Explore the San Francisco Botanical Garden with master landscaper Peter Good and Editor-in-Chief Barry Boyce.
Video launching on May 1, 2019!
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Watch the Mindful Interview with Shelly Tygielski and Parkland community members Ivy Schamis, Samantha Novak, and Fred Guttenberg.
Launching here on May 1, 2019!
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Codependent. If any word captures the relationship between phone and user, it’s that one. And not just because we depend on our phones and our phones depend on us. Too often our “codependence” is an unhealthy and unbalanced relationship with a sleek, seductive sliver of technology. The tell-tale signs: cramps in our “texting thumbs”; sleep lost to round-the-clock games; conversations with friends and partners that go nowhere because our eyes—and attention—are plugged in elsewhere.
With tech addiction, as with all kinds of dysfunctional relationships, identifying the problem doesn’t automatically make it better. The American Psychological Association’s 2017 Stress in America report, which surveyed over 3,500 American adults, revealed that 65% believe they should periodically unplug or do a digital detox to improve their mental health. However, only 18% report actually doing so.
Phone addiction is real.
The reason lies partly in our neurochemistry. As smartphones keep us informed, connected, and distracted, our brains get used to a steady flow of stimulation. Over time, merely picking up the phone triggers the release of dopamine, that tiny blip of excitement and satisfaction. Like any high, the feel-good sensation doesn’t last and our brains hunger for the next hit. Ping! and we’re reaching for another fix: an addiction cycle that plays out, on average, 47 times per day.
The brain’s modern craving for constant connection—with one-time acquaintances, total strangers, and your cousin’s cat’s Instagram—can leave us disconnected from the people and the things that really matter. A 2018 study found participants who were highly preoccupied with their phones showed greater absent-mindedness and difficulty focusing on tasks. They also experienced less well-being and life satisfaction. Sadly, we’ve become so convinced that we need our phones all the time—to assuage our FOMO—that we’re lulled into missing out on real life. Our own well-being and relationships take a backseat.
These are the problems journalist Catherine Price set out to solve. Troubled by her own phone habits, Price researched what undergirds our tech relationships and tested ways to transform them. As described in her most recent book, How to Break Up with Your Phone, Price devised a Technology Triage that is a gentle yet motivating warm-up for creating healthier phone boundaries. You’ll jump-start the practice of mindfully noticing how you relate to your phone, and learn to shift from self-sabotaging phone habits to new patterns that leave time and mental freedom for the people, experiences, and dreams you really care about.
Monday: Download a Tracking AppThe first step is to compare the amount of time we think we’re spending on our phones to how much time we’re actually spending on them. Start by jotting down your answers to these questions:
Next, download a time-tracking app that will automatically monitor how often you reach for your phone and how long you spend on it. (Use a third-party app or a built-in tracking feature, such as Screen Time for iOS, to determine how much time you are spending on your phone each day, and on which apps.) Don’t try to change anything yet about your behavior; our goal is just to gather data. We’ll touch base about your results in a few days.
Tuesday: Assess Your Current RelationshipNow that you’ve got a tracking app up and running in the background, pull out a notebook or create a new email message to yourself (or just get a pen and write in the margins) and write a few sentences in response to the following questions:
Next, imagine yourself at the end of your breakup. What would you like your new relationship with your phone to look like? What would you like to have done or accomplished with your extra time? What would you like someone to say if you asked them to describe how you’d changed? Write your future self a brief note or email describing what success would look like, and/or congratulating yourself for achieving it.
Wednesday: Start Paying AttentionThe next step is to pay attention to how and when you use your phone, and how you feel when you do so.
Over the next 24 hours, try to notice:
Lastly, I’d like you to choose several moments in your day when you seem to pick up your phone the most often, and see if you can identify a consistent trigger that makes you repeat this habit. For example, maybe you check your phone first thing in the morning because you’re anxious. Or maybe it’s just because it’s on your bedside table. Maybe you check your phone in the elevator because everyone else is also checking their phone. Maybe you check it at work because you’re bored with whatever you’re supposed to be doing.
We’re not trying to put a judgment on any of these triggers; we’re just trying to become aware of them so that we can begin to identify patterns. Personally, I’ve noticed that while it can initially be pleasant, I hardly ever feel better after I use my phone—an observation that has helped me catch myself when I’m about to pick it up out of habit.
Thursday: Take Stock and Take ActionBy now, we’ve tracked our phone usage for a few days. Now that we’ve gathered this data, let’s analyze it.
1. Look at the results from the tracking app you installed
The tracking data may not be entirely accurate, but that’s okay—we’re just trying to get a general sense of how our guesses match up to reality.
How many times per day did you pick up your phone, and how much time did you spend on it? How does this compare to your guesses? What, if anything, surprised you?
2. Notice what you’ve noticed
Next, review the list of questions from yesterday and consider what you’ve noticed over the past 24 hours about when and why you typically use your phone. What patterns did you notice? What, if anything, surprised you?
3. Create your first speed bump
One of the most effective ways to regain control over our phones is to build speed bumps: small obstacles that force us to slow down. By creating a pause between our impulses and our actions, speed bumps give us the chance to change course if we decide we want to take a different route.
This first speed bump is an exercise that I call WWW, which is short for What For, Why Now, and What Else (you might want to consider putting “WWW” on your lock screen as a reminder).
WWW: What For, Why Now, and What ElseAny time you notice that you are about to reach for your phone, take a second to ask yourself:
What For? What are you picking up your phone to do? (For example, to check your email, browse Amazon, order dinner, kill time, and so on.)
Why Now? Why are you picking up your phone at this moment? The reason might be practical (I want to take a photo), situational (I’m in the elevator), or emotional (I want a distraction).
What Else? What else could you do right now besides check your phone?
If you do your Ws, and then decide that you really do want to use your phone right now, that’s totally fine. The point is simply to give yourself a chance to explore your options for that particular moment, so that if and when you turn your attention to your phone, it’s the result of a conscious decision.
Identifying your goal ahead of time also prevents an impulse to share a photo on social media from devolving into another 30 minutes spent absent-mindedly scrolling through your feed.
Friday: Delete Social Media AppsSocial media is like junk food: Bingeing on it makes us feel bad, and yet once we start consuming it, it’s really hard to stop. So let’s take control of it by deleting all social media apps from your phone.
I’m serious. Do it now. Put your finger on an app icon until it starts jiggling, and then press the x in the corner. The app, panicking, will respond with a manipulative question (“Are you really sure you want to delete me and all my data?”). Say yes and then shake your head in disgust: Everyone knows that Facebook didn’t really delete any of your data. It’s all still lurking in the cloud, ready to be used against you and reinstalled/downloaded at any time.
I’m not trying to get you off of social media entirely; I just want you to check it through your phone or computer’s internet browser instead of on an app. This creates a speed bump, because browser versions of social media platforms often have fewer features than their apps and are clunkier to use. So they provide lots of opportunities to ask yourself whether you really want to be checking social media at that moment.
If you decide that you do, define your purpose ahead of time (Are you posting something? Looking for something specific? Just scrolling for fun?) and decide how long you want to spend. You may even want to set a timer. When you’re done, log out and close the window so that it won’t open automatically the next time you launch the browser.
Lastly, make a point of taking some of the time you usually spend on social media and spending it with people you care about instead—offline. Call a friend. Invite someone to coffee. Have a party. (Yes, you can use social media to help you organize.) Notice how you feel afterward, especially compared to how you usually feel after spending time on social media.
Saturday: Come Back to (Real) LifeIf you use your phone less, you’re going to end up with more time. Unless you have some sense of how you want to be spending this reclaimed time, you’re likely to feel anxious and possibly a bit depressed—and you’ll be at risk of sliding right back into your old habits. That’s why we need to get back in touch with what makes us happy in our offline lives. We’re going to start with a few prompts. Just jot down whatever comes to mind.
