world, where a device right in our pocket (or on our wrist) serves as a hub for work, personal life, fitness tracking, incessant news updates, and even meditation apps, for many of us, fractured attention is more the norm than not.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t support the sustained attention needed to make lasting changes. When it comes to changing or adopting new habits, researchers say that, depending on the difficulty of the task, it can take between 20 days and more than 200 for a new activity or way of being to become automatic. In other words, it requires the ability to sustain your attention for a significant period of time on a particular task, whether it’s exercise, meditation, writing, you name it.
We know mindfulness meditation is one of the best ways to increase focus and attention. So, in addition to putting your phone down (or, preferably, away, where you can’t hear a vibration or see a notification), engage in simple, playful meditations whenever you have a moment. Try this: Sustain attention on a particular part of the body (nostrils, abdomen), and when your attention drifts, gently bring it back again and again. Remember, what you practice and repeat becomes automatic, and so it is with our attention, too.
Lack of social supportHumans are inherently social; even from our beginnings we came together in clans to gather food and keep safe from potential threats. Strong communities also had a set of values and practices that were implicitly reinforced simply by the nature of being in a community. However, in our modern lives, we live in little boxes, separate from one another, and our neighboring clans are no longer an immediate threat (for most of us at least). On top of that, with a few swipes of the finger we can order groceries to our doorstep without even seeing another human being.
As a result, most of us aren’t spending a great deal of time around people who naturally inspire us toward our desired value or action. That doesn’t mean you don’t have good friends, family, or coworkers you care for and respect, but they may not be practicing the change you want to make.
This is not to suggest that you should abandon people who aren’t living the way you want to live. Not at all! However, you should realize that your attention is an invaluable resource, and the people you attend to will greatly influence your ability to achieve the changes you want. So consider ways you might spend time with people who do represent the changes that you want. For example, you could try joining a gym or meditation studio, or finding (or starting) a writer’s group.
Remember, working toward change is an imperfect process and you’ll fall off the path many times. That’s natural and part of our common humanity. See if you can hold all of this with a learning mindset. When you stray, forgive yourself for the time gone by, investigate with curiosity what brought you off track, and invite yourself to begin again with this new learning. Repeat this process indefinitely.
When you stray, forgive yourself for the time gone by, investigate with curiosity what brought you off track, and invite yourself to begin again with this new learning.
Take InventoryTake honest inventories of your social and your physical environments to identify where you’re supported and where you’re not.
- Write your name on the left-hand side of a piece of paper.
- Draw three short lines to the right of your name, and continue doing that progressively, fanning the lines out to the right of the paper.
- Write the names of the people you spend most of your time with on the lines closest to you and continue this until you write the names of the people in your life you spend the least time with.
- Next to each person’s name, write a number on a scale of 1-10, where 1 stands for least inspiring in respect to the change you want to make and 10 stands for most inspiring in respect to the change you want to make.
- You may notice that many of the people you spend most of your time with may or may not be supportive in your life, but are not the most inspiring, and there are others on the periphery who are doing what you want to be doing, and could be inspiring to you, but that you’re not spending much time with.
- Consider how you might connect more with those who live the way you’d like to be living and draw them closer to you. If you find that you don’t know where to find inspiring people, do a search in your area of local interest groups. While in-person is optimal, don’t discount the power of having regular contact with inspiring people online, too.
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Savouring Grilled Peaches
Maybe more than any other fruit, peaches embody sensuality. The velvety, blushing skin, the luscious flesh—at once juicy and firm—gushing sweetness and just enough tang to keep it enticing with every bite. I could eat a dozen peaches in one sitting without a moment’s pause. (In fact I have, much to the dismay of my stomach.)
However, not all peaches are made equal. When not quite ripe or in season, peaches can be mealy, dry, and lacking in flavor. A sure way to improve the flavor and texture of less-than-ideal peaches is by cooking them, which helps loosen up their juices and soften their texture. Nothing beats a perfect peach, so for something truly spectacular, try this recipe with ripe fruit.
Try ThisPit and slice some peaches to about half-inch thickness. Lightly brush each side with your choice of oil and place on a grill (or a stovetop griddle) set to medium heat. Grill for one or two minutes on each side. Enjoy them on a salad, with a bowl of ice cream, or on plain yogurt with a drizzle of honey.
