Meditation: Collecting, Unifying and Opening the Mind (21:31 min.)

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Collecting, unifying and opening the mind, we begin with a listening attention, noticing sounds that are here. Relaxing open and letting sounds wash through. With the same receptivity to sounds, listen to and feel the aliveness of the body. Listening to the breath as if you’re listening to the voice of a quiet loved one – really close in, tender attention – and including the background sounds. Not pushing away anything – a very open and relaxed, receptive attention.

Sensing what’s actually happening in this moment – perhaps the sensations of the breath, the other sensations through the body, the play of light and dark in the eyes, sounds… Closing by sensing all in the foreground and in the background – that alert inner stillness, that light of awareness, that which is our deepest, formless nature.

Sensing the possibility of this presence shining through every cell, every part of your being, you might ask yourself:
Is it not true that the stillness I seek is already here?
Is it not true that the peace I seek is already here?
Is it not true that the happiness I seek is already here?
Is it not true that the love I seek is already here?

(a favorite from the archives)

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How to Meditate

Train Your Mind to Work Smarter

A Guided Meditation to Encourage Deep Breathing

Is It a Bad Day or Is it Burnout ?

There’s a difference between a period of bad days, which we’ve all encountered, and serious burnout. Burnout is something that creeps up on you. Imagine a leak in your bathroom pipe that has been dripping unassumingly behind the walls for months or even years. One day, the pressure becomes too much, the pipe ruptures, and that water comes bursting through the walls with devastating results.

It’s when every day seems riddled with strife and anxiety until you reach that tipping point where all things seem futile and you find yourself at the point of giving up. To put it in simpler terms: Burnout is a bad day every day.

Look, bad days happen to everyone, and they can certainly snowball. A bad day can become a bad week. A few bad weeks can lead to a bad month. What makes a bad day (or collection of days) differ from burnout, however, is that you know in your heart you can bounce back. Even in these tough patches, you can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and you can resume (albeit not always easily) your life and still derive enjoyment from it.

Genuine burnout leads to an inability to successfully function on a personal, social and professional level. It steals hope. It squashes motivation. It, quite literally, sucks the life out of you.

Burnout is not so kind. Genuine burnout leads to an inability to successfully function on a personal, social and professional level. It steals hope. It squashes motivation. It, quite literally, sucks the life out of you.

So, how do you know if you’re totally burnt or, perhaps, getting close? There are three telltale symptoms that almost all burnout sufferers find themselves facing:

Three Telltale Signs of Burnout

1.    Emotional and physical exhaustion: People with burnout usually describe experiencing a complete lack of energy that manifests itself physically. Some are even diagnosed by their doctors with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Regardless, this troubled state results in a debilitating feeling of dread for what the day will bring, even on days when no major work or personal responsibilities loom. Basic tasks and, sadly, even things that would normally provide joy become chores. Surprisingly, though exhausted, people with burnout often have trouble sleeping to the point they develop chronic insomnia. This inability to rest and recharge makes it harder to concentrate and focus, which eventually shows up in physical forms, such as panic attacks, chest pain, trouble breathing, migraines and stomach pains. These symptoms become so severe and disruptive that it becomes impossible to cope with the challenges (and even pleasures) of daily life.

2.    Detachment and cynicism: Those suffering from burnout tend to become perpetual pessimists. They go well beyond seeing the glass as half empty. For them, the glass is totally empty and there’s zero reason to try and fill it. Feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and an inability to accept consolation from others or connect to the empathy offered by others is commonplace. They retreat into themselves and resist socializing. Eventually, fueled by a desire to shut everyone out, they move to a state of total isolation and justify their retreat with a cynical approach to life, family, friends, work, you name it. The feeling of hopelessness transitions into one of helplessness and creates a default response to every suggestion in the vein of “what’s the damn point anyway”.

3.    Feelings of self-doubt and ineffectiveness, lack of accomplishment: Sometimes people experiencing burnout are still capable of going through the motions. They still make it to the office. They still get the job done. They still join the family for dinner and handle the household duties. However, they do it in an almost robotic manner. There is no zest, no pleasure, and, therefore, performance suffers. They find ordinary tasks take longer. They procrastinate and invent excuses as to why they’re less effective. They get frustrated at things that were once easy and now seem overwhelming. Sure, they’re physically present and on some level functioning. But emotionally and mentally, they’re a shell of their former selves and are keenly aware of their inadequacy. This, as you can imagine, only perpetuates those feelings of exhaustion and detachment.

Now before you freak out and come to the immediate conclusion that you’re suffering from all the above, relax and take a breath.

We have all experienced one or more of the signs of burnout in our lives. In fact, they seem so darn familiar to us because in various degrees they are simply a part of dealing with everyday life and its stresses. Remember, the difference between a difficult period and burnout is a matter of a few degrees, a few drops from that leaky pipe behind the wall.

Maybe you’re having a bad stretch right now? That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re burnt out. I’d like to share a few stories from my own life that might resonate and offer up a few tips that can help you recognize and even avoid serious burnout.

A Personal Story About Burnout

My first experience with the creeping onset of burnout happened during the separation period in my first marriage. My ex-husband and I were still cohabitating with my toddler son while the divorce was being finalized. I was working full-time, active in my community, weathering a long commute to work and handling a pretty high-stress job. On top of this, I was trying to keep some sense of normalcy and civility in the home so my son would enjoy a healthy and nurturing environment. As you can imagine, this wasn’t easy while going through such a tense and uncomfortable situation. I found myself not eating right. I stopped meditating (something I swore I’d never do). I was going at an unsustainable pace and began cutting myself off from the friends and family who once filled me with so much joy.

Well, one morning I woke up to find that I could not see. I was completely blind in both eyes. My entire field of vision was nothing more than piercing white. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was experiencing what’s called a “white out”. What I did know in that moment was abject fear of never seeing my son again. After many exams, diagnostic tests and doctor visits, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called Uveitis. My doctors were eventually able to treat the symptoms and I regained my vision.

Still, it took losing my eyesight for me to finally acknowledge the fact that I was burning out.

However, here is what I learned since my diagnosis 13 years ago and as I’ve undergone continuous treatment: the onset of the disease was likely triggered by a prolonged period of stress (and eventual burnout). Autoimmune conditions are prone to flaring up with stress. In fact, in the years immediately following my diagnosis, every time I stressed out I would flare up and partially lose my eyesight again. It got to a point where I knew I needed to regain control of my lifestyle, diet, mindset, and surroundings if I wanted to ensure I could gaze upon my son’s beautiful face as he grew up. Fortunately, with the support of great friends and family and a return to my meditation practice, I was able to make real changes in my life. Still, it took losing my eyesight for me to finally acknowledge the fact that I was burning out.

Recognizing Early Signs of Burnout

If you learn to recognize the onset of burnout, you can minimize the effects and possibly prevent it: The second experience of burnout I’ll share happened in 2016 when I was the president of a mid-sized private firm with a few thousand employees. I was commuting close to three hours per day, was very involved in my son’s school and extracurricular activities, plus I had ramped up my political activism to campaign for the candidates and causes I held dear.  Fortunately for me, unlike my brush with burnout over a decade earlier, this time I was in a wonderful marriage that was supportive and loving. I had a daily meditation practice bolstered by an expansive and caring meditation community. I was far more in tune with my body and mindful of what it was trying to tell me. I first noticed the change at work. I began feeling unmotivated and tasks that used to take me a few hours were suddenly difficult to complete. At the end of each day, I left the office feeling as though I’d accomplished nothing significant.

I started to dread Sunday evenings and began to feel physically ill driving into the office on Monday morning thinking of the week ahead of me.