Once you’re done, use your answers to those questions to make a list of fun, off-phone things you could do over the next few days. For example: Do a crossword in a café. Go on a day trip. Sign up for a class. Plan a game night. Go to a museum. Our goal here is to come up with ideas—and plans—for fun things ahead of time, so that when you find yourself with free time, you’ll be less likely to reach for your phone.
Sunday: Get PhysicalMost of us weren’t very good at mind–body integration even before smartphones came into the picture—and with every screen we add to our lives, we’re only getting worse. So today, make some time to get back in touch with your body by doing something physical and enjoyable—a chance to remember you are more than a brain sitting on top of a body. And, as a side note, there’s strong evidence suggesting that increased blood flow also helps to strengthen your cognitive control.
Some ideas:
To practice, put down this magazine, take a deep breath, and slowly stretch your arms above your head. Bring them back down as you exhale. Notice how it feels.
How to Ride Out Your Phone CravingsStudies of people trying to quit other addictive habits, such as smoking, have suggested that if we simply acknowledge our discomfort without trying to fight against it—in other words, if we ride out the wave—our cravings will eventually fade on their own.
For example, let’s say you catch yourself reaching for your phone. Practicing mindfulness means that instead of trying to fight your urge or criticizing yourself for having it, you simply notice the urge and stay present with it as it unfolds. As it does, you can ask questions about it. What does the craving feel like in your brain and in your body? Why are you having this particular urge right now? What reward are you hoping to receive, or what discomfort are you trying to avoid? What would happen if you reacted to the impulse? What would happen if you did nothing at all?
The next time you find yourself tempted to look at your phone, pause instead. Take a breath and just notice the craving. Don’t give in to it, but don’t try to make it go away. Observe it. See what happens.
Shift Your MindsetHere’s an interesting psychological trick for you: Researchers have found that the vocabulary you use to describe a new habit has a strong effect on the likelihood that you’ll stick with it. To be specific, saying that you “do” or “don’t” do something—framing an action as part of your identity—is much more effective than saying that you “have to” or “can’t” do something.
So when you feel the urge to open or reinstall one of the apps, don’t try to resist it by saying that you “can’t” or aren’t “allowed” to do so. Instead, simply describe your current reality: “I do not keep social media apps on my phone.” This simple shift can make a surprising difference.
The post It’s Time to Break Up with Your Phone appeared first on Mindful.
When you really pay attention to your breath, it’s astonishing how much you notice. As I follow the sensation of cool air flowing into my nose, I feel a gentle expansion, a widening through my nasal cavity, back into my skull, and down my throat. My collarbones rise and spread; my ribs separate and widen like a bellows.
Exhaling, my diaphragm contracts into the cave of my abdomen, my spine curling ever so slightly around it. All the while, my body feels as if it’s sinking into the floor. My mind follows the gravitational pull, its perpetual whirl slowed to a pleasant hum.
This single breath cycle takes less than 20 seconds, but an hour could easily have passed. It occurs to me that it’s like that movie Interstellar—as if I’ve left the normal time–space continuum and awakened to a whole new world of sensation inside, as I lie here, covered in blankets, a weighted pillow across my hips, drinking in this wildly restorative substance called air.
I’m not normally so observant of my breath. But I’m following Jillian Pransky’s voice, a bit raspy, slow and clear and incredibly relaxing. She’s guiding me through her signature Deep Listening practice, which, in this moment, I could honestly describe as liquefying. As in, it feels like my muscles have separated from my bones and both are suspended in some viscous substance, my mind contentedly floating alongside.
“Let your breath arrive in your body,” Pransky says, and if I could, I would nod in assent: I think it’s here. But I really don’t think I can move. And then a tiny thought bubble rises up from the deep: Thank goodness I don’t have to drive right away.
I’ve come to meet Pransky to experience her body-based relaxation system that blends yoga, mindfulness, and somatic awareness into a delicious low-tech stew—a nourishing and welcome response to our hyper-connected and overstimulated lives. It might just be the antithesis of popular modern yoga styles—no overheated room, no endless Chaturangas-to-Up-Dog vinyasas, no orders to in-hale! ex-hale!
Instead we move slowly and deliberately, warming up with a few gentle poses. With calm assurance, she is beginning to direct our inner attention to how we hold ourselves in our bodies, before we head back to lie down on our mats, surrounded and comforted by the support of bolsters and blankets. As we lie in postures designed to encourage the gentle release of tight and shortened muscles, we “receive” the breath as it enters the body. Then, we mentally trace where our feet, legs, back, arms, and head touch the floor, like kids making body outlines they’ll later paint in art class, and imagine expanding the imprint with our awareness.
We invite the breath to meet any hard or stuck places in the body, washing over and around them like water, releasing the tension and pain held there. In a contemplation she calls Making Space, Pransky gently urges, “Let yourself be opened by your breath.”
Welcome the breath with a receptive belly. Your breath will gently unravel the tension it meets. Your breath will tenderly expand you inside. Allow your breath to unwind you, unfurl you.
From Go-Go-Go to Slow-Slow-SlowTwenty years ago a different yoga attracted Jillian Pransky. A different life. Absorbed in a busy marketing career with a major publishing house in Manhattan, she was a go-getter, a climber, focused on success and her ability to create it. “Jillian the Achiever. Jillian the Tenacious. Jillian the Succeeder,” she writes in her 2017 book Deep Listening. “All the foundational ideas I had about myself were validated by my job.”
She was also athletic, pushing herself through any physical challenge. She played soccer throughout school, and as an adult she taught aerobics in addition to her day job. She tells how she began running, proudly finishing a five-mile race soon after. Then someone suggested she should run a marathon, so she did…just five months later. “Because I had cultivated a mind-over-matter attitude, I was actually able to cross the finish line,” she writes. “But then I was sick for a year. I had pushed myself too much, although I didn’t make that connection at the time.”
When she discovered yoga, it became an obsession. She practiced at the studio across from her Flatiron Building office at lunchtime and again after work. She became certified to teach, and started doing that in her off hours.
“I loved how powerful my body felt when I practiced yoga,” she writes. “I loved the sensations of openness and expansiveness when challenging my physical boundaries. I did headstands so I could feel mighty and successful and strong.”
Then her world turned upside down. Her beloved sister-in-law, Lisa, was diagnosed with lung cancer, and died just three years later. The shock of it deeply impacted Pransky; alongside the pain and loss a harrowing truth was revealed, she writes: “We are not really in control of our life.”
We invite the breath to meet any hard or stuck places in the body, washing over and around them like water, releasing the tension and pain held there.
Not long afterward she experienced her first panic attack, sending her to the emergency room and followed by the development of debilitating fears. “I was scared to ride the subway, scared to fly in a plane,” she writes. “I felt as if I were forever running away from danger.”
The yoga that had made her feel strong and powerful didn’t help. “In the wake of Lisa’s death, I suffered from both anxiety and exhaustion. As my health faltered, I realized that the yoga practice I had created to make myself feel solid and secure was not the type of practice I needed to become a more active participant in my own well-being.”
Somewhat ironically, it was a yoga class that changed the trajectory of her practice, and as it would turn out, of her entire life. During Savasana, the finishing “corpse” pose where you simply rest in meditation and allow the practice to sink in, she became aware of how hard she was working, and how frustrated she was that her teacher did not acknowledge her efforts during class. An uncomfortable realization began to dawn on her: Underneath all her pushing was a pervasive longing for approval, a deep desire to be “seen.”
“It was one of the big pivotal moments for me that made me ask, Why do I push so hard?” she says.