Nutrition info
Peaches are a rich source of vitamins A and C, potassium, and fiber-rich healthy carbohydrates. They also provide chlorogenic acid, an antioxidant that helps to slow the release of glucose into the bloodstream.
source: whfoods.com
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Top of Mind
In villages throughout India, women are singing about IUDs and iron supplements, saving the lives of countless mothers and their infants, as an aspect of Save A Mother. SAM is an NGO whose mission is to deliver crucial health information and resources to vulnerable Indian communities. Gita Gupta, a trained health activist with SAM, says she has often incorporated maternal health information into traditional folksongs, because musicalizing the information makes it easier to remember.
Having a baby can be fraught with health risks in these rural areas, resulting in tragically high maternal mortality rates. While SAM has also aided in tuberculosis detection and increased acceptance of contraceptives, their education and advocacy programs are focused on pregnancy, nutrition, immunization, delivery, and infant care. The organization trains volunteers, primarily women, to empower other women in their villages to be proactive about their health needs. Their goal is social change where healthier behaviors become the norm. Since 2008, they’ve worked with more than 2 million people in over 1,000 villages. In that time, maternal deaths decreased by 90% and infant deaths by 57%.
Frisky funCould mindfulness be linked to better sex? Australian researchers surveyed 800 adults about their “dispositional mindfulness”—a quality of nonjudgmental attention to the present moment—and sexual satisfaction. Well, well: The more mindful people reported happier relationships and better sex lives.
Countering trauma two waysResearchers at Rutgers University recently examined whether a program that combines meditation and aerobic exercise might ease trauma-related symptoms and depression better than meditation or exercise alone. In a pilot study, 32 women who had experienced sexual violence received either the MAP (Mental and Physical) Training My Brain program, meditation alone, exercise alone, or no instruction. At the end of six weeks, women who’d had MAP training reported significantly fewer traumatic thoughts and less rumination, as well as greater feelings of self-worth.
MAP training is unusual in that it activates both branches of the nervous system—one responsible for rest and repair, and one governing our “fight, flight, or freeze” response. Learning to intentionally engage and disengage these systems may be effective for those seeking to heal from trauma.
WHO recognizes the risks of gamingThe World Health Organization has added a new illness to its International Classification of Diseases: gaming disorder, which is marked by “a pattern of gaming behaviour [of] such a nature and intensity that it results in marked distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational or occupational functioning.” Medical professionals have said the addictiveness of gaming is “substantially similar” to that of cocaine and gambling. While many people game in moderation, acknowledging the addictive quality of video games could make it easier for therapists and medical experts to understand and treat people who do not.
Open your mind, learn something newWhat we already know can get in the way of learning something new, a phenomenon called proactive interference. Much of what we’ve learned is stored in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory hub. Researchers in Boston were curious about whether mindfulness training might reduce proactive interference, as well as increase the size of the hippocampus—similar to the way a muscle grows with repeated exercise. So they randomly assigned 79 adults to four weeks of either web-based mindfulness training, or creative writing. Each group had brain scanning before and after their training.
Those who’d practiced mindfulness showed significantly less proactive interference than the creative writing group. What’s more, the lower rates of interference were directly linked to increases in the size of the hippocampus, suggesting mindfulness practices that focus attention on the present may improve learning and memory. These findings may help researchers develop strategies to better aid children with learning difficulties or prevent cognitive decline in aging adults.
Research gathered from Greater Good Science Ctr. at UC Berkeley, Ctr. for Healthy Minds at U of Wisconsin–Madison, Ctr. for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School, and American Mindfulness Research Association.
Posing no problemA Denver, Colorado, elementary school is replacing its detention periods with yoga class. The pilot program draws on research that suggests yoga can help kids pay attention to their breathing when they’re mad or anxious, and may even ease symptoms of ADHD. School psychologist Carly Graeber hopes to leave behind the punishment paradigm in favor of “teaching kids social and emotional skills that they can use for their lives.”
Making menopause easierThe transition to menopause can be physically and emotionally rough. Chinese researchers compared women receiving either Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training or menopause education. At study’s end, while both groups had fewer menopausal symptoms, the MBSR group was significantly less anxious and depressed.
Mindful at work with Michael CarrollQ A junior member of staff has asked for mentoring. What does this really mean? What does a good mentor do?
