Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i Mindful

I love watching bird murmurations move across open fields in rural Pennsylvania where I live. Starlings flying independently as one organism, stretching away from each other and then pulling back together. Each bird responsible for finding its way as part of the whole. As I write to you from my kitchen, there’s a war displacing millions of people on the other side of the world. Temperatures in Antarctica are 70 degrees higher than normal. Millions of people are rejecting toxicity in the workplace and leaving their jobs. Social issues continue to divide us. I often get letters from readers asking how they’re supposed to show up right now. What can they do? I have no answers, of course. What I can offer is that it’s helpful to drop in and…

1 NOTICE WHAT’S PRESENT We can commit to developing awareness of emotions in the body through the regular practice of mindfulness of emotions and body sensations. 2 EXPAND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE We can work to improve our emotional literacy—our own vocabulary of feelings that can adequately describe our inner experience. This takes practice and may require help from others. 3 RESPOND WITH INTENTION We can become an active agent in choosing our emotional reactions to everyday events. We can also cultivate nurturing and self-sustaining positive feelings—including optimism, gratitude, and empathy—and commit to practicing the skills of navigating challenging emotions with a sense of curiosity and self-compassion.…

When I woke up on the morning of September 28, 2011, I had no idea that this would be my wedding day. John had been invited to a MacArthur Foundation event in Paris, an international mind-meld of twelve academics from different fields who all had something to contribute to the study of aging. The group included some of the world’s top public-health experts and psychologists—among them my fiancé, John Cacioppo, one of the founders of social neuroscience, most famous for his pioneering work revealing the mentally and physically damaging effects of loneliness. John was invited to discuss, among other things, how the elderly could protect themselves against the dangers of loneliness. At the time, he and I were several months into our long-distance love story and getting good at juggling…

The average American spent 4.2 hours per day using mobile devices alone, plus another three hours per day watching TV, according to data collected between 2019 and 2021. Meanwhile, as of 2019, nearly half of the US population didn’t take part in outdoor activities even once that year. This disengagement from the natural world is associated with increased rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, among other problems. At the same time, interest is growing in the ways nature can restore our health and well-being. Research has shown that nature can improve vision, memory, and concentration; restore mental energy; relieve stress; reduce inflammation; sharpen thinking; and expand creativity. Returning to nature can help us experience ourselves and others more deeply and enjoy renewed feelings of health and wholeness. Florence Williams,…

EXPANSIVE LEADERSHIP Cultivating Mindfulness to Lead Self and Others in a Changing World Latha Poonamallee, PhD • Routledge We live in a world that’s diverse, complex, and constantly changing, and with all those changes comes a call to shift our leadership styles. Expansive leadership, as Dr. Latha Poonamallee explains, “is an invitation to explore how to be a leader in an expansive, inclusive, robust, and resilient way.” As Chair of Faculty of Management and University Fellow at the New School in New York City, Poonamallee can help leaders usher in this new era of change with kindness, self-reflection, curiosity, and mindfulness. While there are a lot of leadership books out today, Poonamallee successfully uses various guides and exercises to differentiate hers from the rest. This 28-day journey, filled with daily…

By reading Mindful and sharing it with others, you’re helping to bring mindfulness practices into the world where the benefits can be enjoyed by all. Thank you! Print magazine & special topic publications 30 Day Mindfulness Challenge FREE! Guided meditations & podcasts Mindfulness video courses Visit online at mindful.org Get More Mindful…

GUITAR HERO A Colorado teen named Fallon, who has Williams Syndrome and a deep love of music, often visited J.B. Hart Music Co. to play guitar. So when an anonymous stranger gifted Fallon his dream guitar, it’s no surprise he smiled from ear-to-ear—a sweet moment caught on camera that’s now captured the hearts of thousands who’ve seen it on the music store’s Facebook page. GOOD DOG When Alfie Kitson’s terrier Millie made national news dropping litter in trash bins in Hereford, England, the dog unknowingly performed another good deed by reconnecting her owner with his siblings. Kitson’s sister, who he’d lost touch with 20 years ago, saw his name in the news. She and their brother were then able to find him and reunite after years apart. SLICE OF LIFE…

We can work on every system to be more at ease and balanced. “Breathe Together. Heal Together. Grow Together.” These words aren’t just the slogan of an organization—for Jasmine Marie, founder of Black Girls Breathing, they are an invitation to a community she is committed to serving. “Black women needed a space to heal the trauma that’s trapped in their body; trauma is held,” Marie says. “That can be scary when you really learn more about how trauma impacts our daily lives. But the good thing is that we can undo that. We can work on every system to be more at ease and balanced.” With a pledge to reach one million Black women and girls by 2025, Black Girls Breathing has been a space for Black women to connect through…