That realization prompted an exploration to understand her need to be recognized and validated, why she drove herself to exhaustion and even to the point of illness. She dove deeply into the study of somatic therapy, structural and functional anatomy, and mindfulness. She worked with a Gestalt therapist, “starting to peel the onion” of her personal history, discovering how a troubled relationship with her chronically ill and volatile father fueled much of her drive.
“With my training in yoga and somatic therapy, I had tools available to work with to go deeper, and to finally listen.”
Our Stressed Minds and BodiesPransky understands firsthand the stress faced by the people who come to her classes and workshops. She recognizes those driven by ambition, those buckling under the weight of their responsibilities or barely balancing on the edge of overwhelm. And she knows well the anxiety that lies just beneath the surface. Anxiety about the future or what’s on the news. About keeping their jobs or about their kid getting an F and whether he’ll get into college.
“I have rarely met someone who doesn’t say they’re somewhere on the spectrum of anxiety,” Pransky says.
She also hears the opposite, she says, when people believe “stress is their friend.” She relays the story of a former client, the founder of a big nonprofit who began working with her after an accident left him unable to use his legs. “He said, ‘I haven’t felt this at ease and this relaxed in, like, I forget. I forgot this place,’” she recalls. But just two sessions later, he told her he couldn’t continue. “He was overwhelmed with the possibility of what real relaxation would mean for him,” she says. He told her, “It’s going to make me lose my edge. If I relax too much, how am I going to have the command and respect that I need to do what I do?”
She was able to convince him to continue, but she recognizes how difficult it was for him “to get over to that place where relaxation didn’t mean surrender, loss of power.” Instead, she says, he learned how it could help him be “more deliberate about how he used his energy, and how he took his rest, so he could be less reactionary and more purposeful.”
Uncovering TensionWhether we consciously choose to hold tension or our bodies and minds do it for us, when we do, Pransky says, we feel in control. “When we relax, we feel vulnerable.”
Tension becomes our armor, holding the fear, worry, and vulnerability at bay. But eventually, inevitably, it fails us. With stress hormones coursing through our bloodstream, as we hold ourselves so tightly to stay “safe” that we forget to take a deep breath, we’re just one fender bender, one work crisis, one sad and senseless loss away from falling apart. That’s when we get sick. Or stop sleeping through the night. Or blow our stack at someone we love, or suffer a panic attack and become afraid to live our lives.
Before we can release tension, however, we have to know where we hold it. And it’s not always obvious where it resides, Pransky says. “We’re so used to living with it, we think we are relaxed while, in fact, we are still harboring tension.”
Lying with my head and back supported by a bolster, my mind idly following my breath as it moves through my limp body, I’m suddenly aware of a sensation of opening deep in my core, and something seems to shift within. As my breath sinks into this new space, I feel a sense of sadness. I feel how weary I am. I’ve been traveling for almost two weeks, and it’s been emotional, visiting with older family members and coming face-to-face with how much has changed, and how much more change is still to come. I’ve spent hours on planes and trains and in cars, and I haven’t done any yoga or much exercise at all. I’m ready to go home, but some things there too are uncertain. I miss my dog.
“Just welcome the breath,” Pransky is saying, and as the emotions fill me, I’m grateful for this guidance. I touch the sadness lightly with my breath, exploring its shape and size, its texture and density. After what could be a few moments or an hour, it starts to grow lighter, thinner, and more transparent, until…it’s gone. I feel lighter, my mind suddenly alert, yet my body is still deeply relaxed.
Wow.
As we just notice, just rest, just listen, we offer ourselves a great kindness that makes us feel cared for.
This experience is why Pransky is a proponent of pairing mindfulness with somatic awareness. When we engage in restorative poses, opening the anatomy and welcoming the breath deeply into the body, we not only trigger the relaxation response, we uncover those deeper areas of tightness and holding. And as we just notice, just rest, just listen, we offer ourselves a great kindness that makes us feel cared for. “It sends our mind a signal that right now, in this moment, we’re OK,” she says.
She describes it like a plane coming in for a landing. Before the plane can touch down, the pilot needs to receive a message: “Welcome! It’s safe to land here.” Having the embodied sense of being supported by the ground, of being safe in our own bodies, we can start to lay down the armor of tension. “And our mind can begin to shift into a new conversation: ‘I’m OK here on the ground.’”
The more familiar we are with how and where we hold tension, the easier it is to notice “how we are closing down or opening up to the current conditions in our lives,” she says.
This is where Deep Listening becomes a tool for life. We’re building resilience “over time, making more space and capacity to stay open with whatever arises.”
The Power of SoftnessReleasing our tension requires softness.
It does not require knowing all the answers to whatever may come up. We don’t need to figure everything out. We just need to give ourselves kind and friendly space to receive not only our first uncomfortable thought or feeling but every uncomfortable thought or feeling. If we can trust the ground to support us, we can open more fully to what we discover. It’s like allowing our breath to come in. We don’t have to do anything. We simply need to welcome it.
—Jillian Pransky in Deep Listening
When she teaches, Pransky uses cues, simple words or phrases that seem to bypass thinking and land right in your body. She talks of a “spacious belly” and “effortless legs.” She asks you to “imagine the breath flowing in through the front of your heart and out through the back of your heart. Washing through your chest. Softening you.”
And she refers to the body, breath, and the earth as “family.” During our session, as I lay in repose, no tension left anywhere, this notion immediately hits me as so simple and beautiful and true that I feel my heart melt. No matter what else is going on, these things—the breath, the body, and the solid support of the earth itself—are always there, steady and real, for every single one of us.
“Similar to the way we learn to rely on the support of the ground, becoming aware of our partnership with the breath reinforces our experience of connectedness. Of not feeling alone,” Pransky explains. “The breath is always there for us, without question. It is our life partner. Really, it’s family.”
And this feeling of belonging, of safety, helps you to stay soft. To stay open. To let in the good while knowing that you are also strong and stable, supple and responsive to whatever comes. You are listening, deeply.
Try These Four Practices 1. Listening SoftlyImagine you could breathe directly through your heart. Imagine this is where the air flows in and out of you.
Let your breath flow freely in and out through your heart. Let your breath soften you. Uncovering layers of you. Allowing room for you to unfurl. All of you.
Your breath tenderly receiving everything it comes in contact with. Welcoming your deepest feelings openly, unwaveringly. Welcoming all your feelings. Your joys and your sorrows.
Your breath is a gentle listening space.
Your breath listens wholeheartedly to all that it meets, staying with you no matter what arises. Your breath is always present. Always listening.
Listen to your infinite breath as it flows in and out of your heart. Your breath will teach you how to listen.
Listen softly. Listen to yourself as your breath listens to you.
2. Letting Go of TensionHelping the psoas muscle to release tension, to lengthen to its optimal state, is an important step in deep listening, according to Jillian Pransky. This is done through supported long-held poses that open the front of the hips, and by welcoming the breath into the body.
The psoas is the longest and strongest of the hip-flexor muscles, connecting the lumbar vertebrae to the femur on both sides of your body. It helps stabilize the spine and support your internal organs, while supporting the movement of blood and lymph through your cells. It’s involved with almost every motion, from bending to twisting to walking and running. And, it’s intimately connected to the breath, sharing space with the diaphragm and contracting when you feel afraid or stressed. Sitting for long periods of time, excessive movement, or any repetitive motion that compresses the front of the hip, contracts and shortens the psoas.
“Our gut environment has to feel safe. If it’s squeezed because of our six-pack abs, if it’s squeezed because we don’t want to feel it, if it’s squeezed because the psoas is short, as it is constantly from walking and riding and running and driving and sitting, then all of that inhibits our ability to calm ourselves,” she says.