A Mentoring is a private relationship between a mature, trusted leader and a talented, motivated protégé. The relationship requires periodic face time, so each party needs to be willing to be available to the other. It’s best if the person being mentored can articulate up front—in writing—what they would like to learn.
Mentees should take an active interest from the very start in cultivating the relationship, rather than expecting their mentor always to lead.
Mentors should expect to offer guidance and encouragement on:
Culture: What does the enterprise value most? What are the unspoken rules that one should be aware of?
Politics: Who holds influence in the enterprise? How best can an aspiring leader contribute, inspire, and succeed?
Social intelligence: What is expected of successful leaders and how should they behave?
Above all, mentoring relationships are about mutual learning; it’s not a one-way street. It’s a collegial relationship bound by shared trust and respect.
Michael Carroll is the author of Fearless at Work.
Extraordinary acts of kindnessAn Australian man who has a rare antibody in his blood has donated plasma 1,100 times in his life, saving 2.4 million babies.
An off-duty Houston cop paid to replace groceries stolen from an ill man who had collapsed in the store’s parking lot.
Bermuda native Rodney Smith, while at university in the US, founded Raising Men Lawn Care Service, a nonprofit that helps youngsters volunteer in their communities by mowing lawns for those in need.
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Wednesday 22 August 2018
A Body Check-In Practice for Money Decisions
The body check-in is a simple practice, yet it can be supportive throughout all the various money interactions—both small are large—that happen on a daily basis.
If you’re about the have a money conversation with your spouse, family member or business partner, try this body check-in practice to find balance.
Body Check-In Practice
Before you begin, give yourself a moment to pause and get quiet. You can close your eyes if that feels right, or keep them open. Take time to get curious and begin to notice and listen to anything that’s happening inside your body.
Take time to get curious and begin to notice and listen to anything that’s happening inside your body.
- At first, let yourself notice on a physical level how you’re seated. Are you upright, is your back against a chair, are your feet touching the ground? Just notice, be curious.
- Next, let yourself notice any sensations in your body of movement or stillness, of holding, of looseness, of tightness. Are your shoulders creeping up a bit high, is your chest tight, do you feel fluttering in your belly?
- Let yourself notice any feelings, any emotions that are present right now. They’re all welcome here in life. When we’re about to have a conversation about money, what is present? What are you noticing in this moment? Is it strong anger? Is it anxiety, nervousness? Is it sleepiness, or that you’re starting to check out ? What is the feeling, what’s the emotion that’s present with you right now? Let it be here, whatever it is.
- Also, let yourself notice what’s going on with your breath. Is your breath full and deep, down into the bottom of your belly through your heart? Or is it up in your throat and it’s more shallow? Just be curious, be open, be interested.
- Lastly, give yourself a moment to just notice any thoughts that are going across your mind right now. You may just want to watch them as they pass by. What words, what sentences are coming up as you’re doing this practice right now, just knowing you’re about to have that money conversation, or you’re about to walk into the mall, or you’re about to look online and look a your balances?
- When you’re finished the body check-in, you can either continue on your day or you can extend the practice further by asking yourself if there’s any adjustment or tweaks you can do in the moment to support yourself. Would it be helpful to take a fuller breath and bring it into your belly? Would it be helpful to loosen your jaw?
The body check in is a wonderful tool to help us get present and learn about our money story and our money patterns, so that we can go towards understanding, forgiveness and money healing.
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Tuesday 21 August 2018
How to Give Your Full Attention
“To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.”
—Mark Nepo, poet, philosopher
“When I’m at work and listening to someone in a conversation or meeting, half of me is listening and the other half is thinking about what I need to do to prepare for my next meeting.” A product design executive at a tech company in Paris described his interpersonal habits this way at a mindfulness leadership program I facilitated. His experience is common. I hear it from businesspeople in pharmaceuticals, banking, publishing—in every industry, country, and culture. Mindful listening—focused attention to what another person is saying, without judging or having an agenda—is a foundational skill that is rarely practiced anywhere.
Instead, the ubiquitous listening style today is that the listener steps on the ends of the speaker’s sentences with “Yep, Yes, Uh-huh, Right . . .” And rather than make the speaker feel heard, this tends to press him or her to talk faster—and around the conversation goes. In our always-on, high-speed world, and particularly in the working world, people seem to get increasingly restless and frustrated while others are talking. This constant, low-grade sense of urgency can impede genuine communication. But with mindfulness, you can be the witness of how you interact with others, and make an effort to add value to the exchange for both sides.
