This guided practice emphasizes bringing a gentle and kind attention to our bodies, and then including all experience with a receptive presence. We close by identifying a part of our being that is asking for a healing attention, and offering loving presence to ourself and then to others.
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Mindfulness is the act of being attentive to yourself. In the noise of the world, it’s taking a moment to tune everything around you out and tune in to yourself.
That’s not easy.
Though for some the pandemic provided a much-needed interruption, the “rise and grind” mentality and routine has continued to permeate our lives. “Hustle culture” pushes the narrative that being busy is a measurement of achievement and success, and anything that conflicts with our ability to work must be pushed to the side.
The kinds of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that conflict with work are increasingly prevalent due to the coronavirus. This can come in the form of worries about your personal and loved ones’ health and well-being, with COVID-19 being such a new virus that is disproportionately impacting Black and brown communities. It could be stress due to such a quick shift from a familiar daily rhythm to most of the world shutting down. Maybe it’s pressure from losing a job, working from home for the first time, or suddenly teaching your kids school. All of this created so much stress and worry—all of which is piled on top of our hustle lifestyle.
However, the very same thoughts, feelings, and emotions that this lifestyle makes us inclined to ignore are an important sign that it’s time to slow down and listen.
All of us in western capitalist cultures are conditioned to “go go go.” Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color (BIWOC), though, experience additional systems of oppression on top of hustle culture that compound negative thoughts. This poses a continuous challenge for women, including trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary, genderqueer, and all those with gender identities oppressed by racism and misogyny. As all of us are conditioned to ignore our feelings, to not sit still, BIWOC are also experiencing racism, white supremacy, the patriarchy, and microaggressions—racial trauma—that cause harm to our bodies, souls, and minds daily.
The oppressive challenges BIWOC wake up to every morning are another blockade between Black women and mindfulness. These challenges make it even more arduous to push the pause button. Beyond this barrier, there can also be a great deal of trauma and hurt to unpack. Pausing and noticing our trauma—and ultimately healing from it—is not easy, but it is imperative for our health, our survival, and our ability to thrive.
The idea of practicing mindfulness can be overwhelming to some people because it sounds like a production. You may be thinking: “I don’t have four hours a day to spend with myself. I have kids. I’m navigating microaggressions from my white coworkers. There’s no time.” Practicing mindfulness, the act of tuning in to oneself, does not need to be a lengthy, scheduled task. It’s not four hours of meditation, or even 45 minutes of yoga. Take 10 minutes to sit on a park bench and look inside. Be curious. What is your body telling you? Take five minutes while eating an apple. Put your phone down and check in with yourself, your emotions, and your physical body. Sit in your car for a moment to close your eyes and breathe before going inside the house.
Mindfulness is not an event that needs to be blocked out on your calendar, but moments taken throughout the day to commit to yourself. As they begin to add up, these moments can result in five tangible benefits. You can keep these benefits in mind by thinking of the five Rs: Resilience, Relationships, Self-Regard, Rationale, and Robust.
Mindfulness practice is an opportunity to rest. Much like exercising, we have to give our muscles time to recover after a hard workout so we can grow stronger. Resting with mindfulness allows us to give ourselves the opportunity to grow and be more resilient.
Resting with mindfulness allows us to give ourselves the opportunity to grow and be more resilient. We create a safe haven within ourselves where microaggressions aren’t happening.
We create a safe haven within ourselves where microaggressions aren’t happening. Experiencing microaggressions is inevitable for Black women, so having the space to rest allows us to build stronger resilience when experiencing daily trauma out in the world.
When our mind is harmonious with our feelings, we’re paying attention to us, not what others think of us. Mindfulness allows us to get reacquainted with the truest, most authentic version of ourselves and know who we are today, in this season of life. As we know ourselves better, we can in turn develop healthier relationships with others. We are empowered to know what is and is not good for us in this stage of life, and we can recognize if and when a relationship is no longer healthy or if we need to set additional boundaries. By knowing ourselves, we are empowered to make ourselves a priority and build valuable relationships that pour into who we are instead of draining us.
Self-sabotaging behavior is when we get in our own way. Language is a big part of this: talking down to ourselves and convincing ourselves that we are unworthy, not enough, or disappointing. This is what makes practicing mindfulness difficult. When you sit with yourself, you must acknowledge the feelings and emotions that are arising—the hurt, the pain, the disappointment, how you may have disappointed yourself or others, pain inflicted on you by others or yourself. Mindfulness means sitting with all of that. When we do, we can correct the self-sabotaging language we may berate ourselves with during the day. Mindfulness is the chance to give ourselves respect, love, and compassion. Forgiving all those things we don’t like to see about ourselves allows us to regard ourselves in a higher light, and to radiate that light and confidence.
The hustle and bustle of grind culture can leave us untethered. When we pull away from the “busyness” of the world and sit with ourselves, we have the opportunity to become more centered and grounded. Picture an old oak tree that has stood for hundreds of years: It does not get uprooted in a storm. It may lose a branch or two, but it remains standing tall, rooted.