During evenings at home and on weekends, I would feel zapped of energy and any desire to do the things that once gave me joy. I started to dread Sunday evenings and began to feel physically ill driving into the office on Monday morning thinking of the week ahead of me. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take a two-week vacation in the summer with my family and head deep into nature. On the evening before my flight back to reality, after two-weeks of decompression, deep thought and spending the week reconnecting with myself and my family, I got so violently ill that I spent the entire night in the hotel bathroom just thinking about having to go back to my “old life.” I recognized that I was on the fringe of experiencing burnout and that my priorities in life were taking a backseat to a well-paying job.

I was ready to make a change, and, with the support of family and friends, decided to resign from my position, take a chance at fulfilling my dream of being a mindfulness teacher, and relish in the last few years that my son would still be at home before heading off to college. I resisted the black hole of burnout by recognizing it, knowing what the consequences would be if I got sucked in, and averting them by listening to my heart, my body and my mind.

How to Navigate Your Way out of Burnout

Speaking from my own experience, I highly recommend two things.

1. Commit to a daily meditation practice of at least 10 minutes, twice per day. This will help you reduce daily stress, become more in tune with your emotions, and hear what your heart, mind and body are telling you. Second, if you notice the signs of burnout are particularly persistent and troublesome, take at least two consecutive days off to detach from work, family and other stressors (FYI, this is where your self-care community can step up to help you make that happen!).
   
   One of my non-negotiable habits is my meditation practice. When I get quiet, everything gets really loud – my mind, my body, my gut, intuition. Each part of me begins to give me feedback in these moments of silence and solitude.  I would strongly recommend making meditation a cornerstone practice in your life, one that you can lean on in difficult and overwhelming times.
   
   
2. Take time for yourself when you can. This was my saving grace. If possible, find a place where you can’t do any work, take work-related calls or even check emails or texts. If being in nature brings you peace, immerse yourself in it. If you need a break from your family, find a way to make it happen. Sleep, nourish yourself with healthy food, read books or listen to podcasts, or maybe, don’t do a damn thing. If after those few days you don’t feel the weight lifted and are still dreading what lies ahead the next day, you very well might be suffering from burnout. If so, ask yourself if you’ve ever felt this way before; see if you can understand what led you to this point, and try to determine how long you’ve been feeling this way. Look to the past to understand if it’s just stress or if it may be more than that. If you think it may be burnout, or, even if you aren’t quite sure, it may be time to seek professional help, or, at the very least reach out to discuss your concerns with your inner circle.

It’s also important to remember that communities of care work both ways. There are others in your group who may be experiencing burnout. This is where you can step up. Check-in and connect with a friend you haven’t seen around in a while. Who knows, you just might be the one able to help fix that leaky pipe before it bursts.

And if I can offer one take-away, it’s this: Burnout doesn’t make you weak. It is possible to bounce back from burnout but you will need the help of others. You will need to commit to big changes but change, as you know, only needs to be begin with one step.

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The Transformative Effects of Mindful Self-Compassion

How to Support Students Dealing with Trauma

Six-year-old Jada feels a persistent expectation of danger. She overreacts to provocative situations and has difficulty managing her emotions, which often flare up without warning. To her teachers, Jada appears touchy, temperamental, and aggressive. She is easily frustrated, which makes her susceptible to bullying. When something happens at school that triggers Jada, she may lash out in fury.

How can teachers manage a kid like Jada who may have suffered trauma, but whose emotional reactions make it difficult for her to learn? Not by getting angry, for sure. That would just trigger her, because she’s hypersensitive to criticism.

In my new book, The Trauma-Sensitive Classroom, I present key, alternative strategies teachers and schools can use to help kids who’ve experienced trauma to do better in school. I’ve found that when teachers recognize the symptoms of trauma, build supportive relationships and classroom environments, and build upon strengths to help traumatized kids learn self-regulation, they can play an important role in helping them heal.

How can teachers do that while still managing a roomful of other kids? It can feel overwhelming to contemplate, but many of the strategies are useful no matter who is in your classroom. And, as long as you couple them with care for your own well-being, they are certainly worth the effort.

Here are some of the suggestions I make in my book.

1. Build supportive relationships in the classroom

As human beings, the most important factor for our survival is supportive relationships. But trauma and adversity can disrupt the development of the important bonds that children need to reach their full potential. Fragmented families and communities make it harder for children and teens to find attachment figures to connect with, leaving many kids unmoored.

Trauma and adversity can disrupt the development of the important bonds that children need to reach their full potential

To support children and teens exposed to trauma and adversity, we can demonstrate alternative working models of relationships by building social trust. While a warm and supportive classroom environment is beneficial to all students, for students exposed to trauma and adversity, it’s a necessity. Teachers can make efforts to get to know each student individually, their strengths and challenges. They can pay special attention to the classroom social network, promote positive peer relationships, and teach and reinforce kindness and respect, while avoiding competitive situations that create social hierarchies.

Teachers can build relationships with students by practicing a mind shift—one that focuses on students’ strengths rather than their weaknesses. Instead of asking yourself, “What’s wrong with him?” when a student exhibits difficulties, ask yourself, “What happened to him and how did he learn to adapt to it?” Reframing in this way will help you to understand where he is coming from and how best to help him.

It’s best not to ask students who’ve misbehaved, “Why did you do that?”—because their behavior may be as perplexing to them as it may be to you! Educators need to understand that exposure to trauma often impairs self-awareness, self-regulation, and perspective taking, which interferes with these students’ ability to understand or explain reasons for their behavior.

If teachers can move away from blame, and provide warmth, empathy, and a respect for students’ strengths, it will go a long way toward building positive relationships in the classroom.

2. Create safe spaces

Effective treatment of complex trauma requires coordinated community systems that can effectively identify, treat, and provide support for children, teens, and families. The first order of business in building a trauma-sensitive school is creating a safe environment for all concerned.

This essay was adapted from The Trauma-Sensitive Classroom: Building Resilience with Compassionate Teaching, with the permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company.

What does that mean? It means that all students feel protected by and connected to their teachers and the school community, and that rules for the students are always fair, made with their needs in mind.

At the classroom level, teachers can help build safety by creating fair, logical rules that are consistently reinforced. For children exposed to trauma, this is particularly important, because they come from homes where rules may be associated with arbitrariness and severe punishment. It may help to use the word “expectations” rather than “rules” to communicate with students in a way that is less likely to trigger them.

Since children exposed to trauma often feel powerless around what’s happening in their lives, having them participate in creating classroom rules, and giving them choices and alternatives when making assignments, can help empower them. However, it’s important not to lower your academic expectations. I have witnessed teachers give trauma-exposed students a coloring worksheet as an alternative to a math assignment out of fear that the assignment might trigger an outburst. While offering alternative assignments may be helpful at times, the alternatives must give the student an appropriate opportunity to learn the same material.

What can teachers do when students act out? While you must always address behavior that disrupts the learning process, it’s important not to rupture the students’ connection with the school community. Exclusionary policies, such as suspension and expulsion, only reinforce students’ feelings of rejection and low self- worth.

Instead, give students the opportunity to calm down by de-escalating the situation. Recognize that such behavior may be adaptive in their home environment and they may need support to learn adaptive strategies that are appropriate for the school environment. Alternative strategies include inviting the student to take some “time in” to settle and calm down, either in the classroom “peace corner” or in a “resilience room,” a place set up to give students space to self-regulate at their own pace.

3. Build upon strengths by supporting self-regulation

Hypervigilance, hyperarousal, and a tendency to disassociate—these are all ways students who’ve been exposed to traumatic environments try to adapt. Unfortunately, while being adaptive in some stressful environments, they can interfere with a student’s ability to focus their attention on schoolwork.

To support students exposed to trauma and adversity, teachers can help them learn to understand and manage their emotions better—both directly and indirectly. For example, you can monitor your students for signs of hyperarousal and use soothing talk to help them calm down. You can also teach calming strategies such as simple mindful awareness and relaxation practices, which help all students to deal with difficult feelings. Having a meditation or compassion-based practice yourself prepares you to teach practices to students and maintain your own resilience at the same time.