Just as in meditation, the key to mindful listening is to simply notice when your mind begins to wander, and then gently bring your focus back to center—in this case, to the speaker. You train yourself to refrain from interrupting, adding your point of view, or sharing similar experiences. These interjections take away from the speaker’s experience by making it about you. Instead of projecting your experience or feelings onto their message, the idea is to listen with the intention only to hear with an open, receptive, nonjudgmental, and compassionate ear. One way to practice this is to repeat back to the speaker what you think you heard him or her say, to see if you fully understand what the person is trying to communicate. You might be surprised by how often your mental and emotional filters lead to misinterpretation, however subtle.
Just as in meditation, the key to mindful listening is to simply notice when your mind begins to wander, and then gently bring your focus back to center—in this case, to the speaker.
What are your listening habits?
Mindful listening is hard, for everyone. There are external and internal forces to manage, even when you’re putting in conscious effort. Noisy, open office spaces with interruptions from co-workers, technology devices pinging nonstop—all these disturbances add to the challenge of concentrating on conversation. And what’s happening in your head can be even more disruptive. Start looking deeply at your impulses and habits during interactions with different people. Do you tend to interrupt or “help out” by finishing someone’s sentence? If the person you’re talking with is struggling, is your immediate reaction to try to say something funny to break the tension? Or maybe there’s a silence that makes you uncomfortable, so you find yourself speaking just to fill the void.
We all have our conversational patterns, but seeing these tendencies is a way to learn about yourself from the inside out, and in turn, to know how to be truly present for someone else. With self-awareness, you can begin to listen with greater care—not only to words, but also to the emotion and meaning that the speaker is expressing. You’ll not only learn more from the speaker about who he or she is and what’s happening in his or her life, but you’ll feel more connected.
Businesspeople in my classes often report that they experience an unfamiliar sense of “freedom” when they start to listen mindfully. They notice that rather than being tense, forming their next thought, and waiting for a pause in the other person’s words, they’re free to truly hear and process what is being said. One guy in a Washington, D.C., class said he felt as if a physical burden had been lifted and he could feel more space to just listen. In the same session a consultant said she could see now how she disengages with listening as she starts processing, solving, and fixing problems her team brings to her. For others, it is as if they let go of being ready to hit the ball back over the net and win the next point. It’s a gift to you and the one talking; mindful listening is so fundamentally different from how we usually converse that we can feel it in our bodies as much as in our heads. In that space and perspective that you create, you can ultimately respond with greater wisdom and skill—but only when it’s your turn.
Try it — five key mindful listening techniques
1. Hear between the words. When you’re in conversation, set your mind to being present, receptive, and ready to listen with compassion. Bring yourself into the moment with a few deep breaths and ask yourself: What is this person communicating beyond the words they use? What is your sense of what they are feeling?
2. Use nonverbal cues to indicate you’re listening. When the other person is speaking, just listen. Let go of any agenda or points you want to make and try to be there quietly, but mentally active and alert. Use nonverbal signals like nodding or smiling to let the person know you’re tuned in.
3. Notice when your mind has wandered away from the conversation. As with mindful breathing, your thoughts will wander. When you realize that your mind has drifted, let go of the thoughts and return your attention to what the person is saying.
4. Scan your body language. Tuning in to your own body can give you valuable information about your direct experience when listening. Is there tightness in your chest, uneasiness in your belly? Or do you feel a lightness and a sense of joy?
5. Respond with curiosity. When you get fairly good at listening mindfully without speaking, begin to experiment with offering brief verbal comments that express kindness, or ask questions that deepen understanding. The key is to keep the focus on the speaker, not to bend it around to yourself. You might try, “Oh, that sounds rough. What happened next?”
Excerpt adapted from The Mindful Day by Laurie J. Cameron, © 2018. Reprinted by arrangement with National Geographic Partners, LLC.
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Monday 20 August 2018
Easy Money
When it comes to money, shame is present somewhere in us all, whether it’s right at the surface or swept under the rug, prompting big changes or holding us back from even starting our money healing journey.