“When the belly can soften, when we provide a place for the breath to move at ease, we create an environment where we can feel more, know more, receive more guttural, preverbal cues that inform us on what would really be most wise. Insight and wisdom are then available in a way that they’re not when we’re rushing around and not seeing a bigger perspective.”
3. Soft Belly BreathingSit in a comfortable position on the floor or in a chair. Close your eyes, if you wish. Take a few long breaths, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.
Let your body land on the ground. Let your breath arrive in your body.
As your breath flows in, feel it move down into your belly. As your breath flows out, let your belly be effortless.
On your inhale, think, “soft,” allowing your belly to receive your breath.
On the out breath, think, “belly,” letting go of any holding and resistance.
Inhale, “soft.”
Exhale, “belly.”
Each inhale, imagine your belly being cared for by the breath. Each exhale, let the breath loosen any solidity. Let your breath make room. Let thoughts, emotions, sensations rise and fall in and out of a spacious belly.
Since our belly is our emotional center, when we soften it, a variety of feelings, thoughts, images, and memories may bubble up. Welcome all that rises and falls. If you find yourself in conversation with a thought or feeling, simply acknowledge that observation, meet yourself kindly, and draw your mind gently back to the flow of your breath.
After 5 to 10 minutes, place your hands on your belly. Feel your breath meeting your hands. Little by little, expand your awareness into the space around you.
Close your practice by setting an intention to stay connected to your breath and your belly as you move slowly out of the meditation.
4. Appreciate the Open SkyUse this reset practice while looking at an open sky.
Stand outside or in front of a window, or gaze at a photograph that features an expansive sky.
Pause and sense where your body meets the ground. Soften excess gripping in your face, neck, and shoulders. Feel yourself landing completely.
As you bring your attention to the flow of your breath, gaze into the openness of the sky.
Follow your next three breaths as they come in from the space around you and expand into your body. Follow them as they move from the space inside you back out into the world around you.
Notice the continuum of your breathing flowing from outside in and inside out.
Feel how your breath connects you to the space around you.
To finish, notice your feet on the floor and imagine your head—and your heart—in the shape of the sky. Move into your next moment grounded and open.
The post The Power of Meeting Stress with Softness appeared first on Mindful.
I’ve spent some happy moments in my own small garden, down on my knees, gently pressing the earth over a handful of seeds or nurturing a young plum tree to bear fruit. I’ve known for a long time that whatever effort I give to my garden, the gifts that I get back are nothing short of miraculous: food for body and soul.
But today, as I tour the 55-acre San Francisco Botanical Garden with master landscaper Peter Good, I discover the gifts of gardening on a completely different scale.
Soft-spoken and handsomely weathered, Good regards this urban oasis in the midst of Golden Gate Park as his spiritual home. “This garden is my touchstone,” says Good, who has spent decades working here. And no wonder. The botanical garden houses 8,500 kinds of plants from around the world, and everywhere I look, there is something spectacular to see: rich purple blooms on the rhododendrons, pastel azaleas, and golden South African lilies.
On Garden TimeGood and I start by strolling along slowly, stopping to finger a branch, sniff a flower, or gaze high up into a tree. On my own, I’d probably walk briskly through this garden, seeing the obvious sights, but today I deliberately slow down to match his leisurely pace. Reducing the speed, it seems, is part of Good’s secret to gardening; slowing down allows the mysteries to unfurl.
On my own, I’d probably walk briskly through this garden, seeing the obvious sights, but today I deliberately slow down to match his leisurely pace.
I watch as he pauses, kneels down, and lifts a broad green leaf on the edge of the garden path to reveal a tiny hidden bloom, cradling the delicate blossom in his gnarled hands. It’s rose-colored and exquisite, hanging upside down from a slender stem. I follow his gaze and peer at what I would have missed—not just the blossom itself, but the beads of moisture on the sheltering leaves, bright and reflective as little balls of mercury, and the shiny trail on another leaf, left by a snail.
“Asian mayapple,” Good says, turning the small flower over so I can see its full beauty, the waxy petals, the delicate yellow stamens. “This plant is from China,” he adds and softly ticks off →the names of the other plants we will soon see.
“Plants are our travel agents,” he says with a smile. “They take us places. And everything has a story and a companionship with the whole ecosystem: the soil, the rocks, the trees.” To walk through the garden with Good is to discover the garden’s undercurrents, the smallest and most elusive details.
As we visit one plant after another, Good talks about each like an old friend. I watch as he lovingly runs his fingers along the branch of a bush, kneels down to look underneath a plant, scratches at the soil to check the moisture content. I follow his pointed finger to glimpse a flitting bright-blue butterfly. It soars, dips, circles, settles on a leaf for a moment in the sun, then spreads its wings and drifts away. “There goes a pipe-vine swallowtail,” Good says. “And over there is the pipe-vine plant, where it lays its eggs.”
Good knows this garden so well that he can see what is not yet there. He points to a tall stalk with buds along its length. “This,” he says, “will soon have flowers that will emerge as an unworldly crystal blue, as if we were in Avatar!”
Paying close attention is Good’s way of caring for this garden, for hearing its messages. It’s how he spots the signs of a tree in distress or makes sure there are enough native plants to keep the bees and butterflies happy. When he pauses by a dry creek bed, he leans down to point out some tiny green shoots lying partly underneath the rocks—unnoticed by an average visitor, of course. “It’s quiet here now,” he says, “but that will change.” The little shoots will soon push their way out. In fact, Good adds, shoots like these could push their way through asphalt if they needed to!
Hide and SeekWatching and listening, I begin to sense the hidden power of this garden, the invisible, fierce force of nature that is at every moment nudging each plant along its own course. It reminds me of the line in a Dylan Thomas poem: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” It’s spring and those green fuses are all sizzling. The garden is full of raw energy, more going on beneath the surfacethan I’d ever imagined
The huge 200-year-old Monterey Cypress by the park’s entrance is impressive enough above ground, but beneath the soil the tree’s roots are an equally powerful presence. Underneath our footsteps, Good tells me, those tree roots are communicating with each other.
The garden is full of raw energy, more going on beneath the surfacethan I’d ever imagined
“Plants are also tactile,” Good says, stopping beside a massive tree with thick rusty-brown tangled skeins of stiff plant material hanging down in bunches. I’d never seen—or fingered —anything quite like it, and on my own I would have passed it by. “Aerial roots,” explains Good. “It’s a New Zealand Christmas tree, and these bunches of roots reach down to grab the earth and help stabilize the tree when it grows on precipitous slopes.”
The more I slow down and linger, the more I see: a ladybug climbing up a stalk, a beetle slowly making its way into the grass.
“When you slow down like this, the real garden is uncovered,” writes Wendy Johnson, who started the gardens at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Muir Beach, California. “And so is the real gardener,” she adds. “You unfold together. This takes time and a willingness to sit still past the moment when you get bored, or past the moment when you think of at least 30 worthy garden tasks that you need to accomplish immediately. Instead, give yourself all the time in the world, and don’t move.”
I think of the biologist David Haskell, who spent a year studying just one circle of earth, a meter in diameter, and found enough going on there to write a whole book about it, The Forest Unseen. I’m beginning to get the barest hint of how he found enough material.
My own garden has held surprises, too. Once, I moved a rock to find a moist little salamander hiding underneath. As the warmth of the sun reached it, the small brown creature moved one delicate long-toed foot, then the other, completely vulnerable to any careless movement of the rock that had provided shelter. I gingerly put the rock back in place, delighted to have shared such a rare private moment.