Be careful to avoid situations that are confusing, chaotic, or erratic. If these situations do arise, try to prepare these children in advance. Here is an example of how this might be done:

Let’s say that you learn of an upcoming fire drill, and you fear that it will set off a student. While all students deserve a warning, you can give special support to a student who may be particularly frightened. Taking her aside during early morning recess and explaining what will happen can help avert a meltdown. Also, asking the student to take a leadership role—perhaps leading the other students as you walk out of the classroom—gives her a chance to feel empowered in the situation. Giving her a last warning just before the fire drill happens and preparing for her special role can help her to build some self-confidence.

Exposure to trauma and adversity during childhood and adolescence has a significant impact on a child’s development, often interfering with learning and social and emotional functioning. While children may have learned to cope with a stressful environment in adaptive ways, their coping strategies can pose challenges to learning in school environments, especially if schools are not employing trauma-sensitive practices.

Schools can play an important role in helping students heal by recognizing and building upon their strengths and by building supportive relationships, creating safe and caring learning environments, and supporting their development of self-regulation. This requires adults who are committed to caring for themselves first, so they have the resilience to be compassionate in their teaching.

While this is not always an easy task, I believe that the benefits in terms of improved school climate and student learning are well worth the effort. Long-term, the benefits to our students and society may be immeasurable.

This article originally appeared on 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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Six Ways Mindfulness Helps You Age With Ease

Aging happens. We all know it, and sometimes we enjoy the fruits and freedoms it brings. But it’s also humbling to experience our bodies changing, forgetting names or facts, or realizing that the world is moving ever more swiftly around us—and we’re not necessarily driving the car! But resisting what we can’t control only adds to discomfort and unhappiness—and lamenting the inevitable shifts of time doesn’t change their reality. 

However you feel about growing older, it’s possible to experience it with a greater sense of ease. 

Mindfulness helps us embrace change through accepting its inevitability while also actively pushing back where we can. Aging is here, and happening in every moment.  This life experience accumulates whether we want it to or not. How we use it is up to us.

Change Is Always Possible

However you feel about growing older, it’s possible to experience it with a greater sense of ease. One simple formula remains the best medical advice we have when it comes to aging well: healthy nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate sleep. We also now know that the brain continues to grow and change throughout our lives, and is influenced by our habitual patterns.

…And It Begins with Choice 

You’ve lived one way for a long time; today, there are new considerations to act on. You get to choose how to navigate this new terrain. Here are a few proven tools to help you along the journey

1. Stay connected

Maybe your kids are older and you aren’t in touch with parents around school as much, or you no longer go to an office daily. Staying in touch with others may require more planning now, but social engagement is vital. Studies suggest up to one in five adults feels chronically lonely, and that loneliness correlates with poorer health. Whatever it takes, diligently carve out time with family, friends, or community. 

2. Care for your mind

Ongoing learning may help prevent cognitive decline as you age. Sustain old hobbies, try out new ones, or take a class. If you are not working as much, consider volunteering or using your experience to offer consulting services in your community. Address mental health concerns if they arise; the risk for depression increases with age. Less computer and television time also correlates with better mental (and physical) health. 

3. Re-evaluate your diet

The body’s needs change throughout our lives, and our diets should reflect this. Maybe you used to be able to eat or drink whatever you wanted, but now spicy foods upset your stomach, your alcohol tolerance has dropped, or you gain weight more easily. Mindfulness is a useful tool for exploring your habits with food and supporting steady steps toward creating new ones that meet your needs today.  

 4. Move more

Muscle mass starts receding as early as age 30, but exercise can counteract that. One study found that just 30 minutes of intense interval training three times a week restored the cellular health of muscles degraded by aging. Exercise also supports bone density, balance, agility, helps you sleep better, and can stave off depression. And consider this: Age-related weight gain is often misattributed to a changing metabolism, when it may stem from lessened physical activity. Even 10 minutes, several times weekly, improves your mood in the moment, and also increases mental and physical fitness in the long run. So, get moving!

5. Find your sleep formula

Sleep needs and patterns change throughout our lives. You may find yourself requiring more sleep, or perhaps less. Maybe a 20-minute midday nap is now what keeps you balanced. The quality of your sleep is also undermined by excessive alcohol, caffeine, and screen use, and can be affected by health issues like menopausal symptoms, heartburn, or medications. And guess what? Sleep often improves with regular meditation. 

6. Practice mindfulness

Stress is one of the biggest health-risk factors in our lives, greatly impacting both mental and physical health. Mindfulness meditation is one of the best ways to reduce stress and improve your emotional well-being. It also improves focus, supports habit change, and may help protect your memory. Remember, there is no “perfect” way to meditate. It’s OK when your mind wanders, just as it’s OK if you now sit in a chair instead of on a cushion. Whatever happens, it’s normal.

Get Started, Wherever You Are

One of the best truths about aging is that we’re never too old to learn! What if we use our slightly wiser perspective to examine habits that hinder our ability to embrace change—habits like resistance, rationalization, and procrastination? Focusing on diet and exercise helps you physically and offers opportunities to learn new skills. Maintaining or expanding your social circles provides stimulation, connection, and maybe new experiences.  Mindfulness meditation helps your brain, in part by minimizing negativity bias, which makes unpleasant thoughts (Aging is awful!) stickier than more pleasant ones (I can adjust and still enjoy life as I age). 

If we choose it, we might even find this new landscape, and all the paths and vistas it affords, a welcome change

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Three Mind Tricks That Keep You Addicted to Your Phone

Without Anxiety About Imperfection – featuring special guest, Haemin Sunim, with Tara Brach

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Internationally known Buddhist teacher and writer, Haemin Sunim, talks about his new book – Love for Imperfect Things. Then, he and Tara talk together and respond to questions.

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Meditation: Living Loving Awareness (19:54 min.)

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By bringing our full attention to the aliveness in the body, we can open to the experience of interior space and the space that includes all sensations and sounds. This then allows us to perceive continuous space filled with the light of awareness. This meditation attunes us to these dimensions of awareness: continuous open space, heart space and full aliveness. We end with a Zen poem that invites us to rest in this living, loving awareness, and know it as home.

From one Zen poet: Right here, right now. Be absolutely still and notice… the experience of pure awareness… without resistance. This attention is the universal attention. It has no boundaries. It is awake, pure, alive and nurturing. So dip into this awareness… rest in purity for one second… 10 seconds… 30 seconds… Keep diving in complete surrender, allowing whatever sensations to be and to move. Keep resting in this place. Soon you will see it is your home. It is your essence. Like an ice cube on the sea, you apparently melt into this ocean and there’s only bliss… this bliss of freedom… of homecoming. Right here, right now. Be absolutely still and notice… this experience of pure awareness. Keep resting in this place. Soon you will see it is your home. It is your essence.

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How Do I Bring More Mindfulness Into My Life?

Have you ever started eating an ice cream cone, taken a lick or two, then noticed all you had was a sticky napkin in your hand? Or been going somewhere and arrived at your destination only to realize you haven’t noticed anything or anyone you met along the way? Of course you have! These are common examples of “mindlessness,” or as some people put it, “going on automatic pilot.” Which may lead you to wonder—how can I bring more mindfulness into my everyday life?

We all fall into habits of mind and body, of attention and inattention, which result in our not being present for our own lives. The consequences of this inattention can be quite costly. They can result in our missing some really good things, and also in our ignoring really important information and messages about our life, our relationships, and even our own health.

We all fall into habits of mind and body, of attention and inattention, which result in our not being present for our own lives.

An important antidote to this tendency to “tune-out,” to go on “automatic pilot,” is to practice mindfulness. To practice mindfulness means to pay more careful attention in a particular way. We all have the quality of mindfulness in us. It is the quality of bare awareness that knows what is here in the present moment. Mindfulness knows what is going on outside, and also, inside our own skin.