We all carry it. Women, men, black, brown, white, young, old, short, tall, gay, straight, billionaires and paupers, spreadsheet enthusiasts and number-phobes, self-made entrepreneurs, welfare recipients, and trustfunders. Money shame is an equal opportunity affliction, and it does not discriminate based on who you are, where you’re from, how much money you earn, what percentage you save, whether you pay your taxes on time, or what your credit score is.
Your money shame might be tied to a specific experience in your life, your upbringing in general, or none of the above. Here are some variants I’ve heard:
“I’m just not good with money. I can’t be trusted with it.”
“I earn plenty, but I still seem to spend too much—how do I have this much debt?”
“I’m too right-brained, creative, and bad at math to be good with money.”
“If I make a lot of money, I’m betraying my working-class roots.”
“I should be further along with my savings/earnings/debt payoff/investment.”
“People who have money are bad.”
“I should have more money by now—the fact that I don’t means something’s wrong with me.”
“I’m too reliant upon my parents/husband/daughter for money. Why can’t I be more financially independent?”
“People like me shouldn’t make money; it’s dirty and unethical.”
“I only deserve money if I work really, really hard for it. Lazy people (like me) don’t deserve money.”
“Wanting more than ‘just enough’ money is selfish.”
Back in my social worker days, one of the heaviest pieces of money shame I carried was the belief that I shouldn’t try (or even want) to earn a comfortable income: That would be too materialistic, shallow, and un-spiritual. Instead, I told myself I should just do good work in the world and be happy with that. Unfortunately, this shameful money belief only fed into another: I was supposed to earn more money and “be a grown-up” about it. Satisfying both of these demands wasn’t just difficult; it was utterly impossible. Indeed, when we look directly at money shame, we can start to recognize all of those sneaky contradictions and impossible double-binds it puts us in.
This is an excerpt of Mindful’s feature piece from the October 2018 issue of Mindful magazine.
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A Nonjudgment Call
Judges Concerned for Judges provides Pennsylvania judges with information about stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns as a way to help them deal with the strain of their job. And make no mistake, being a judge—despite, or perhaps because of, its exalted status—is a highly stressful thing to do day in, day out. Dispassionately riding above the emotional turmoil in a courtroom is hard enough, but then there’s the matter of having to make certain judgments about uncertain things. You may be deciding not only how culpable someone is but what an appropriate response is to wrongdoing—and you’re doing all of that with imperfect information.
Lots of judges have participated in mindfulness programs, some of them specifically targeted for lawyers and judges, which is a little ironic, since the first principle they may encounter is that the practice of mindfulness involves “nonjudgmental” awareness. How exactly does that work?
The nonjudgmental part of mindfulness practice has to do with the very fact that the act of judging is stressful.
The nonjudgmental part of mindfulness practice has to do with the very fact that the act of judging is stressful. The world is an uncertain place. We’re rarely totally sure. We survive on judgment calls. Only the know-it-all and the autocrat indulge in the luxury of certainty. The rest of us muddle through with some understanding that we’re always dealing with less than the whole picture.
But does nonjudgment mean that we never decide that something is wise or unwise, right or wrong, advisable or inadvisable? Of course not. How could we live without ever making decisions? What the instruction in mindfulness practice is asking us to do is the following: During our practice session, when we encounter thoughts, emotions, and sensations arising, notice them without judging them as good or bad or otherwise. Just try to see them as they are. It’s about a pause, a space, a gap, where judgment is suspended.
That pause is key to mindfulness practice. It suggests to us that we can be a witness to what’s going on in our body and mind, without immediately trying to decide whether we like it or not and what we’re going to do about it. And in that pause, we have the opportunity to recognize—and perhaps even begin to embrace the fact—that we don’t know for sure.
And then the practice session ends.
When we get up and resume regular life, there may be an aftereffect of having spent that bit of time inserting the monkey wrench of a pause into the machinery of the mental process that wants things to be more solid and certain than they are. We crave a kind of instant security that the world isn’t built to supply. When we have a pause thrown in, the craving may lessen. We may tread more gently, probe more, listen more, touch more, and feel more, before we act or attack. In some cases, the nonjudgmental pause may cause us to act less and let be more.
And if we are asked to be a judge, we may be able to do so with more care, humbled by the daunting task of deciding the future for others—something we are all doing whether we sit on the bench or not.