Practicing mindfulness allows our roots to grow as we become surer of ourselves and of our needs.
Practicing mindfulness allows our roots to grow as we become surer of ourselves and of our needs. Getting in touch with those deep roots of who we are, what we want, and what we hope our future will look like makes us an unshakeable force. We can make rational decisions that we might have otherwise waffled on, because we know what we need. Rationale gives us a firm foundation, a core purpose, and a sense of groundedness in who you are that you can make decisions from.
Mindfulness is physical and embodied. Just as racial trauma negatively impacts mental and emotional health for BIWOC, our physical health suffers as a byproduct. Capitalistic culture, too, encourages us to work hard and keep pushing. When we never stop to rest, we become sick. Grinding away, especially when it’s almost always in service of someone else’s goals, is stressful and hard on our emotions and body.
When we practice mindfulness, we grow to see how our emotional and physical well-being are tied together. As a whole person, you must take care of all of the parts of you. This means knowing ways we can move our bodies and eat nourishing foods that increase our strength. These are powerful acts of self-compassion! If we can fall in love with ourselves, we will make ourselves a priority, and that is good for our emotional and physical health.
The world demands we sacrifice and hustle, that we put everyone else first. To prioritize our own selves as BIWOC not only builds our confidence and health, it subverts and recalibrates society’s racist expectations of how we handle ourselves. Rest is resistance, and mindfulness is the key to thriving.
Law professor and author Rhonda Magee offers a 9-minute guided meditation to remain grounded as reactivity arises. Read More 
The ground beneath your feet may be shifting, but mindfulness can help you return to what is true: Your breath. This moment. Your heart. Let your practice be your guide. Read More
Yoga and meditation teacher, speaker, and author Leslie Booker offers a practice to check in with your body, breath, and heart. Read More
The post 5 Benefits of Mindfulness for Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color appeared first on Mindful.
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Helpful Notes:
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Thank you for your interest in working with Mindful.
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There’s a number of mindfulness-based strategies that can help settle us when fear is really strong. And the practices can be combined or sequenced in any way that you find effective.
It’s ideal to develop a familiarity and skill with these strategies when you’re not feeling strong fear so that they’re available to you when they’re most needed. So let’s start with a short mindfulness practice that helps bring us here into our body, in this moment.
1. Finding a comfortable posture with both feet on the floor, allow the eyes to gently close. Or, lower your gaze.
2. Now bring attention to the areas of contact that your feet have with the floor. Feel into your feet, noticing the solidity of the ground under them. Maybe feeling where your shoes are in contact with your feet.
3. And now moving on to the thighs and where the body meets the chair. Notice where there is contact with the chair, just allowing the ground and the chair to hold and support your body without you needing to do anything.
4. Then, move your attention to your back. Where does your back touch the chair? Can you feel the difference between where there is contact and where there is none?
5. And now moving your attention to your hands, feeling into your hands. Maybe noticing what they’re touching. Perhaps the chair, your thighs, the other hand. You can ask yourself, How do I know that I have hands without looking at them? You just know, right? We can feel the hands from within.
6. Now open your awareness. Feel your entire body sitting here in this moment on this chair.
Where do I feel my breath the most? Where are the sensations of the breath most pleasant? At the nose where the air comes in at the back of the throat? In the chest? Or, maybe the belly?
7. For a few moments, bring your attention to the breath. If you’d like, you can make the next couple of breaths a little bit deeper, so you can really feel the breath. And ask yourself, Where do I feel my breath the most? Where are the sensations of the breath most pleasant? At the nose where the air comes in at the back of the throat? In the chest? Or, maybe the belly? And using that place—the place where you feel it the most—as an anchor for your attention.
This is where you can come back over and over. Whenever the mind wanders off, when you’re experiencing a strong sense of fear, come back to your breath or repeat the words ground, breathe, settle, soothe.
7. Now let the breath just breathe itself. No need to make it any other way than what it wants to be. When you notice your attention is somewhere else, gently bring it back to the breath.
8. Whenever you’re ready, let your eyes open or lift your gaze. Notice how you’re feeling right now—there’s no particular way you should feel.
This is a grounding practice that you can come back to throughout your day. When you find yourself caught up in feelings of anxiety or fear, you can use simple words to remind yourself to come back to the breath. Ground, breathe, settle, soothe
This practice is brought to you by Calmer Choice, one of Mindful’s charitable partners for Mindful30—a 30-day online program that sends insights and guided practices straight to your inbox.
Loving-kindness expert Sharon Salzberg guides an 8-minute meditation for wishing everyone around us well—including ourselves. Read More
Yoga and meditation teacher, speaker, and author Leslie Booker offers a practice to check in with your body, breath, and heart. Read More
This classic loving-kindness meditation can help you to awaken to how connected we all are. You don’t have to like everybody, or agree with everything they do—but you can open up to the possibility of caring for them, because our lives are inextricably linked. Read More
The post 10-Minute Meditation to Ground, Breathe, Soothe appeared first on Mindful.