Good and I walk along a path into the Botanical Garden’s primitive plants area, where shady clumps of horsetail ferns grow, along with other age-old plants, the kind that formed the fossil matter of our modern fuels. He points to a Wollemi pine, a tree species dating back millions of years and until recently thought to be extinct. But a specimen was found in a remote canyon in Australia, he tells me, and seeds and cuttings have since been carefully distributed to various areas of the world, to reestablish the species. He sees this as a hopeful sign.
“Even in dark times in history,” Good says, “nature is still there, still bountiful, still providing comfort.”
I take in his words, savoring their meaning and the calm that has enveloped me while in this lush landscape. After a long pause, we walk slowly back into sunlight and sit on a bench. “Look up,” says Good. A drooping profusion of exquisite white blossoms is gently swaying overhead. “It’s a Chinese fringe tree, and we are here at the perfect moment.”
After saying goodbye, I leave the garden moving far more slowly than my usual pace, having seen far more than I usually see. I look forward to getting home to my own small garden, to see what secrets I can discover in my own patch of earth.
Seven Ways to Appreciate the Natural WorldGardening gets us moving, fills our lungs with fresh air, is naturally meditative, and can be deeply nourishing, both literally and figuratively. But research also shows that in getting some dirt—with its bacteria and other microscopic denizens—under our fingernails, we may also boost our gut health.
The gut has earned the nickname “second brain” among some experts. Much of that is thanks to the 300 to 500 different types of bacteria, along with other friendly microorganisms, that make up our intestinal microbiome. From breaking down dietary fiber to making vitamins K and B7, the microbiome does a lot of heavy lifting in maintaining our well-being. A 2013 study at Oregon State University also found that gut microbes communicate back and forth with the vast number of immune cells that live in our gut, helping to decide when the immune system needs to spring into action—say, in response to invading bacteria—and when it isn’t needed.
What, then, does gardening have to do with our gut? Soil naturally contains probiotic microorganisms that support gut health. For example, Mycobacterium vaccae, a bacterium found in soil, appears to aid the release of the chemical serotonin, which may alleviate anxiety and depression. “Gardeners inhale these bacteria while digging in the soil,” says microbiologist Dorothy Matthews from Russell Sage College in Troy, NY, as well as on “their vegetables, or when soil enters a cut in their skin.”
However, as modern science starts to discover the benefits of these probiotic microorganisms, our mainly indoor, sanitary lifestyles threaten their very existence and the delicate role they play in our bodies. Natalia Shulzhenko, PhD, who reported on the 2013 study, says our gut flora face “increasing disruption,” due to “modern lifestyle, diet, overuse of antibiotics, and other issues. With that disruption, the conversation is breaking down.”
All the more reason to go outside; get our hands dirty; breathe deeply; enjoy wholesome, natural foods; and care for the earth we all depend on.
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From Suffering to Peace: The True Promise of Mindfulness
Mark Coleman • New World Library
Longtime meditation teacher and naturalist Mark Coleman—author of Make Peace with Your Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Your Inner Critic and Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery, among others—is at pains to demonstrate in his new book that mindfulness is definitely, incontrovertibly not about finding an escape from the pain we find in the midst of everyday life.
The book, in fact, is filled with poignant stories of students who have come to him in immense pain. One woman, for example, arrived at a retreat having, over a two-year period, lost her sister in a car accident, her brother to a heart attack, and her father to cancer. Shortly thereafter, her only living aunt died, and weeks before the retreat, following several agonizing months, her mother passed away in a state of dementia.
Stories like this demonstrate that the “true promise of mindfulness” in the subtitle is that if we turn toward pain, rather than seek escape routes in temporary states of mind, we may find ourselves on a path toward genuine, sustainable peace
Stories like this from students demonstrate that the “true promise of mindfulness” in the subtitle is that if we turn toward pain, rather than seek escape routes in temporary states of mind, we may find ourselves on a path toward genuine, sustainable peace. Maybe not overnight. But over time.
The 36 chapters in From Suffering to Peace are short, and all end with a practice or contemplation. They’re divided into four parts corresponding to four areas of practice. The body section asks us to explore what it means to have a body (and to know that at some point “we” won’t). The mind section focuses on thoughts and our conception of a self. The heart section treats of our emotions, while the world section explores our relationships with those around us and the natural world. It’s a very filling meal.
The Green Cure: How Shinrin-Yoku, Earthing, Going Outside, or Simply Opening a Window Can Heal Us
Alice Peck • CICO Books
In The Green Cure, author Alice Peck offers a compelling argument for incorporating nature into any personal health quest. Citing research examining the health benefits of nature—for example, how walking among trees lowers blood pressure—Peck provides ample evidence that a “green cure” isn’t merely a poetic notion. She also offers practical ways to tap these benefits: creating terrariums, using light and color therapy to mimic nature’s light and color spectrum, and more. Peck shows us that tapping into nature’s healing power doesn’t require us to live by the ocean or in a forest. It’s all around, wherever we begin.
Alphabreaths: The ABCs of Mindful Breathing
Chris Willard, David Rechtschaffen, and Holly Clifton-Brown • Sounds True
“Spread your arms like a butterfly, imagine blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, or be still and silent as a ninja.” Psychologist Chris Willard and Mindful Education director Daniel Rechtschaffen—each having written several previous titles on bringing mindfulness into children’s lives—offer 26 imaginative ways for kids and their adults to pay attention to the breath all day, from Alligator Breath to Zzzz Breath (no prizes for guessing that this last one involves bedtime). Accompanied by adorable, vibrant, homespun illustrations, the wide variety of exercises will help kids associate mindful breathing with play and with learning about ourselves in relation to the wider world. Not a bad way to understand mindfulness at any age.
Invisibilia
Episode: The Fifth Vital Sign
The more attention you give something, goes the aphorism, the bigger that thing becomes. In this episode of NPR’s Invisibilia, host Alex Spiegel explores the power our attention wields in the realm of the body. It introduces us to Devyn, an American 16-year-old who finds inexplicable chronic pain taking over her life. The narrative also lights on a medical system—within an oppressively stressful, pain-inducing society—that’s grown obsessed with “killing” pain (as in, taking “pain killers”). Plus, a pocket of the medical community claims that we’re understanding and treating physical pain in all the least helpful ways. Trying so hard to get rid of every trace of pain, says rheumatologist Dr. David Sherry, serves to amplify it rather than curing it: “There’s some suffering that people just need to live through.” Is pain, “the fifth vital sign,” an enemy to be vanquished at all costs? Or is debilitating pain a matter of misplaced focus? It may be that our body knows the answers we need better than we do. We ought to be listening.
CBC’S Sunday Edition
Episode: Too Long, Didn’t Read: How Online Reading Is Hurting Our Brains
Although “hurting” may be a tad alarmist, research shows the digital revolution is literally changing our brain circuits. Tufts University professor Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain In the Digital World, describes how reading has, for centuries, allowed us to engage in “deep reading, sophisticated processes like analogy and inference,” as well as “critical analysis and empathy.” But these skills developed while our most pervasive forms of media were printed books, newspapers, and magazines. Reading on our phones, we tend to merely skim—a habit that suits whizzing through emails or Twitter but hurts when we want (or need) to read, say, business reports, or Steinbeck. Reading on screens doesn’t encourage taking the “precious milliseconds” required for those deep-reading processes. Our brains quickly lose patience with it. For Wolf, we’ve reached “a moment of cognitive choice”: If we don’t practice reading slowly, deeply, with intention, the literary skills gained over countless generations will continue to fade.
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Many of the traditional loving-kindness phrases used in meditation (May I be happy, May I be free from suffering…) have been handed down over centuries, so it’s not surprising they can be a bit hard to connect with. For this reason, we believe that it is important to find phrases that resonate. This is especially true when we want to generate feelings of loving-kindness for ourselves: What we say must feel authentic to have impact.