6 Simple Tips to Practice Mindfulness Every Day

1. Allow your mind to wander. Especially if you practice for even a few breaths or for a few minutes. Practice kindness and patience with yourself when this happens and gently return awareness to the breath sensation.
2. Notice any tendency to be hard on yourself or to feel frustrated or a failure. See this kind of judgment as just another kind of thinking, and gently return awareness to the breath.
3. Embrace relaxation, especially if you practice for even a few breaths or for a few moments. This relaxed feeling is an ally. It helps us to be more present, more mindful. Relaxation alone is not what mindfulness is about, however! It is about being present with awareness.
4. Expect to notice more things, including more painful things. This is actually progress. You are not doing anything wrong! Quite the opposite, you are increasing mindfulness for all things. When you begin to notice the painful things, see if you can hold yourself with compassion and kindness, and continue to bring open-hearted awareness to the experience that is unfolding.
5. Practice staying present. By not turning away from the painful things in our lives, we can learn to remain open to all the possibilities in each situation. This increases our chances for healing and transformation in meeting the pain we face. And it also gives us a way to be with those situations when there is nothing more we can do to “get away from the pain” but must find a way to be with it. We can discover that the quality of mindfulness is not destroyed or damaged by contact with pain, that it can know pain as completely and fully as it knows any other experience.
6. Be careful not to try too hard. Don’t try to make anything happen, or to achieve any special states or any special effects! Simply relax and pay as much attention as you can to just what is here now. Whatever form that takes. Allow yourself to experience life directly as it unfolds, paying careful and open-hearted attention.

How Mindfulness Helps Us Be More Present

Our reactions to the stressful events of our lives can become so habituated that they occur essentially out of our awareness, until, because of physical or emotional or psychological dysfunction, we cannot ignore them any longer. These reactions can include tensing the body, experiencing painful emotional states, even panic and depression, and being prisoners of habits of thinking and self-talk including obsessional list making, and intense, even toxic self-criticism.

All we have to do is to establish attention in the present moment, and to allow ourselves to be with what is here.

So, we can practice mindfulness and become more present. All we have to do is to establish attention in the present moment, and to allow ourselves to be with what is here. To rest in the awareness of what is here. To pay attention without trying to change anything. To allow ourselves to become more deeply and completely aware of what it is we are sensing. And to be with what it is we are experiencing. To rest in this quality of being, of being aware, in each moment as our life unfolds.

And, to the extent we can practice “being” and become more present and more aware of our life and in our life, the “doing” we do about all of it, will be more informed, more responsive, and less driven by the habits of reaction and inattention.

Make the effort! Whenever you think of it in your day or night, remember that you can be more mindful. See for yourself what it might be like to pay more careful attention and to allow yourself to experience directly what is here, especially including what is here in your own body, heart, and mind.

How to Practice Mindfulness Throughout the Day

There are three simple ways you can add more mindfulness to your daily life:

1. When starting a new activity (beginning a meeting with 2 minutes of silence and attention on the breath, or taking a few mindful breaths before entering a patient’s room, or a focus on the breath before starting your exercise routine, are some possibilities).
2. In the middle of an on-going situation or process (bringing attention to the breath, or to the sensations arising while washing dishes, eating a meal, walking the dog, doing a job, etc.)
3. Or when you are just waiting, in between the things on the schedule (gently bringing attention to the breath or the sounds or the sensations or the sights or even the thoughts while at a red light, in a line at the bus stop or grocery, or waiting for someone else to arrive).

In these situations, use the sensation of the breath as the “anchor” for awareness in the present moment. Establish mindfulness on the narrow focus of just the breath sensation. Allow yourself to feel the breath as it goes in, and goes out and the pause between in and out. Do not try to control the breath. Simply let it come and go. Bring as much attention, as completely and continuously as you can to the direct sensation of the breath.

After awhile, if you wish, when you have established awareness on the breath sensation, you could widen the focus to include all body sensations along with the breath sensation. Again, not trying to change anything at all. Simply allow yourself to feel, and be aware of the changing sensations in the body.

After awhile, again if you wish, you can further widen the focus to include all that is present. This means whatever you are hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, touching, or even thinking. Just practice being with these different experiences as they unfold. Allowing yourself to feel your life in this moment. Resting in mindfulness, the open-hearted choiceless awareness of what is here in this moment.

Anytime you feel lost or confused or frustrated, gently narrow the focus and return awareness to the sensation of the breath. You may have to do this frequently. It is ok. Or you may wish to concentrate mainly on the breath, especially if you are new to meditation. That, too, is ok. The important thing is the quality of awareness you bring to the moment. One moment of mindfulness, one breath when we are truly present, can be quite profound. See for yourself.

You can practice mindfulness in this way throughout the day and night. Practice for a few breaths at a time, even for a few mindful moments. And, if you wish, you can make this a more “formal” meditation practice, by setting aside some time (from a few minutes to an hour or more, as you wish) free from other activity or distraction to devote full attention to simply being present, being mindful of what is present. Over time you may find that the “formal” practice supports and strengthens your ability to practice “informally” throughout the day and night in different situations.

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A Guided Meditation to Label Difficult Emotions

How to Find Your Self-Care Squad

Self-care is not a lone pursuit. Having someone you can reach out to when you need an extra push or a compassionate ear can very well be the difference between burning out or becoming your most powerful self.

Today we’re going to explore how we can build powerful communities of care.

Throughout history, our greatest cultural shifts and positive leaps have been born from a place of collectivism. The idea that “united we are stronger” has been proven time and time again. But what about the idea that together we are “healthier”? What about the argument that bonding with our peers brings us comfort in trying times? What about the possibility that a strong community helps all its members achieve physical and mental wellbeing? I argue this is what happens when we build communities of care.

Rather than being islands unto yourself, accepting and relying on the help of others builds a sense of accountability to your community, inspiring you to be the best version of yourself. This is not dependency. This doesn’t devalue your contributions or render you an incapable human being. Being part of a community you genuinely believe in is both empowering and humbling. It’s at once calming and energizing. It’s striking that healthy balance between “me” and “we” that’s the key to emotional and physical health and well-being.

Why Create a Community of Care?

Think of a standard rope. It starts out as a bunch of frail individual strings. However, when they are all intertwined, the result is an unbreakable force.

When you build a community of care, you immediately become stronger. You are instantly blessed with greater power to take on the problems you deem worthwhile. Think about it, you go from a single voice for change to a chorus for change and that’s a powerful thing. It’s only possible because a community of care looks out for itself.

A community of care doesn’t merely ask a single mother how she and her children are doing. It finds ways to help with childcare and babysitting. A community of care doesn’t expect a teacher on strike to hang in there alone. Rather, it organizes a rally to picket alongside that teacher and makes sure that her family has access to food and basic needs. A community of care recognizes when a member becomes detached and starts displaying the warning signs of fatigue or depression, and it intervenes with a shoulder to cry on and a safe space to be vulnerable.

When a community of care does its job properly, deeper connections and clearer purposes emerge. A strong community of care makes sure nobody goes it alone.

When a community of care does its job properly, deeper connections and clearer purposes emerge. A strong community of care makes sure nobody goes it alone.

How Do We Build Sustainable Communities of Care?

1) Think Big But Start Small – The Self-Care Buddy System

A powerful community of care doesn’t require a massive membership. Go ahead and start on a smaller scale. Find a friend or two who share your sensibilities and start a self-care practice together. You and your micro-community buddies can schedule regular check-ins; invite each other to self-care activities; and set realistic goals together (You can join our online meditation group and spend 30 minutes every Friday with a global group of like-minded people, for example). Most importantly, you’ll enjoy the empowering support and motivational accountability that come with finding a true sense of community.