When stressed, we often react with looping fear-thoughts, feelings and behaviors that cause harm to ourselves and/or others. This talk offers three interrelated strategies that can serve us when we’re triggered by stress, and help us find our way back to our natural wisdom, empathy and wholeness of being. By de-conditioning habitual reactivity, we are increasingly able to respond to our life circumstances in ways that serve healing and awakening.
Three teachings:
“Please don’t believe your thoughts!”
“Please just pause and come back into presence!
“Please remember love!” …
Never under-estimate the power of your caring. With one small gesture you can change a person’s life. …
May we each discover this pathway of homecoming in a way that really allows us to trust our natural being. And may we live our days from this presence, from this loving.
Please enjoy this remastered audio and video version of one of Tara’s most popular talks, originally published on 09/02/2015.
The post Learning to Respond, Not React (redux) appeared first on Tara Brach.
Loving-kindness is a practice and technique where the central object we rest our attention on is the silent repetition of certain phrases. And the phrases are a way of offering, gift giving, and switching our attention. So for example, if we normally think about the mistakes we’ve made, what we did wrong, and when we failed, we’re going to switch our attention and just wish ourselves well.
You may use the phrases: May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live my life with ease.
Many people ask me, “Well, who am I asking?” We’re not asking anybody, we’re offering. We’re gift giving. And then we wish others well. It may be people who’ve helped us, who we take for granted, tend to overlook, or people we don’t really know. There are many phases and stages of the practice, but we’ll begin with the offering of loving-kindness to ourselves. We’ll end with the offering of loving-kindness to all people everywhere.
1. To begin, you can sit comfortably. Many of you may have your own loving-kindness practice, and it’s fine just to continue on. Common phrases you would repeat are things like, May I be safe, be happy, be healthy, and live with ease. Live with ease means: May the things in day-to-day life not be a struggle.
2. May I be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. You can silently repeat these phrases or whatever phrases you’ve chosen. Gather all of your attention behind one phrase at a time. You don’t have to try to force a special feeling, the power of the practice is in that gathering. And when your attention wanders—because it will—don’t worry about it. See if you can gently let go and just return your attention to the phrases.
3. Then, see if you can call to mind someone who’s helped you. Maybe they’ve helped you directly and helped pick you up when you had fallen down. Maybe you’ve never met them, and they’ve inspired you from afar. So if someone like that comes to mind, you can bring them here. An adult, a child, a pet, whoever it might be, see if you can visualize an image of them, or say their name to yourself. Get a feeling for their presence and offer the phrases of loving-kindness to them. May you be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. Even if the words don’t seem perfect. It’s fine. It’s the conduit for the heart’s energy.
Gather all of your attention behind one phrase at a time. You don’t have to try to force a special feeling, the power of the practice is in that gathering.
4. Now let’s have a gathering. Just with whoever comes to mind: friends, family, colleagues, pets. And offer loving-kindness to the group, to the collective. May you be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease.
5. Then, shift your attention to all beings everywhere, all people, all creatures, all those in existence, near and far, known and unknown. May all people be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease.
This practice was led during our first Mindful Live session with Sharon Salzberg and Barry Boyce. Watch the full session for a limited time here.
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The post Guided Meditation: Offering Loving-Kindness to Yourself and Others appeared first on Mindful.
Chicago, July 30, 2020 – At a time when mindfulness is more valuable and sought after than ever before, two leading organizations are merging to create better access to the most comprehensive and impactful content regarding self-actuated mental health.
The new company, Mindful Communications, is formed from the merger of the media enterprise that includes Mindful Magazine and mindful.org, with LifeXT, a leading corporate-training organization. The merger creates the largest and most comprehensive enterprise in the field with more than 9,000 pieces of content, state of the art technology and a monthly audience of more than 2 million individuals. Mindful Communications offers relevant courses, corporate training, consumer media, licensed content, business media, events, and directories.
Abundant Venture Partners co-founder Eric Langshur, a lead investor in the new company, said, “Now more than ever, people are seeking the benefits of mindfulness – equanimity, compassion and self-actuated mental health. In this merger, we see the opportunity to dramatically expand the availability of effective tools supported by scientific evidence. Mindful and LifeXT represent the highest standards in the field with a great team of long-time practitioners of meditation and mindfulness. We intend to make these assets available to billions of people around the world in the places where they live and work.”
Former Mindful CEO Bryan Welch will continue as CEO of Mindful Communications and LifeXT CEO Brenda Jacobsen joins Mindful as President.
For more information contact Bryan Welch at bryan@mindful.org (785-249-0609) or Brenda Jacobsen at brenda@mindful.org
The post Merger of Mindful and LifeXT Creates World’s Largest Mindfulness Training and Media Company appeared first on Mindful.