The aim is to find language that evokes the attitude of loving-kindness and compassion. Here are some guidelines:
Phrases should be simple, clear, authentic, and kind. There should be no argument in the mind when we offer ourselves a loving-kindness phrase, only gratitude.
You don’t need to use “may I.” Loving-kindness phrases are wishes. “May I” is simply an invitation to incline the heart in a positive direction, meaning “If all the conditions would allow it to be so, then…”
The phrases are like blessings. They are not positive affirmations (for example: “I’m becoming healthier every day”). We are simply cultivating good intentions, not pretending things are other than they are.
We are simply cultivating good intentions, not pretending things are other than they are.
The phrases are designed to evoke goodwill, not good feelings. A common reason for difficulty with loving-kindness meditation is that we have expectations about how we’re supposed to feel. This practice doesn’t directly change our emotions. However, good feelings are an inevitable byproduct of goodwill.
The phrases should be general. For example, “May I be healthy” rather than “May I be free from diabetes.”
The phrases should be said slowly. There’s no rush—saying the most phrases in the shortest time doesn’t win the race!
The phrases should be said warmly, like whispering them into the ear of someone you truly love.
Finally, you may address yourself as “I” or “you,” or use your proper name (“George”). You may also use a term of endearment, such as “Sweetheart” or “Dear One.” Addressing yourself in this way supports the attitude of kindness and compassion.
Try it out:Excerpted from The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook by Kristin Neff, PhD, and Christopher Germer, PhD. © 2018 Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer. Reprinted by permission of Guilford Press.
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“This probably isn’t going to kill me, but it’ll hurt,” Danny Penman remembers thinking back in May 2006. Moments earlier, Penman had been floating serenely over England’s Cotswold Hills when a blast of wind collapsed his paraglider. He somersaulted head over heels through the air before slamming into a hillside some 30 feet below.
An agonizing pain engulfed him as he realized his leg was shattered. He slipped into shock; near-seizures shook his body. That’s when Penman deployed his secret weapon: He’d learned meditation as a student in England. In sheer desperation, he gave it a try.
Forcing himself to breathe slowly and deeply, he focused on the sensations his breath made. He envisioned himself in a beautiful garden and imagined breathing its tranquil air. Gradually, his perception of the pain shifted, so that it became less “personal” and intense, as if he was watching it on TV rather than experiencing it directly.
Over the next five months, Penman needed three operations to rebuild his leg. The pain—plus the insomnia, irritability, and anxiety—was excruciating, he recalls in his book, You Are Not Your Pain, written with Vidyamala Burch.
The powerful pain meds provided by his doctors weren’t much help, and nausea was an additional problem. Some three weeks after he left the Bristol Royal Infirmary, Penman came across a newspaper article about a form of mindfulness meditation called Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), developed by Mark Williams at Oxford University. “I immediately studied his book, The Mindful Way Through Depression. And then I had Dr. Williams teach me personally,” says Penman.
“My pain subsided and I slashed my intake of painkillers and other drugs by two-thirds about a month or so after the accident—I was initially taking 40 pills a day,” he told Mindful.
Penman’s healing was so complete that he eventually hiked Britain’s 630-mile South West Coast Path—a goal he’d envisioned while in the hospital. He also became a meditation teacher and author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World.
Chronic Pain—A Silent EpidemicChronic pain has been called our “silent epidemic,” says Fadel Zeidan, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of California San Diego. Pinning down numbers of people suffering from chronic pain is tricky, because pain is subjective and we have no good way of measuring, he says. Official estimates range from over 25 million to 126 million Americans struggling with chronic pain each year—and Zeidan thinks that number could be significantly higher.
Any pain that lasts more than three months is considered “chronic,” according to the National Institutes of Health. It can be caused by an illness or an injury and can last for months or even longer. Chronic pain can also bring sleep disturbances, fatigue, and appetite and mood changes. And it can limit your mobility—being in constant pain stunts your ability to take even a short walk, much less get to the gym or the yoga studio. As a result, your flexibility, strength, and stamina can take a nosedive.
“Pain is both mental and physical, and meditation is excellent at changing the mental aspect of it,”
Zeidan is a mindfulness researcher (and teacher) who, through his clinical studies, has discovered that mindfulness affects the way the brain processes pain. In one study, for example, his team exposed mindfulness meditators to painful stimulation. Through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they discovered that mindfulness affects areas of the brain that influence pain, including the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the right anterior insula. Mindfulness meditation, they found, reduces both the intensity of pain and self-reported feelings of the pain’s unpleasantness.
How Mindfulness Meditation Combats Chronic PainMindfulness triggers a neurological, pain-relieving response. But what also weaponizes mindfulness meditation against pain is that it helps you cultivate a nonjudgmental, accepting attitude toward the pain, says Sara Lazar, PhD, Associate Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Pain is both mental and physical, and meditation is excellent at changing the mental aspect of it,” she says. “You change your relationship to pain so that it no longer rules your life,” she adds.
What’s more, meditation promotes relaxation and combats the muscle tension and psychological stress that worsen pain, says Lazar. In Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was, in fact, originally created to ease chronic pain.
“The key thing about using mindfulness to ease pain is to have no expectations about changing the pain itself,” says Lazar. If you focus on getting rid of the pain, you won’t. But if you focus on reducing your stress and becoming mindful, the pain will lessen as a result of your practice.
Experts agree that you don’t have to spend hours in mindful meditation to ease pain. “Many people gain some relief almost immediately, but it will return unless they continue to meditate for 10 to 20 minutes a day,” says Lazar.
“Mindfulness helps you turn down the ‘volume control’ on the brain’s pain-sensing networks,” says Penman: This ends up reducing the amount of pain you consciously feel.
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Once a product of nature found only in mineral springs, sparkling water is now produced through both mechanical and chemical processes as well, and it has become a staple in households around the world. In France and Italy, some water fountains even offer free eau pétillante or acqua frizzante to all (there’s a fountain conveniently located outside the Colosseum in Rome).
Tingly, and sometimes a little sharp, not all bubbly waters are made alike.
Tingly, and sometimes a little sharp, not all bubbly waters are made alike. Some have distinct mineral flavors, while others are all about the bubbles. The size of the bubbles affects the intensity of the sparkling sensation, with smaller bubbles creating a smoother texture and larger bubbles creating a stronger texture.
Try This Mindful Drinking PracticeSavor the sensations of sparkling water:
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I love trees and am not immune to hugging them. It may not be rational, but when I’m near one of these quiet giants, I feel like they are kin—ancient grandparents, or at least benevolent witnesses of history and time.
Everyone probably doesn’t feel the same way as I do, but perhaps they should. While being in nature leads to better health, creativity, and even kindness, there may be something special about being among trees.
After all, trees are important to our lives in many ways. The most obvious is their role in producing the oxygen we breathe and sequestering carbon dioxide to help protect our atmosphere; but science suggests trees provide other important benefits, too.
Here are some of the more provocative findings from recent research on how trees increase human well-being.
Probably the most well-researched benefit of nature exposure is that it seems to help decrease our stress, rumination, and anxiety. And much of that research has been conducted in forests.
In one recent study, 585 young adult Japanese participants reported on their moods after walking for 15 minutes, either in an urban setting or in a forest. The forests and urban centers were in 52 different locations around the country, and about a dozen participants walked in each area. In all cases, the participants walking in a forest experienced less anxiety, hostility, fatigue, confusion, and depressive symptoms, and more vigor, compared to walking in an urban setting. The results were even stronger for people who were more anxious to begin with.
“The psychological benefits of walking through forests are very significant, and forest environments are expected to have very important roles in promoting mental health in the future,” the authors write. Indeed, various other studies suggest that the practice of “forest bathing”—deliberately spending time among the woods—can help us deal with the stresses and strains of urban living.