“Look at all these beautiful bodies,” the instructor shouted over the music. The beat of the song made my whole body vibrate as the bass swelled in a rhythmic crescendo. I concentrated on the instructor’s movements, mimicking the flawlessly choreographed blend of international dance. All around me, bodies gyrated, a wave of arms swinging in unison, and joyful shouts echoing off the gym walls. I swallowed hard, blinking away tears. It felt as though I was giving my body a chance to catch up to the sadness I’d been suppressing throughout the pandemic. I had recently dusted off my gym membership after the worst of the lockdowns, and it was my first in-person Zumba class in almost two years. I had forgotten what it was like to dance in rhythm…

When you’re feeling shaky and finding it hard to remember how gorgeous you are, take a few moments to settle into the mountain practice. Explore it as a way to find ease and comfort as you settle into the earthy grounding joy of being you, exactly as you are. Your eyes can be open or closed. You can do the mountain practice sitting, standing, or lying down. 1 Begin by breathing naturally, in and out through the nose. After several breaths, bring your attention to the body you’re in today.2 Notice your feet touching the ground, your thighs pressed into the chair, and your buttocks weighted by gravity. Bring your attention to your lower back, your middle back, your beautiful belly, and your chest and shoulders. Feel the slope of…

My friend shared the story in hushed tones during a late-night run. Her friend had discovered that her husband was cheating and that he’d taken the other woman to a hotel room in another town. My friend’s friend got into her vehicle, drove three hours to this town, then staked out the hotel. This woman had only a hazy notion of what she would do if she saw her husband and his paramour. Luckily she never saw them. She probably would have worried anyway. After some cold cramped hours in her car, she began to calm down and drove back home. “What was I thinking?” she’d asked my friend. “What was she thinking?” my friend asked me. Sometimes our behavior surprises even ourselves. It has happened to me. It has…

Mindfulness is essentially a deep-listening practice that cultivates a profound quality of receptivity. Listening is a beautiful doorway to the present moment, a tuning in to what’s here. With listening practice, we develop the qualities of receptivity, relaxation, and a sense of naturalness. We don’t need to make much effort to hear anything. A sound arises and is known quite easily and naturally in awareness. So, with this particular meditation, the intention is to cultivate a sense of ease, receptivity, openness, and where we allow the sounds to be the locus for our attention, simply present to the ebb and flow in the soundscape. Find a place outside where you can sit comfortably, relaxed, safe, and at ease. I suggest you sit with your eyes closed, or if that’s not…

MINDSET MASTERY Episode: “How Mindfulness and Self Reflection Can Change the World with Saundra Davis” Money is seldom the meaningful aspect of financial goals, says podcast guest Saundra Davis, a financial coach and mindfulness teacher. It’s about what the money can buy, and for many it adds up to peace of mind, freedom, or legacy. Her refreshing perspective takes into account the deeply emotional nature of financial planning, and therefore, the responsibility of financial coaches like herself—and not only for people who are wealthy. She offers a can-did account of her personal experience with poverty and her journey into the world of finance. “Just because you’re broke doesn’t mean you’re broken,” Davis says. – AWC WILD WITH SARAH WILSON Episode: “Johann Hari: THIS is why you’re finding the world too…

3 PRACTICES TO HELP YOU FIND STRENGTH IN SELF-COMPASSION 1 Open Your Heart with Sharon Salzberg We tend to show more compassion to others than to ourselves. While it can be easier for us to lend a shoulder or a kind word to a friend, it can be a lot harder to open ourselves up to receiving the same. In this guided meditation, Sharon Salzberg invites us to open our hearts to giving and receiving love and reminds us that there’s nothing special we must do to deserve love—the fact that we simply exist is more than enough. 2 Try a Self-Compassion Break with Kristin Neff and Chris Germer As much as the good moments are a part of life, so too are the difficult ones—and self-compassion can allow us…

CALM KIDS Taking just a few slow, deep breaths can help calm young children, according to researchers at Stanford University. They randomly assigned 342 young children to either a breath training or a control group. The breath training group watched a one-minute animated video teaching them how to slowly inhale by pretending to smell a flower, and exhale by pretending to blow out a candle. The control group watched a video with similar animated images but no breathing exercise. Children’s physiological stress was measured using two biomarkers: heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). RSA is the changing pace of the heartbeat when a person inhales and exhales. Higher levels of RSA are linked to increased stress resilience. The study found that even one minute of deep breathing can help…