This article appeared in the October 2018 issue of Mindful magazine.
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Am I Doing This Right?
Q. I heard meditating while looking into someone else’s eyes can be good for developing empathy. Do you think that’s true?
A. I first experienced this “interpersonal meditation” exercise when I brought my then-fiancée to a Jack Kornfield talk in Santa Monica, about eight years ago. We paired up, and it wasn’t long before she was overcome by emotion and tears were streaming down her face as we two lovebirds gazed into each other’s eyes. She says she fell in love with me all over again during that exercise.
These practices are often introduced to give people a direct, felt sense of loving-kindness, compassion, and empathy. They can be very powerful and often quite emotional (as my now-wife can attest!).
These practices are often introduced to give people a direct, felt sense of loving-kindness, compassion, and empathy.
What’s less clear is if engaging in such practices develops these qualities in an ongoing, sustainable way. It’s also been reported that people who have experienced trauma have found the exercise of enforced empathy with strangers less than comforting, which suggests that it may be a practice that should be introduced only in contexts where people are prepared for and have signed on for such a thing.
The good news is that we’re able to cultivate loving-kindness and compassion all by ourselves by often calling to mind loved ones or people we admire or people we know are suffering or struggling and directing good wishes toward them for happiness and freedom from suffering. Doing so helps cultivate good will—not necessarily good feelings—and allows us to tap into our natural capacity and desire for happiness and freedom from suffering. No eye-gazing required!
This article appeared in the October 2018 issue of Mindful magazine.
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An 11-Minute Awareness of Breath Practice
One of the oldest meditation practices is also one of the simplest: Sit, and know you’re sitting. Let’s give it a try:
1. Get comfortable, with your back straight. Close your eyes and relax. Gently move your attention away from what you’re thinking to the sensations in your forehead and around your eyes. Soften and let go of any tension. Smile a little and soften your jaw. Let your shoulders feel heavy and drop away from your neck. Relax your upper arms, your lower arms, your hands, your fingers.
2. Relax into your breath. Place one hand over your heart. Let your shoulders drop even more. Feel your breath move your hand up, then down, up down, up down. Now move your hand to your belly, soften, let go and relax. Breathing in, know you’re breathing in. Breathing out, know you’re breathing out. Let your hands rest easy on your lap and let go of any tension in your upper legs. Soften your knees, soften your lower legs, let your feet feel heavy and sink into the ground.
3. Notice the feeling of breathing. Notice how your body feels as you relax and drop. The part of your mind that is noticing—that’s awareness. It’s nothing special. You don’t need to look for it. You don’t need to do anything at all. Awareness is always here. Settle in and stay with your breathing for a few moments. Trust that your breath will find a natural rhythm. Trust that awareness is always here. Breathing in, know you’re breathing in. Breathing out, know you’re breathing out.
The part of your mind that is noticing—that’s awareness.
4. If your mind gets busy, don’t worry, that’s what it’s designed to do. To steady your attention silently, say “in” when you breathe in, silently say “out” when you breathe out. Thoughts, images, and sensations, they’ll come and go. The goal is to notice them without thinking about them. Don’t try to stop them. Don’t try to make them go away. Don’t try to change them, they’ll change on their own. No need to reflect on them now. There’s plenty of time to do that later. No need to add anything to your experience. Just stay with it, when sounds appear, hear them, when sensations appear, feel them, when thoughts and images come to mind, notice them. That’s how we sit and know we’re sitting.
5. Watch what’s happening in your mind and body the way you’d watch a movie or a TV show. The storyline will twist and turn, threads of the plot will pass by, something new will emerge. You don’t need to look for this show, just settle in, relax, and it will come to you. Notice how those thoughts and sensations and images, they don’t have much heft, like the plot in a movie there’s no real substance to them. Nothing substantial to dig into or to hook onto, nothing to shut down, to push away, or to change.
6. You don’t need to do anything at all. Let go and settle back, relax your mind, smile a little bit, sit and know you’re sitting. Before we close, take a moment to notice the ever-changing, always connected web of causes and conditions that lead to this and every single moment. If someone comes to mind who has been helpful, silently say thanks.
Join us for 30 days of guided meditation this September! The Mindful30 is a 30-day online mindfulness program that helps you walk the path of mindful living one step at a time with expert guidance from the leaders in the field. By joining us you’ll also be supporting organizations bringing mindfulness into schools across the US. Learn more here.