In all cases, the participants walking in a forest experienced less anxiety, hostility, fatigue, confusion, and depressive symptoms, and more vigor, compared to walking in an urban setting.
In another recent study, Polish participants spent 15 minutes gazing at either a wintertime urban forest or an unforested urban landscape. The trees in the forest had straight trunks and no leaves (because of winter), and there was no other shrubbery below the trees—in other words, no green; the urban landscape consisted of buildings and roads. Before and after, the participants filled out questionnaires related to their moods and emotions. Those who gazed at a winter forest reported significantly better moods, more positive emotions, more vigor, and a greater sense of personal restoration afterwards than those who gazed at the urban scene.
It may be that some of these benefits have to do with how forests affect our brains. One study found that people living in proximity to trees had better “amygdala integrity”—meaning, a brain structure better able to handle stressors.
These findings and many others—including an earlier review of the research—show how even short amounts of time in a forest can give us a break from our frenzied lifestyles.
Besides helping us breathe, being around trees may improve our health in other ways, too.
Studies have shown that spending short amounts of time in forests seems to benefit our immune systems. Specifically, one study found that elderly patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease experienced decreases in perforin and granzyme B expressions, as well as decreased pro-inflammatory cytokines—all related to better immune function—after they visited forests rather than urban areas. Though it’s not clear exactly why this would be, a prior study suggests that trees may improve immunitythanks to certain aromatic compounds they release.
Trees also seem to help our heart health. In one study, participants walked in a forest one day and an urban environment another day, and researchers measured how the two walks impacted their bodies. In comparison to the urban environment, walking in trees lowered people’s blood pressure, cortisol levels, pulse rates, and sympathetic nervous system activity (related to stress), while increasing their parasympathetic nervous system activity (related to relaxation). All of these physiological markers are tied to better heart health, suggesting that walking in the woods improves cardiovascular function.
Though it could be that these health benefits are due less to trees than to natural spaces in general, New Yorkers living near trees report better overall health than residents living near green, grassy spaces. And another study found that women who live in areas affected by tree loss have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease than those in unaffected areas. One study that tried to quantify this health effect concluded that “having 10 more trees in a city block, on average, improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $10,000 higher median income or being 7 years younger.” Clearly, there’s something healing about trees.
While some prior research has shown that green spaces reduce crime in urban settings, it may be that trees are even more effective.
In one recent study, researchers looked at crime data for the city of Chicago, computing a score for each census tract. Then, they compared that to the percentage of tree canopy cover and park space enclosed in each tract. They found that for every 10 percent increase in tree canopy cover, crime rates went down in several categories—11.3 percent for assaults, narcotics crimes, and robbery, and 10.3 percent for battery.
These findings held after controlling for factors that might skew the results—like the socioeconomic status, poverty, unemployment, and education of the residents. Also, while burglary rates went down 6.3 percent for every 10 percent increase in park space, other types of crimes were unaffected by having a park nearby. In other words, trees were more predictive of crime reduction than parks.
“Understanding the relationship between green space and crime can inform urban planning to improve human safety and well-being,” conclude the authors.
Prior research has shown that vegetation around houses helps reduce people’s fear, incivility, and aggression—potential precursors to crime.
This result mirrors those of other studies in different urban settings—Baltimore, New Haven, and Vancouver. In all cases, areas with more tree coverage had lower crime.
Why would this be? Researchers don’t know for sure, but prior research has shown that vegetation around houses helps reduce people’s fear, incivility, and aggression—potential precursors to crime. And trees may also draw people out of their homes, creating an atmosphere of more “eyes on the street,” which aids in reducing crime. Whatever the case, planting some trees may be an effective way to help communities stay safer.
Research suggests that nature experiences help us to feel kinder toward others, and many of those studies involve trees.
In one experiment, researchers asked a group of university students to look up at either a tall building or a grove of towering eucalyptus trees for one minute. They found that students who studied the trees experienced more feelings of awe—a sense of wonder and of being in the presence of something larger than oneself. Afterwards, when one of the experimenters pretended to accidentally drop a bunch of pens, the students who had seen the trees and felt awe helped pick up more pens than those who had looked at the building.
In another study, researchers found that people were more willing to help someone who’d lost a glove if they had just spent time walking through a park with trees, rather than if they were near the entrance to the park. Unfortunately, this study, like many others, doesn’t specify the benefits of trees versus green space in general. So, we don’t know the exact role trees play in promoting kind and helpful behavior. But there’s a good chance that their presence at least contributes to better social interactions.
For all of these reasons, I make an almost daily practice of interacting with trees. Whether it’s just looking out my office window or taking a short stroll down the block to visit a favorite oak, I like to acknowledge the trees around me, often with a quick pat or hug. As research continues to grow, I’m sure my tree appreciation will, too.
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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Equanimity is the quality of presence that is open, balanced and non-reactive. As this talk explores, when equanimity is lacking, we become easily lost in trance, identified as a defended and controlling egoic self. When present, the solidity and constriction of egoic self dissolves, and our heart is free to respond to life with love, compassion, forgiveness and joy. Note: this talk is a favorite from the 2014 archives and includes the “Duck Meditation” and bricklayer stories.
Tara will continue with part 2 of the Forgiveness series next week.
Now we are ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.
No, it isn’t a gull.
A gull always has a raucous touch about him.
This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells.
He isn’t cold, and he is thinking things over.
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic,
And he is part of it.
He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.
But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher.
He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have.
He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.
Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But he realizes it.
And what does he do, I ask you. He sits down in it.
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.
That is religion, and the duck has it.
He has made himself a part of the boundless, by easing himself into it just where it
touches him.“The Little Duck,” by Donald C. Babcock
~ published in The New Yorker on October 4, 1947
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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. We close with a prayer of loving kindness (a special meditation from the archives).
No matter how often the mind drifts, all that really matters is the quality of heart in the way you come back… to come back with interest and friendliness to this moment, then you plant those seeds for whatever else arises.
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When we think about meditating (with a capital M), we can get hung up on thinking about our thoughts: we’re going to do something about what’s happening in our heads. It’s as if these bodies we have are just inconvenient sacks for our brains to lug around.
Having it all remain in your head, though, lacks a feeling of good old gravity. That approach can make it seem like floating—as though we don’t have to walk. We can just waft.
Meditation involves taking the time to pay attention to where we are and what’s going on, and that starts with being aware of our body.
But meditation begins and ends in the body. It involves taking the time to pay attention to where we are and what’s going on, and that starts with being aware of our body. That very act can be calming, since our body has internal rhythms that help it relax if we give it a chance.
Here’s a posture practice that can be used as the beginning stage of a period of meditation practice or simply as something to do for a minute, maybe to stabilize yourself and find a moment of relaxation before going back into the fray. If you have injuries or other physical difficulties, you can modify this to suit your situation.
Time: 3 to 5 minutes
This article also appears in the April 2013 issue of Mindful magazine.
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In recent years, a number of wilderness therapy programs have cropped up to help people who suffer from mental health challenges. These trips often involve physically and emotionally engaging experiences—like backpacking or rock-climbing in remote areas—combined with therapeutic work from caring professionals. Something about being engaged in nature seems to help hard-to-treat patients open up, find new confidence, and focus their lives in more positive directions.
Psychologists who conduct these programsbelieve there is healing power in nature, bolstered by research that suggests green spaces are good for our health, our well-being, and even our relationships. But what is the secret ingredient in nature that brings about these benefits?
A recent study, led by researcher Craig Anderson and his colleagues (including the Greater Good Science Center’s faculty director, Dacher Keltner), suggests it could be awe—that sense of being in the presence of something greater than ourselves that fills us with wonder.