2) Find More People

Once you have a small group formed you can look for more people who share your values to build out your community. Identifying these people is actually the easy part. They’re people involved in causes near and dear to your heart. They’re your neighbors who are facing the same challenges you face. The hard part is having the courage to approach them. It’s kind of like asking someone on a date. There’s always a little healthy trepidation at first, but you just have to go for it.

The ask doesn’t have to be formal—it can start as a group email or text message thread that leans into your vulnerability. I once sent a text message to two friends and a coworker that said, “Ladies, I need your help, I’m feeling depleted and I need some of your time, and attention and to ask that you hold me accountable to make some changes.” What I found was that first, there was this willingness to come to my aide and secondly, when I expressed my struggles there was a willingness from my friends to ask for help themselves.

3) Hold Onto Them

Once you break the ice and get people on board, begin by sharing your viewpoints, personal strengths, and intentions for the group. After our first gathering, we took an inventory of our life and examined each area where we felt lacking, we each committed to one or two things we could take on to make improvements, we asked each other make sure we were held accountable, and we decided that we enjoyed it so much that we wanted to meet again.

You can make your group more formal if you want to by defining the mission and then inviting people to join the group if the mission resonates. This can be in the form of an email, evite, or Facebook event, for example. Set a time and date, define your goals and see who shows up. You may be surprised.

The point is to foster a group dynamic that’s a true give-and-take between like-minded people who share the same values, intentions and ultimate goals.

The point is to foster a group dynamic that’s a true give-and-take between like-minded people who share the same values, intentions and ultimate goals.

4) Don’t Struggle With the Struggle—Take the Steps That Heal

In the struggle for self-care, we often fail to remember the seemingly immovable root of the struggle in the first place. We ignore the elephant in the room: the institutional, economic and structural influences that prevent our wellness: the cruel side of capitalism, the American obsession with “busyness”, and the incessant influence of social media, to name a few.

Ironically, it’s those failing institutional, cultural, and structural influences that lead many of us to activism (as well as the need for getting serious about self-care). Whether it’s fighting for affordable or universal healthcare, quality education in low-income areas, affordable public college tuition, humane immigration policies, or any other cause near and dear to your heart.

Only by working together, from a place of clarity and strength, can we build a conscious path out of our collective quagmire—One day at a time, one foot in front of another, lifting each other up along the way when we inevitably fall down.

Finding (or founding) a community of care has never been more important—Your self-care tribe can have a tremendous impact on how you handle challenges, how quickly you bounce back, and how well prepared you are to recognize issues and engage in proper self-care. Without the support of a community filled with people you trust and led by values you hold dear, you might find yourself pouring from an empty cup. Burnout, compassion fatigue, depression, anxiety, and secondary trauma are all major risks of an involved life these days. It’s up to us to take an active role in creating the communities of care and support we need in the world.

Sign up to join shelly for a live guided meditation and Q&A this friday

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The Mindfulness of Mary Oliver

Mary Jane Oliver surrendered her mortal body to merge completely into amazement on January 18, 2019 – she was 83 years old.  I am one of her countless admirers and I suppose that like me there are many of us still moved to tears by her poetry even after reading it for decades.  I hope you might indulge me this urge to share a few words of gratitude and praise for the many precious gifts’ she has left us. I fell in love with her poetry after hearing “Wild Geese” for the first time at a mindfulness retreat 25 years ago.

It’s wonderful that her poetry has won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award as well a Lannan Literary Award for lifetime achievement –but, it’s it hard for me to imagine that any of these rewards as prestigious as they may be, were at the top of her dream list. Her ecstasy is palatable in far more simple prizes, like watching a grasshopper eating sugar out of the palm of her hand.  Her reverence for life itself as it’s expressed in the natural world flowed through her pen into her verse as she wandered enraptured in the marvels and wonders she found in the pristine living meadows and fields she loved. All the wonders of nature were sacred to her and this reverence and awe imbues her poetry with the numinous awe she felt as she sought solace and peace in the wonders of the natural world in Cape Cod.

Her exquisite and timeless poems remind us how deeply and completely that we are interconnected…

A simple grasshopper was all it required for her to rise into the heavens and know her place in the family of things. Her exquisite and timeless poems remind us how deeply and completely that we are interconnected not only with one another but with the earth, the water the fire and air, the moon and sun, and all other living things from flowers to bears and the tiniest of insects.  Where are there more poignant questions in all literature than “Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Fragments and stanzas of her poems come to me in my meditation practice and when I lead mindfulness practices. Even more come to me as I wander through the meadows and trees of my Northern California forest home.  I sometimes think of her when I lie in bed and hear the wind whistling through nearby branches or the creek rumbling in the canyon below me and I’m certain she too loved listening to the ecstatic rapture in millions of small frogs singing their hearts out in meadow ponds she found!  I am not alone in these steady correspondences – I know from her verse that Mary Oliver also found joy and transcendence in these things and if you share my love for her poetry you do too.

In the end, who but Mary herself can better say what she wanted all of us to know about her life?

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

—Mary Oliver

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Can Mindfulness Help Us Dismantle Inequality?

Tap into Your Inner Brilliance

Her baby is colicky. That’s how it begins. The only way Manoush Zomorodi’s infant son can be soothed is when she walks him in his stroller through the streets of Brooklyn. She walks for hours. Any noise sets him off, so even talking on her flip phone is off limits. She grows bored. She finds herself spacing out, her mind wandering in a way she hasn’t experienced since childhood. Years later, she has a new job as a radio reporter. She’s given the chance to host her own show. It’s called Note to Self, about how technology is shaping our lives. She sits down to brainstorm. You know, as many ideas as you can dream up. No idea is a bad idea! There’s only one problem. She has no ideas. She tries to think back to a time when ideas came easily. And she remembers: those long walks with her son. Before her smartphone. When she was bored. That’s how Manoush came up with the Bored and Brilliant challenge, in which she asked her listeners: Will you join me in a week-long experiment? Will you change your digital habits, get bored on purpose, and see what happens? Twenty thousand people signed up within 48 hours. I sat down with Manoush to find out what she and her listeners learned. 

Q. Why do you think boredom can be a good thing? 

Our parents always said, “Only boring people get bored.” So you think, “If I’m bored, I’m insufficient!” Then when we have our own kids, we’re told we have to make sure those little minds are constantly stimulated. We think boredom is something to be avoided. But we’ve gone to an extreme, which is that technology means we don’t ever have to be bored. Because all those little cracks in our day, those moments of walking someplace or waiting in line for coffee or sitting on the subway, are filled with our phones. The moment we get that uncomfortable feeling, we can immediately be distracted with texting or scrolling. So once I started to notice I was never bored anymore, I wondered: Is that a good thing? What would happen if we got rid of boredom entirely? Would we be missing something? 

Q. What did you find out?

I discovered that neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists are coming to understand that boredom is actually very important because it’s the gateway to mind-wandering. And allowing your mind to wander—some people call it daydreaming—is necessary to your creativity. It’s the time when you take one disparate idea and another disparate idea, and you smash them together to make something new. When you’re bored, you find the space to ask, “What if?” It ignites a network in your brain called the default mode, which some scientists refer to as the imagination network in your brain. 

Daydreaming is the time when you take one disparate idea and another disparate idea, and you smash them together to make something new.

Q. Is the default mode the same thing as being on automatic pilot?

So yes, physically you’re on automatic pilot, right? You’re folding laundry or you’re walking or you’re not doing anything that requires focused attention. And so you click over into the default mode, and you just kind of space out. And it turns out this default mode is where you do your original problem solving—including something called autobiographical planning. This is where you look back at your life, you build a personal narrative, and you plot out the steps to reach where you’re going to go next. When I learned this I was like, Well, what if we changed our digital habits? Could we make ourselves more bored on purpose? So I came up with this seven-step program to do just that. 

