Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i Mindful

Are you more susceptible to sadness in the day or at night? 53% DAY 47% NIGHT How do you react to sadness? In order of most to least common: • Lethargy – 60% • Crying – 53% • Hopelessness – 50% • Grumpiness – 36% • Body tenses up – 31% • Loss of appetite – 17% • Uncontrollable laughter – 15% • Stomachache – 12%  Do you ever feel sad for no reason? 50% SAY THEY RARELY FEEL SAD for no reason, and 39% feel inexplicable sadness somewhat often. 8% say they are never sad for no reason, while 3% are all the time. Do you believe life is inherently sad? 29% YES  71% NO What’s one thing you won’t do because it makes you too sad? 23% SAY…

Researchers took 60 trips on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney World in Florida, and came to the clear conclusion that the sharp turns and quick drops, at speeds up to 35 miles per hour, help pass kidney stones. MIT researchers have turned spinach into a bomb detector. Yes, you read that right. Sensors embedded in the plant’s leaves can detect in groundwater chemicals used in explosives, and relay information to a special mobile camera. While working with the homeless in St. Louis, Jake Austin learned that a hot shower can make you feel like a new person. So he has retrofitted an old truck with two shower stalls and a generator to heat water, and hooks it up to fire hydrants around the city so the homeless can…

Several years ago, my marriage came to an end. We had been together for 25 years, most of my adult life. On top of all the unpleasant practical matters that you have to deal with during a divorce (custody, money, property, divvying up mementos), I faced a storm of challenging emotions. Indignation and anger were the faces I wore to the outside world (the frustration, fear, and self-righteousness I kept better hidden). These feelings would arise and fall away like the weather, sometimes in great gusts, other times sticking around for days on end, and in patterns I could rarely predict. Yet there was always a steady undercurrent of sadness—over the loss of the dreams for that marriage, and simply for the fact that I had wished, deeply wished, for…

You might be wondering: Don’t totalitarian dictators and bullies successfully wield power for long periods of time and do a lot of damage? How does that line up with this notion of survival of the kindest? It’s true: The coercive, bullying, Machiavellian style can lead to gains in power. Although studies show that bullies are not respected by their peers, are often isolated, and don’t have much sustained influence, the sixth-grade bully can get a lot of attention and influence others, just as the Machiavellian who rises to corporate or political power can makelives difficult and do much harm while they retain power. There are certain contexts, historical periods, and political moments where Machiavellianism and fear-mongering seems to work particularly well. Research I’ve been doing recently suggests that when people…

Take a Field Trip Gather friends who also practice for a weekly or monthly “fieldtrip” to a peaceful destination. Think: a park, a sculpture garden, library community space, or even a vacant room at a local yoga studio. Get creative! A local café may have a room you could reserve for an hour, and then hang out over tea and coffee afterward. Spruce Up Your Space Jazz up your home meditation space to feel fresh and new. Don’t forget a comfy cushion or a nice chair, good lighting, and a cozy throw to keep off the chill. Try Something New Download a new guided practice or meditation app each week to mix things up. See What’s Out There Many community centers offer meditation classes. Check out the local offerings, and…

barry@mindful.org Our must-read story this issue: “A Time to Be Sad” shows us why we need sadness in our lives, and how our darkest emotion can connect us to our innermost selves. On page 44. “We are not enemies, but friends…Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection,” Abraham Lincoln said. “The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” When he spoke these words in his first inaugural, Lincoln was stunningly optimistic. He assumed office with only 40% of the vote after an election that saw him ridiculed as much as admired. Only weeks before, he had to sneak into Washington to skirt an assassination plot. Within weeks, an immensely bloody…

Clinical psychologist Eric López Maya discovered meditation in the wake of a devastating loss during college. Since then, the postdoctoral scholar at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center has been working to share mindfulness-based interventions adapted for Spanish-speaking audiences, founding the Mexican Institute for Mindfulness (MIM) to advance his mission. Why did you start meditating? It was around 1999, in college. My father became ill and died within a year. It was a huge blow, and I explored different alternatives to alleviate my suffering. Somehow I discovered a book on Buddhist meditation. I read a couple of paragraphs and did a simple meditation exercise, and that was it: Something clicked inside me. Those first practices gave me the possibility of having a silent mind for a little bit, of quieting the…