Participants in the first phase of the study were military veterans and underserved youth who went on either a one-day or four-day river rafting trip. Rafters traveled through the forested canyons of the American River in California or the dramatic rock formations of Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, encountering up to intermediate-level rapids. While participants sometimes paddled through the rapids themselves, other times they rode while guides paddled. On the longer trips, they camped out in remote, unpopulated areas.
Before and after the trip, the participants reported on their well-being, including their stress levels, mood, and satisfaction with life. During the trip, they kept diaries at the end of each day about their feelings, including whether they’d felt awe, amusement, peace, gratitude, joy, or pride that day.
At the end of the trip, participants’ well-being had increased dramatically, with youth particularly helped by the experience. Analyzing the diary entries, the researchers discovered that awe—above and beyond any of the other positive emotions—seemed to explain these improvements.
“Experiencing awe in nature is a powerful way to impact people’s psychology, even as they’re doing something they really like to do,” says Anderson.
Next, Anderson and his colleagues decided to study whether awe played a role in more ordinary, everyday nature experiences. After all, rafting experiences have many components that could be beneficial, and the participants had not been randomly assigned to go on the trip; they had volunteered.
In this second study phase, undergraduate students kept daily diaries for two weeks, recounting positive experiences they’d had during the day (which might or might not include awe or nature), as well as their feelings and overall satisfaction with life. They also filled out well-being surveys before and after the two weeks.
Analyses of the diaries showed that students who spent time in nature on a given day felt more satisfied with life that evening than those who didn’t.
Analyses of the diaries showed that students who spent time in nature on a given day felt more satisfied with life that evening than those who didn’t, and that experiences of awe predicted that boost more than any other positive emotion. Thanks to this pattern, students who spent more days in nature over the two weeks saw greater improvements in well-being during that time.
This is good news, says Anderson, because sometimes it’s not that easy for people to invest in long, expensive wilderness trips in order to heal.
“Our findings suggest that you don’t have to do extravagant, extraordinary experiences in nature to feel awe or to get benefits,” says Anderson. “By taking a few minutes to enjoy flowers that are blooming or a sunset in your day-to-day life, you also improve your well-being.”
Why would experiencing awe have these effects? Anderson doesn’t know for sure, but he speculates that awe may benefit well-being by inducing a “small self”—the sense that you are in the presence of something bigger than yourself—which may make past worries or present cares feel less significant by comparison.
But he also concedes that there could be other ways that nature experiences improve our well-being, besides inducing awe. In the river rafting trip, for example, the physical exercise or camaraderie could have made a difference to participants, since both are tied to well-being. And some students also experienced gratitude on days they were in nature—and this, too, led them to be more satisfied with life.
More research needs to be done to tease out awe’s specific role in nature’s healing power, Anderson says. But, whatever the case, he believes there’s enough evidence to encourage us to add more nature to our daily life and to protect our national parks—which, he says, are an important part of our public health system.
“Our study illustrates the importance of trying to find moments to enjoy nature and feel in awe of it,” Anderson says. “People need to learn to slow down and make space for that in their lives.”
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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Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part II on the places of deep self-condemnation, and Part III on where we have locked into anger, blame or hatred of others. Each includes guided reflections that can support us in directly awakening beyond the confining thoughts and feelings of blame.
“Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi
The post Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.
In this meditation we begin with the image and felt sense of a smile to arouse an atmosphere of care, and allow that caring presence to fill our body and the entire field of awareness. We then open to the changing experience of breath, sensations, feelings, sound and thoughts. By resting in a wakeful and open heartspace, we can include all the passing waves with ease and tenderness.
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We all make mistakes. When it comes to our closest relationships, this can lead to hurt, anger, disappointment and even resentment. Forgiveness, or the ability to let go of hard feelings toward another person, is key to sustaining healthy relationships. To forgive we need to pause and see the situation from the other person’s point of view. This may be easier said than done when we feel slighted. Can mindfulness help?
Scientists at Radboud University Nijmegan and their colleagues in the Netherlands conducted several studies to see if mindfulness, paying attention, on purpose with an open and accepting attitude, is related to forgiveness.
In the first study, 160 men and women, 72 of whom reported having a regular meditation practice, completed an online survey about their meditation practice, mindfulness, and their tendency to forgive. 36.1% of respondents had 1 to 5 years of meditation experience, 12.5% had between 6 and 10 years of practice, and the other 18.1% had been meditating for over 10 years.
As anticipated, people who meditated reported being more mindful, but contrary to expectation meditators weren’t necessarily more forgiving than non-meditators. It was a person’s mindful disposition, or tendency to be inherently mindful, that was most strongly linked to a forgiving attitude.
To understand why, the same researchers dug deeper into the links between meditation, mindfulness and forgiveness. They asked a different group of 87 college-aged students to answer questions about perspective taking and rumination in addition to those about mindfulness and forgiveness.
Students with higher mindfulness scores were more willing to take another person’s perspective, which was associated with a greater likelihood to forgive
Here they found that students with higher mindfulness scores were more willing to take another person’s perspective, which was associated with a greater likelihood to forgive. Rumination did not play a factor.
Would these results hold in a real-life experience? To answer this question a new group of 124 university students were asked to recall a time when they’d been offended and write down their experience. They then rated how close they were to the person who harmed them, and how hurt they felt, and filled out questionnaires about perspective taking, rumination and mindfulness.
Similar to the first 2 studies, mindfulness was linked to forgiveness, this time of an actual past offense. Much of this effect could be explained by the respondent’s ability to take another’s perspective, and rumination didn’t play a role. What’s more, this tendency to forgive was stronger with closer others, but less likely if the harm was felt to be severe.
Although these studies looked at correlations between mindfulness and forgiveness at one point in time, they couldn’t tell whether mindfulness caused a person to forgive. To figure that out, researchers explored whether brief mindfulness training might increase a person’s willingness to forgive.
They asked 98 adults, mostly college students, to recall a past event where they’d been slighted, then assigned each to either a mindful attention group or a control condition. Both groups received roughly 7 minutes of audio instruction.
Those in the mindful attention group were told that thoughts and emotions are temporary, and asked to picture their mind as a blank movie screen. A description of their past harmful event was then displayed in front of them. They were asked to imagine the situation in detail, observe their thoughts and emotions, and allow their feelings appear and disappear on and off their “mental” screen.
In the control condition people were asked to recall their hurtful situation in detail, then focus on their thoughts of the event. Both groups then completed questionnaires about their level of forgiveness, mindfulness and negative emotions. About 2 weeks later they were sent an email asking them to recall they event they’d written down, and fill out another questionnaire.
The result – those who were asked to mindfully attend to their thoughts and feelings when thinking about a past hurtful event reported less negative emotion and a greater tendency to forgive immediately after mindfulness instruction, but only if they were dispositionally mindful. In other words, being prompted to respond mindfully did not have an effect on forgiveness if a person was not inherently mindful to being with. Mindful individuals also reported less negativity and a greater likelihood to forgive 2 weeks later.
These studies consistently point to a mindful disposition as being strongly related to a forgiving nature regardless of whether or not someone meditates.
These studies consistently point to a mindful disposition as being strongly related to a forgiving nature regardless of whether or not someone meditates. What we don’t know is whether practices that foster compassion and loving-kindness might enhance the ability to forgive.
Like mindfulness, forgiveness is an evolving process that can be similar to loving-kindness says renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. “Forgiveness demands presence, reminding us that we are not the same as the feelings we possess in a given situation, nor is the person who we’ve harmed or who has harmed us.”
Whether forgiveness is part of your nature, or something that requires considerable time and effort, letting go of grudges and bitterness are inevitably good for your health, and your relationships.
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