Q. But doesn’t it seem like the state we really want is “flow,” where you’re totally immersed in what you’re doing? 

Yeah, but how do you get into flow? You don’t just snap your fingers. I always think of how, when I was a kid, I’d draw and then two hours would be gone. And I’d be like, “What just happened?” It was this wonderful feeling of having lost yourself in time and space, and I wanted to feel like that all the time! But how did I get there? It requires the proverbial blank page. It requires me to feel the discomfort of “I don’t know what to draw. But there’s nothing else to do. All right, well, I’ll just start with a circle.”

And then suddenly the minutes fly by. And what I hear from young people is that the moment they could press on and get away from the bored and into the flow, that’s the moment where they’re like, I’m just going to check Instagram or get on Snapchat. 

Q. You say our desire for novelty is an urge that’s as hard-wired as our desire for sugar or fat. While it’s great that technology makes it easy to find out what’s new, what’s the flipside of that? 

I think of the food analogy in relation to information overload. I personally am a glutton for news and information. I just want to read everything. But what is the point in stuffing my brain with all this new information if I’m not going to use it somehow? For many people there’s also this insatiable appetite for social connection. Getting a “like” or a “favorite” is like having a piece of candy. It tastes so good! But you’re going to be hungry again really soon. So where’s the nourishment? Where do you find the satisfaction so that you’re not swiping, swiping, swiping…? 

Q. It’s like we think our phones are helping us stay connected to people, but there’s a paradox there.

Yeah, like today we connect on Twitter or Facebook. OK, that’s a connection. But would I recognize you in real life? Would we be happy to see each other? Would we be able to sit down and have a real conversation? It’s OK to be connected to a lot of people on social media platforms, but I want to make sure we don’t lose sight of real connection with people. Like right now you and I are having lovely eye contact. You have these beautiful blue eyes and cool cat glasses. When you see someone eye to eye, and you’re on the same wavelength, and they totally understand what you’re talking about? That’s connection! And you can’t do that in a text. 

Q. One of your listeners equated his phone to a baby’s binky. Another described theirs as a four-year-old in need of attention. How would you describe your relationship with your phone? 

I would say codependent for sure. The phone needs me because that’s how it makes money for all those free apps. But I definitely need the phone. I mean, my son right now is with my husband getting an X-ray on his foot. We can be in touch all day long. My phone tells me where I need to be in the next half hour. I have all my interview preparation in my phone. So don’t get me wrong, I love my phone. But what I’ve also realized is that I have compressed time in a way that sometimes my body cannot keep up with it. 

Q. Before I read your book I was kind of smug, thinking: I don’t have a problem because I’m just using my phone to be productive.

Our phones mean we can always be planning, always be productive. And I think we forget that being reflective actually helps us be productive because it helps us set goals. If we haven’t taken the time to sort out what’s important to us, then when we respond to an email, we’re letting other people set our goals for us. We’re confusing productivity with responsiveness. You know, computers have infinite capacity. Human beings do not. And that’s been a hard lesson for me to learn, particularly as a type A person who has so many things I want to do. It’s hard to get the meditation stuff into my life. 

Q. So do you meditate? 

I’m trying. I’ve started many times, but it’s very hard for me. I used to think I was the world’s worst meditator. But when I heard you’re supposed to fail over and over so you can just start again, I was like, Oh, I can do that! 

Q. One of the habits you asked your listeners to change was to stop taking pictures for a day. What advice do you have for parents like me who take a ton of pictures because we want to capture certain memories?

Part of being a parent is knowing that these moments are super fleeting. But why can’t we be OK with the fact that we’re not necessarily going to remember a certain moment? That’s why we’ve gravitated toward Facebook: because no chapter ever has to end. No one passes out of your life. Why not? It’s a sad thing when you lose touch, yes, but things do come to an end. Life comes to an end! So I’m really trying to be more comfortable with the idea: You’re right, you won’t remember it, and that’s why every moment deserves to be savored, because the ride is short, and it’s not easy. Who told you it was going to be? Nobody. 

Q. So do you think that we’re at a turning point in understanding the way technology might be interfering with our ability to space out and savor the moment? 

I would not have said that when we started the Bored and Brilliant project. But I took all the data that we collected, and I also did a ton more research. And I do think people are starting to understand that the idea that tech is always going to make things better is a utopian ideal—it’s not reality. There are fundamental questions about the next chapter of the internet. And while we wait for regulation or new business models or maybe it’s a Hippocratic Oath for software engineers, that’s all going to take some time. Meanwhile we have immediate work we can do on ourselves, on self-regulating. That’s something we have to teach ourselves and teach our children in schools. The people who participated in the Bored and Brilliant challenge were able to reduce the amount of time they spent with their phones. But more importantly, they created habits—like keeping their phones out of sight, and not using them while in transit—that made them more likely to connect with their own thoughts and with other people. 

You have to sit and be uncomfortable and go deep. That’s hard, but that’s where the good stuff is.

Q. You’re a fan of the tiny hack. Can you think of one small step that you would suggest people try? 

I guess it would be to realize that we have to schedule time for reflection into our lives. What we’re discovering is that the constant connectivity and easy access to information and other people means that we have to prioritize things that we’ve never had to teach before like eye contact, conversation, reflection, boredom. Because the future economy will require you to sit with a problem and work it through and not move to distract yourself with something else. You have to sit and be uncomfortable and go deep. That’s hard, but that’s where the good stuff is. 

ILLUSTRATION BY CAROLE HENAFF Bored and Brilliant: The Seven-Day Challenge

Here’s a chance to take a week to see whether you’re injecting enough space into your life.

Day One: Observe Yourself

First you’ll check your digital habits—and most likely be shocked by what you discover. 

The important thing is to accurately report on how often you check your phone. What are you checking—email, social media, missed phone calls, the weather? Do you read on your phone? What do you read—those long emails from your mom, The New York Times, or hashtags on Instagram? When do you pull it out most? Or is it always in your hand? Are you alone, or do you use it when you’re in a meeting or with another person socially? Do you take it to the bathroom with you?

Day Two: Keep Your Devices Out of Reach While in Motion

Keep your phone out of sight while in transit—so, no walking and texting.

When you are on the bus or walking down the street, you’re not doing nothing. We think of these moments as unproductive, inefficient, or lost if we’re not checking our mail or doing other tasks.But these are ideal times for letting our minds wander. 

Day Three: Photo-Free Day

No pics of food, kitten, kids—nada.

Take absolutely no pictures today. See the world through your eyes, not your screen. Instagrammers, it’s gonna get rocky. Snapchatsters? Hang in there. Everyone is going to be OK. I promise.

Day Four: Delete That App

Take the one app you can’t live without and trash it. (Don’t worry, you’ll live.)

Ask yourself: “Is this product serving me or hurting me?” When I asked myself that question, I knew I had to delete Two Dots, the game I stayed up playing well past my bedtime. I wanted to delete it. And yet the process was literally nauseating. This was by far the hardest challenge for the original Note to Self listeners who followed the Bored and Brilliant program—myself  included. But if I can do it, so can you. 

Day Five: Take a Fakecation

You’ll be in the office but out of touch.

Decide how long you need. An afternoon? An hour? Twenty minutes? It’s up to you. If there’s no way your boss will let you off the grid for an hour or 20 minutes, set aside time for yourself tonight. The important thing is to set a fixed period and to stick to it. 

Day Six: Observe Something Else

Reclaim the art of noticing.

Go somewhere public and stay for a while. It could be a park, a mall, the gas station, a café, the hallway at work or school. Once you get there, hang out. Watch people or birds or anything that strikes you. If you feel uncomfortable lingering in a spot to observe, then you can do this exercise while walking. Just make one small observation you might have missed if your nose were glued to a screen. 

Day Seven: The Bored and Brilliant Challenge

Use your new powers of boredom to make sense of your life and set goals.