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Friday 17 August 2018
Discovering the Power of Prayer - Tara Brach
We all know the pain of separation and have a longing for connection. When we silently listen to and contact the depth of that longing, we are at the root of transformational prayer. This talk looks at what prayer is, who/what we are praying to, the shadow side of prayer, and ways of cultivating our prayers so that they become authentic vehicles for spiritual awakening.
Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven, …
ask that it be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting your heart
toward heaven
only you.A Prayer by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
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How Loneliness Helps Us Heal
When we envision where it is we feel most at home, it is often in the company of other people: be it sitting around the dinner table with our family, at a local bar with our friends, or simply walking around our neighbourhood, passing familiar faces as we go.
But as this video from School of Life points out, sometimes the places we feel most drawn to are places with no one around at all. Places that are stark, isolated, or even downbeat.
Despite this, “we nevertheless experience a deep pull, coming to feel perhaps that we belong here far more than in the gaiety, elegance and color of familiar vistas,” says philosopher Alain de Botton—but where does this pull come from?
The appeal of lonely places
Many of us seek refuge from the busyness of daily life at some point. It’s the reason we go camping far out in the woods, take long drives to nowhere in particular, or sit down to dinner alone in a empty restaurant far from home.
“In these lonely, isolated places, we have an opportunity to meet with bits of ourselves, with which the routines of daily life don’t allow us to commune,” de Botton says.
“In these lonely, isolated places, we have an opportunity to meet with bits of ourselves, with which the routines of daily life don’t allow us to commune.”
Being alone with ourselves—and without the familiarity of the routines, places and faces we know best—we can hold internal conversations that are often drowned out by the chatter of our everyday lives.
“We are recovering a sense of who we are, turning over memories and plans, regrets and excitements, without any pressure to be reassuring, purposeful or just so-called normal,” de Botton says.
The chance to be on our own
A change of environment can be especially beneficial for those who are dealing with a rough patch or internal sadness, as it provides them with an opportunity to stop pretending, and finally feel however it is they really feel.
“The bleakness all around is a relief from the false comforts of home. We don’t have to pretend any longer,” de Botton says. “The environment supports us in our wish to own up to a sadness we have had to hide from for too long.”
Ultimately, while lonely places may not be what we think of when we consider home, they provide us with the opportunity to feel most at home in ourselves.
Video from School of Life.
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Thursday 16 August 2018
Meditation: Presence and Breath (21:40 min.) - Tara Brach
This simple meditation guides us to wake up awareness of the body, and rest with the movement of the breath. We are invited to discover the presence that arises as we come home to our moment-to-moment experience. The practice ends with a short prayer, connecting with what most matters to our heart.
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Seven Mindful Children’s Books
When I was a kid back in the eighties, we had lots of cool books. We had Clifford the Big Red Dog, Curious George, and The Berenstain Bears. There were countless stories with morals and endearing, memorable characters, but I can’t recall a single example that suggested mindfulness: awareness of breath, conscious self-talk, slowing down the moments, tapping into the senses as a way to come into the present moment for ourselves as well as for others.
Today, the number of well-written, thought-provoking children’s picture books with a mindful component is growing by the moment. Adding a mindful book or two to the current cannon of bedtime stories feels like adding an extra nutrient to the meal. We are planting seeds of empowerment in our youngsters to grow into young adults who can appreciate their world from the inside out.
Adding a mindful book or two to the current cannon of bedtime stories feels like adding an extra nutrient to the meal.
I pulled together seven mindfulness-based illustrated children’s books published over the last year that are worthy of a closer look. I lugged them around in a canvas bag on a road trip with my eight-year-old and two-year-old daughters, who were more than happy to add their insights and judgments. We gave them each multiple read-throughs in a range of places, times and environments, allowing the message of mindfulness to sink in deeply, and giving the books more than one chance to impress us. Here’s what we discovered.
1. A WORLD OF PAUSABILITIES
An Exercise In Mindfulness*
By Frank J. Sileo, PhD
Illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin
Magination Press
A World of Pausabilities pulls us into a neighborhood on a summer day that could be any neighborhood on any day. There, we see both children and adults applying mindfulness to everyday moments by taking a pause. The illustrations are crisp and active, depicting all sorts of people delving into the richness of moments like eating an apple and taking a slow, silent walk. The words rhyme, child-like in their simplicity. After reading this book, I started noticing pausabilities all over the place in my world—little bursts of extra mindfulness while brushing my teeth and walking the dog.