Feeling Healing Neuroscientist, mindfulness teacher, and founder of the “Science of Social Justice” framework, Dr. Sará King recently launched her third project with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, titled, “Art and Awareness as a Catalyst for Collective Healing.” This installation pairs artwork with soundscapes to explore how increased awareness of ourselves, our environment, society, and culture can help heal intergenerational trauma. “There’s something so visceral about standing in front of a gigantic painting and bearing witness to the emotions and other sensations that arise within the soma,” King says. Paging Dr. Wonder Art and science are both rooted in a sense of wonder and desire to understand the world—this is the foundational principle of ArtMed inSight, a consulting organization founded by artist Anne Willieme that brings the…

Women are particularly vulnerable to the experience of burnout because of higher rates of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and gender-based social discrimination, and for some groups, racial trauma. All of this underscores the importance of (re)learning to feel freedom and joy in our bodies. One example: Jenée Johnson facilitates the Femme! dance program, created by author and entrepreneur Bernadette Pleasant. The class is designed for women to reclaim their feminine power in the way they walk through the world. Participants start with gentle grounding and awakening exercises, followed by an “emotional tour” through a range of human feelings—joy, rage, sensuality—and end with time for reflection and meditation. Choreographed and free dance movements are set to drumming that matches the pulse of the human heartbeat, grounding women in the ancient wisdom of…

For millennia the heart has been portrayed as the seat of our emotions. While this imagery has been popularized in art and literature, modern neuroscience and cardiovascular research have only recently begun to explore the connection between human emotions and physical health. Over time, our hearts are literally shaped by our emotions and moods. Just as we now know we can rewire our brain’s connections using specific practices (a process known as neuroplasticity), the structure and function of the heart may undergo changes in response to our emotions: one form of a process known as cardiac plasticity. Balanced Mind, Strong Heart Difficult emotions are shown to risk harming the physical heart. For example, a 2014 meta-analysis of 30 prospective studies (40 independent reports), with 893,850 participants and follow-ups ranging from…

Sometimes when a painful emotion comes up, we layer shame and blame on what’s already difficult. For example, we may think to ourselves, “I should be able to do my job better.” We also tend to project into the future and worry about what the pain may feel like tonight, next week, or next year. When we do this, we’re not only facing the pain of present difficulty, but the anticipation of pain, which is actually in our imagination. The first thing we can do to cultivate our resources for managing difficult emotions is allow ourselves to feel the emotion, shift our attention to noticing the sensations present in our body, and forgive ourselves for what we feel. We’re human beings, and feeling this way is natural. 1 Sit comfortably and…

We live on an enchanting planet, this beautiful Earth. You could say we’re here because of love—because of the benevolence that comes from nature and the abundance of this Earth. For many of us, one of the easiest places our heart is touched and opened, where we feel a sense of connection, kinship, and love is in nature. Whether by looking up at the night sky, seeing a bird fly by our window, or when we’re more deeply immersed in the woods or walking by the ocean—wherever we may find ourselves in a natural setting, it is easy for the heart to bloom. MOVING BEYOND OUR SENSE OF SELF And so with loving-kindness practice, what’s most helpful is to find the most supportive place or environment that allows you to…

Let the planets be your guide to reestablish trust in your own body and inner wisdom. Nutritionist, certified strength and conditioning specialist, and astrologer Claire Gallagher guides you in the healing powers of each planet and how to use food, movement, and lifestyle to realign and empower. Practical advice and tools to help parents of kids ages 18 months to 4 years respond skillfully and with mindful intention, especially in difficult moments, from the popular author of Sitting Still Like a Frog. Stay calm, steady, and composed through the ups and downs of life with yoga poses, relaxation techniques, meditations, and lessons on how to manage stress, grief, anxiety, and life’s transitions. From the bestselling author of How to Be an Adult in Relationships, the definitive guide to finding your…

It can be quite a sobering thought should you come to realize, as I have recently, that what you thought of as an aberration is actually a habit. The part of you that works hard to maintain self-esteem can sometimes get carried away: “I don’t do that very often. That’s not me. That’s not who I am.” When you begin to realize that, hey, maybe that is who I am, because I do that kind of a lot, the dastardly inner critic—the evil counterpart to rose-colored-glasses man—can run roughshod over you, reducing you to an inert lump with its withering words. Fortunately, there is a middle way, as proponents of self-compassion readily point out. For starters, you can laugh at yourself, heartily. Then, give yourself a break. Breathe. Pick yourself…