Step I. Identify an aspect of your life that you’ve been confused by, avoiding, or downright terrified to think about.

Step II. Set aside 30 minutes where you’ll be completely free from distraction. Store away your phone, tablet, laptop, or any other digital device. Put a generous pot of water on the stove and watch it come to a boil. Or find a small piece of paper and write “1,0,1,0” as small as you can until the paper is full.

Step III. Immediately after you’ve completed Step II, and are mind-numbingly bored, sit down with a pen and pad and put your mind to the task of solving the problem identified in Step I. If you are a visual person, feel free to draw. If you’re a list maker, make a list. The point is to come up with new ideas and get them down on paper. 

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How to Be Grateful for Your Morning Cup of Coffee

Realizing Your Deepest Intention

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The Buddha taught that this whole life – including our thoughts, feelings and actions – arise from the tip of intention. While our intentions are usually marbled with wanting and fear, when intention comes into the light of consciousness, it unfolds into its most pure essence. This talk explores ways that when we are stuck in reactivity, we can become aware of intention, and find our way to the aspiration that expresses our most awake and loving heart.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

― Mary Oliver, from “The Summer Day”

Link to more talks on intention.

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Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (20:05 min.)

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When we fully inhabit our body, we discover the space and wakefulness of awareness itself. In this meditation, we rest in this open awareness, and when the attention narrows into thoughts, we practice relaxing back into the openness that includes passing sounds, sensations and feelings. We close with a brief offering of lovingkindness to our own hearts and our world (with community OMs – no bell at end).

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6 Ways to Practice Mindful Eating

Are Meditators Unmotivated Slackers?

Ah, clickbait. It draws you in but so often disappoints. All hat, no cattle, as the Texas saying goes. To wit: A recent New York Times headline blared, “Hey Boss, You Don’t Want Your Employees to Meditate.” 

The piece is by two business school behavioral scientists, Kathleen Vohs and Andrew Hafenbrack, who conducted research to test, among other things, whether “the mindfulness condition would reduce task motivation.” In other words, because mindfulness practice asks you to bring your attention to the “current moment” and “accept things as they are,” you’ll be less likely to “strive to obtain a more desirable future.”

It might cause someone at work to be less motivated to do a lot of the stupid stuff that can make work a ludicrously stressful place that most people don’t want to go to now. 

When you look under the hood, you find that the subjects in their initial experiment, about 100 people, were divided into two groups and paid $1.50 each. One group listened to a 15-minute guided breath meditation, while the other group was guided to just think of whatever came to mind. A variation of this initial experiment included a body scan. After listening to the recorded instructions, participants were told they would be asked to complete 10 anagram word puzzles. The key question: How motivated were they to perform the task?

Apparently, fewer of the “meditators” were enthused about it. 

Proof positive: Meditators are slackers after all!

Wait a sec here, though. I have no idea why fewer of the “meditators” jumped at the chance to do word puzzles, but I ask myself: If I had never meditated before in my life and was paid a buck-fifty to sit and listen to a guided meditation for 15 minutes, would I then want to do some word puzzles? 

Hell, no!

After trying repeatedly to bring my attention back to my breath—without a super-clear reason for why I would do so—I would be exhausted, and maybe not a little irritated. I would probably want to curl up in a ball and berate myself for how incapable I was at paying attention to my own damn breath. When you start learning to meditate, it takes a loooong time to learn this simple lesson: Stop trying so hard. 

These authors treat a guided meditation as some kind of magic formula: Fifteen minutes and you’ve entered “The Mindfulness Condition.” Not bloody likely. What activity worth doing achieves instant results when you do it once?

Whatever the relationship between meditation and motivation might be awaits serious study by qualified meditation researchers following established protocols for this kind of research. Will it possibly show that the slow buildup of awareness resulting from regular mindfulness practice might affect one’s motivation? You bet. 

It might cause someone at work to be less motivated to do a lot of the stupid stuff that can make work a ludicrously stressful place that most people don’t want to go to now. 

Hey Boss, Why Are You So Addicted to Stress?

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A Basic Mindfulness Meditation for Labelling Thoughts and Emotions

This practice involves labelling our emotions as they surface. Labelling emotions accurately means going beyond recognizing when anger or fear is present — There are many flavors of anger, for example, such as annoyance, rage, resentment, and aggravation. Finding the right label can give you the same feeling as hitting a tennis ball on the sweet spot of your racket—it just clicks.

Sometimes emotions can feel threatening and there may be a fear that they might swallow us up or overwhelm us. As real as this threat might feel, it’s usually irrational. For both strong and subtle emotions it can also be helpful to give yourself permission to peek behind the curtain for a moment to see what you are feeling. You don’t have to stay long or dig anything up. Just take a quick peek, perhaps feeling right into the center of your chest, and give yourself permission to return to the breath whenever you need to.

Explore This Guided Meditation

For this guided meditation, we will begin with awareness of the breath. Then, we will expand our field of awareness to include thoughts and sensations. Finally, we will add instructions for bringing mindfulness to mental states and emotions. By participating in this meditation, you’ve already done the hardest part: you’ve begun!

See if you can savor the experience of the breath as you might savor a gourmet meal.

  A Practice for Labelling Thoughts and Emotions

• 20:12

1. Find a comfortable posture. Allow the body to settle into a posture that supports the qualities of stillness, alertness, and relaxation. For most people this can be accomplished by sitting in a chair in a way that embodies dignity without tension. Take a moment now to find a feeling of uprightness in the spine, while at the same time relaxing the muscles in the face, neck, and shoulders. If you’re comfortable with it, allow the eyes to close gently. If not, or if you’re feeling sleepy, maintain a soft focus on the floor in front of you, letting the eyes take in light without seeking sensory input. 
2. Turn your attention to the breath. Allow the out-breath to be even longer than the in-breath. After your third out-breath, let the breath find its own natural pace, relinquishing any control of the breath. Gently begin to gather your attention on the sensations in the belly as you breathe. 
3. Bring kindness to your practice. As you direct your attention to the breath, see if you can bring kindness, patience, and humor to the wandering mind, especially at the beginning of the meditation practice. If you find it helpful, use the labeling technique to help steady the mind on the breath; rising for the in-breath, and falling for the out-breath. See if you can savor the experience of the breath as you might savor a gourmet meal. Each bite, each breath, unique and delicious. While maintaining the breath as an anchor or home base of your attention, expand your field of awareness to include thoughts as objects of attention. 
4. Label your thoughts. Whenever you become aware of thinking, use a quiet label, or more specific labels like “planning” or “judging.” See if you can maintain awareness of the thought without trying to get rid of it, or getting lost in the story of that thought. Whether it’s a vague wisp of a thought or a strong storyline, simply note “thinking.” 
5. Be with what comes up. If the thought fades or vanishes, return your attention to the breath. If a sensation or a sound becomes strong enough to call your attention away from the breath, allow it to become the new primary object of your awareness. Explore the experience with steady and kind curiosity, without any agenda to change or get rid of it. You might also notice that feeling’s tone (for example, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral) as feeling tones tend to be more apparent with sounds and sensations. 
6. Let the breath continue to be your anchor or home base. Return your attention to the sensations of the in-breath and the out-breath, when thoughts and sensations aren’t strong enough to call your attention away. Use a soft mental label to note and acknowledge any thoughts, sounds, sensations, and the breath. 
7. Now, expand your field of awareness even further to include emotions and mental states. These can be challenging to attend to with mindfulness because they can be both very subtle, and very strong. Emotions like anger or anxiety can be strong and uncomfortable, making it hard to sit still and be present for them. There are several ways to make this easier; first, rather than pursuing the story in the mind, notice the physical sensations that accompany that emotion. See if you can track the inner geography of anger or fear. 
8. Label your emotions accurately. It can also be helpful to find an accurate label for that emotion. There are many flavors of anger, for example, such as annoyance, rage, resentment, and aggravation. Finding the right label can give you the same feeling as hitting a tennis ball on the sweet spot of your racket; it just clicks. Sometimes emotions can feel threatening and there may be a fear that they might swallow us up or overwhelm us. As real as this threat might feel, it’s usually irrational. For both strong and subtle emotions it can also be helpful to give yourself permission to peek behind the curtain for a moment to see what you are feeling. You don’t have to stay long or dig anything up. Just take a quick peek, perhaps feeling right into the center of your chest, and give yourself permission to return to the breath whenever you need to. 
9. Let your attention move freely. For the remainder of the meditation, let your attention move freely to whatever experience is strong enough to call it away from the breath—This could be a thought, sound, sensation, image, or a mental state. See if you can stay connected to this experience with affectionate awareness while noting with curiosity and interest what happens to it upon observation, and when it’s no longer predominant. Return your attention to the breath from time to time. 
10. Notice the quality of your attention. Make any adjustments necessary in order to balance your energy and help you be present and alert. You might also note and label more subtle background mental states such as calmness, boredom, doubt, or apprehension, again without needing to change them in any way. 
11. Reflect on what matters to you. In the last few minutes of your meditation take a moment to reflect on what matters most to you. Without overthinking, editing, or slipping into rumination, reflect on what simple value or quality bubbles up to the surface of your mind. It might be kindness, generosity, or authenticity. Set an intention, like charting a course for a boat, to invite more moments of this quality into your life for the remainder of the day. 