2. I AM PEACE
A Book Of Mindfulness*
By Susan Verde
Illustrated by Peter Reynolds
Abrams Books
I Am Peace (one of three books in a series, between I Am Yoga and I Am Human) reads more like an aspiration than a tale. It takes us through one, slowed-down moment with a child who is using mindfulness to bring about peace when his thoughts are worrisome. “I give myself a moment. I take a breath. And then I tell myself, it’s alright.” Peter Reynolds’ illustrations are simple and endearing, peace signs abound. In a perfect world, people of any age will have access to the same sanity and peace that the child in this book has.
3. CRAB AND WHALE
Mindful Storytime: Breathe, Smile, Be.*
By Mark Pallis, Chrstiane Kerr
Illustrated by James Cottell
Mindful Storytime Press
Crab and Whale tells us the simple story of a crab that helps a whale make it through a tough day by using calming breathing and encouraging awareness of his senses. When the whale is washed up onto the shore, the crab tells him, “I’ll stay with you until the tide comes in.” I was touched by this gesture, and the profound significance of staying with our loved ones when they are going through a hard time. Readers will find this tiny tale helpful in that it shows how mindfulness can be an offering not only to ourselves, but to others when they may need it most.
4. BREATHE LIKE A BEAR
30 Mindful Moments to Help Kids to Feel Calm and Focused Anytime, Anywhere.
By Kira Willey
Illustrated by Anni Betts
Rodale Books
Author Kira Willey is a children’s music and yoga expert. You can feel her wide-awake energy in the pages of Breathe Like a Bear. Thirty bite-sized mini-meditations—with names such as “Candle Breath” and “Wake Up Your Face”—are accompanied by fanciful, super-inviting animal images. The author has sectioned off the meditations by energy: “Be Calm,” “Focus,” “Imagine,” “Make Some Energy,” and “Relax.” But I could easily see this as being a family-friendly coffee table book that adults and children alike can pick up, open to any random page, do the tiny practice and be a just a bit more mindful and centered because of it.
5. BREATHE AND BE
A Book of Mindfulness Poems
By Kate Coombs
Illustrated by Anna Laitinen
Sounds True
Each page of Breathe and Be offers a miniature poem to tune the mind to the pitch of that which is nourishing and beautiful. “There’s a quiet place in my head like an egg hidden in a nest.” The clever and delicate drawings are not to be rushed through. My eight-year-old daughter declared, “Wow, this is my favorite one.” Breathe and Be is, to put it simply, classy. It would be as much a gorgeous book to give to my daughter as a gift as to give to my mother. It has a lovely timeless quality about it. I could see having this one on my shelf for generations.
6. I AM A WARRIOR GODDESS
By Jennifer Adams
Illustrated by Carme Lemniscates
Sounds True
The half-wall next to my eight-year-old daughter’s desk is filled with post-it notes marked with mis-spelled positive affirmations: “you got ths” and “you r luvd,” they say. I could easily sneak one in there that says, “I m a worior godiss.” The book, I Am a Warrior Goddess feels as simple as a collection of pages of encouraging self-talk for my daughters. The illustrations are fun and lively, telling us the story of a sweet little redhead who talks to herself wisely and affirmatively— the way we are teaching our young girls to speak to themselves.
7. MY MAGIC BREATH
Find Calm Through Mindful Breathing
By Nick Ortner and Alison Taylor
Illustrated by Michelle Polizzi
Harper Collins
My Magic Breath is a colorful manual on how to use breath as a tool that can be practiced alongside specific visualizations in order to work with negative, unwelcomed thoughts. Personally, I’m not a fan of the notion that we need to blow sad thoughts completely “off the page,” as I believe there is a place for them in the holistic narrative as well. But, using breath with positive imagery is a very effective way to create space in the psyche for more pleasant thoughts. My two-year-old—who adores blowing out fake birthday candles—really resonated with this one. Regardless of the specifics, I’m a big fan of bringing awareness to the breath, as this book most certainly does.
*Indicates that the book includes a guided meditation.
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