1 It can improve your memory On rainy, unpleasant days that produce a blue mood, people have a much better recollection of details of objects. On bright, sunny days when people feel happy, their memory is far less accurate. It seems positive mood impairs, and negative mood improves attention and memory for incidental details in our environment. 2 It improves your judgment People are more likely to make social misjudgments due to biases when they’re happy. But sad moods reduce common judgmental biases, such as attributing intentionality to others’ behavior while ignoring situational factors, and assuming that a person having some positive feature—such as a handsome face—is likely to have others, such as kindness or intelligence. 3 It’s motivating Happiness signals to us that we are in a safe, familiar…

1 Empathy Ask a great question or two in every interaction, and paraphrase important points that others make. Listen with gusto. Orient your body and eyes toward the person speaking and convey interest and engagement vocally. When someone comes to you with a problem, signal concern with phrases such as “I’m sorry” and “That’s really tough.” Avoid rushing to judgment and advice. Before meetings, take a moment to think about the person you’ll be with and what is happening in his or her life. 2 Gratitude Make thoughtful thank-you’s a part of how you communicate with others. Send colleagues specific and timely emails or notes of appreciation for jobs done well. Publicly acknowledge the value that each person contributes to your team, including the support staff. Use the right kind…

Dacher Keltner cofounded the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley in 2001 as a means to foster science that could demonstrate the value of prosocial behavior: doing things for the common good. He laid down his core principles in his groundbreaking 2008 book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. At what point did the conviction that we are “born to be good” emerge for you? In the late 1980s, in psychology classes we started with the Darwinian basic assumption: the human nervous system is designed as a competitive, purely self-interested, gratification machine. But I would ask, why do I cheer up when someone acts on someone else’s behalf? As I looked into it, I came to find that Darwin had been misrepresented by the evolutionary…

Find the right spot Pick a place that suits the needs of your prospective clients. In Santa Monica, Suze Yalof Schwartz made sure there was ample parking. MNDFL is near several subway lines. Tal Rabinowitz wanted lots of foot traffic, so she chose a location near a popular café and yoga studio. Mind the lessons It’s crucial to have staff who are steeped in meditation and have a high level of expertise. “You want to make sure your teachers are extremely well trained and know how to teach in a really accessible way,” says MNDFL’s Lodro Rinzler. Keep listening Place a suggestion box by the front desk and take what your clients have to say to heart. All three studios have tweaked timing and class selection based on feedback. After…

research cited here posits the existence of accurate memories that come to light when triggered by subsequent, and somehow related, events. The biggest news about how malleable memory can be emerged in the early ’80s, when a group of therapeutic practices that fall under the category of Recovered Memory Therapy gained popularity. They use hypnosis, sedatives, and dialogue to uncover “repressed memories,” usually of sexual abuse or satanic ritual. Research cited in a series of successful lawsuits in the early ’90s discredited these techniques. Professional standards now proscribe their use, and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation exists to support people whose lives are potentially disrupted by the planting of false, traumatic memories in therapeutic settings.…

There is a bit of a cliché that “If you feel it, you can heal it.” Thoughts are fast moving, elusive, and hard to pin down. Sensations, though, are different. They are ponderous and slow moving, which means we can target them with our attention and tend to them with kindness and compassion. Locating the arising of sadness in the body (it is different in everyone) gives us a kind of steady place to direct our kind attention and begin to alter our relationship with sadness. Follow this sequence. 1 Ask yourself: How does sadness actually feel in my body? This makes it less of an abstract concept or purely mental event and more of an all-body-and-mind experience. 2 See if you can locate a place where sadness is most…

High Greater Good Score ENTHUSIASM Reach out to others KINDNESS Cooperate, share, give FOCUS Focus on shared goals, rules CALMNESS Instill calm, perspective OPENNESS Be open to others’ ideas and feelings Low Greater Good Score AVOIDANCE Avoid social contact EXPLOITATION Exploit others for own gain NEGLECT Neglect shared goals, rules DEFENSIVENESS Complain, be defensive CLOSED-MINDEDNESS Disregard others’ ideas…

MINDFUL ECONOMICS How the US Economy Works, Why It Matters, and How it Could Be Different Joel Magnuson • Seven Stories Like so many elections, the 2016 national election in the United States was heavily influenced by citizens’ perceptions of their own prosperity and their prospects for the future. To measure how well we’re doing and what we can expect in the future, we’re asked to turn to economics, but economics is known as the dismal science for good reason. Most of us avoid it like the plague. Part of the problem is that economics has come to be defined as purely about money and mathematics. Yet, in the original sense of the word, in Greek, it referred to ordering of the household. And the household was understood to be…