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“No” Is A Complete Sentence

Saying “no” is all about creating personal boundaries that allow you to focus your time doing the things that will make the most impact.

Here are 3 ways to create say “no” so you can choose how you spend your time.

Let’s start by agreeing on this premise: If we don’t know how to say ”no” to things, then saying “yes” loses meaning.  

If we say “yes” to everything, we are actually building movements and communities that are based on the models and standards we are trying to fight against. You know these standards well, the ones that are impossible to live up to and are fueled by capitalism, a culture that prizes busy-ness and causes people to curate their lives to perfection on social media.

In part 2 of our self-care series, we’re focussing on the word “no” because it’s the anchor for everything “yes” in our lives.

Saying “no” is difficult for so many people because saying it brings feelings of guilt. We feel like we’re not doing enough and that things are going to fall apart without our personal involvement. Of course, logically, we know this isn’t true. We realize that with everything happening in the world, even if we were capable of working 24/7, it still wouldn’t be enough. Yet, the guilty feelings prevail.

On top of this, our culture places an unrealistic value on the pursuit of busyness. Society tells us that if we aren’t working on something, anything, we are just wasting time. Thus, if the reason we are saying “no” is so that we can find time to do something for ourselves or, perhaps, even manage to do “nothing at all” (gasp!), we feel unworthy.

Even when we finally muster up the courage to say “no” or “I can’t,” we then feel obligated to offer up an explanation to justify this unfavorable response. That’s why I’d like you all to consider for a moment that the word “no” is actually a complete sentence.

“No.” Period. End of sentence.

Saying the word “no” when someone asks you to do something, and then not following it up with the “why” may feel odd, rude even. The charged space that word leaves behind is palpable. Learning to say “no” and letting it hang out there all alone in its glory is a small kind of superpower.

Learning to say “no” and letting it hang out there all alone in its glory is a small kind of superpower.

Of course, the receiving party will likely fire back with a “why?” when you offer up your polite decline. (Yes, the word “no” is polite.) If this happens and you feel that stating “no is a complete sentence” is a bit harsh, try bundling up your courage with a little vulnerability. When pushed for a reason for some of my own uses of “no”, I have honestly and unabashedly responded with declarations like: “I am incredibly tired and mentally unable to take on another commitment.” Not only does this rarely, if ever, elicit a challenge, but my willingness to be raw and honest has, at times, inspired others to do the same or at the very least applaud my efforts.

Three Ways to Say No Without Using The Word “No”

If you feel rude or abrupt by simply stating “no,” there is good news here. There are many alternative ways to say “no” without ever uttering the word.

1. One degree of departure from the word “no” would be saying “I can’t.”
2. Two degrees of departure would be saying, “I’ll get back to you” and buying yourself enough time to give yourself a pep talk so that you can politely decline.
3. Three degrees of departure would be saying yes to something else by creating alternatives, kind of like a “reverse-Jedi mind trick.” For example, someone recently asked me to purchase the refreshments for a large social justice organization gathering. I found myself hard-pressed to say “no” to this especially-pushy Executive Director, so I blurted out, “I can take care of the registration table that night!” By shifting the response from a negative one (something you can’t or won’t do) to something positive (something you can or are willing to do).

How to Create a Culture of Consent

Learning to say “no” is sort of like learning how to meditate—it’s a habit that you have to cultivate. The more you say it, the easier it gets. The easier it gets, the less guilty you feel. We need to set up personal boundaries around what we are and aren’t willing to accept for our own mental stability. And saying “no” doesn’t just mean declining invitations or saying “no” to extra work.

Setting up boundaries means recognizing that other people have boundaries, too. It means asking for consent (another habit to cultivate!) before unloading your day on someone else or entering into a heavy conversation at that casual dinner reception. It’s the kind thing to do and it sets the tone for others to follow. For example, I have a friend who is a fellow activist and I appreciate her dearly because she always asks me things like, “Hey, do you have the mental capacity for me to vent to you right now?” Or, “Are you okay with me asking your thoughts about the [fill in the blank news story] that happened the other day?”

Within the confines of your own boundaries, you can also feel free to draw a line in the sand if someone unleashes on you at a social gathering or a random meet-up by saying something like, “I am so grateful that you trust me with this story, however, I am at full mental capacity right now and I hope you can understand. Would you mind if we discussed something else tonight instead?” This approach actually trains individuals to ask you for consent in the future and helps them reclaim their own self-empowerment by giving them permission to do the same.  

How to Say “No” To Yourself

Learning to say “no” isn’t something you only need to do with other people, it’s something you need to learn to say to yourself. (Chances are, you’re the worst offender of all!)  Saying “no” to yourself means creating personal boundaries that will ultimately contribute to your own well-being over the long-term. Here are some ways to say “no” to yourself:

• Saying “no” to that news app that sends you alerts multiple times a day
• Saying “no” to checking the news multiple times an hour
• Saying “no” to every single troll on your social media feed because you recognize that you are not going to change their minds and that you are simply depleting your own energy.
• Saying “no” to checking your phone first thing in the morning.

See a theme here? Saying “no” to yourself often goes hand in hand with becoming aware of the times during your day when you’re acting on automatic pilot—reacting instead of choosing!

We have to be willing to unclutter these things from our lives that sap our energy in the small moments, where we’re not actively choosing to say “yes” and just allowing things into our lives. Creating new habits means understanding where you’ve become habituated–where you’ve lost touch with the moment.

When we take control of the ways we’re “automatically” saying “yes” to things we might otherwise say “no” to, we give ourselves room to say “yes” to things that really matter.

So how do you learn to choose your yeses? Here’s a quick practice to help you learn when to say “yes”:

Take a breath to consider what you are saying “yes” to? Ask yourself, “Is my heart in this? Am I doing it for the right reasons (what is my motivator)? Can I let this go and make room for something that matters more?”

At some point, you just might realize that it’s not always “something” that matters more. It’s taking the time to acknowledge, “I matter, too.”

In doing practicing to choose your yeses, we begin to filter out the things that matter least in exchange for the things that matter most. We begin to, in the words of Congresswoman Maxine Waters, “reclaim our time.” The more time and space you create to accomplish the things that align with your individual goals and purposes, the better you’re going to feel about being selfish with those yeses.

SIGN-UP TO JOIN SHELLY FOR A LIVE GUIDED MEDITATION AND Q&A THIS FRIDAY

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