Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2022 i Mindful

Every now and then, and less often than appropriate, I realize how grateful I am to help produce this beautiful magazine. I’ve been on a healing journey most of my life. It’s been messy. And clarifying. And hard. I joke with my friends that I make the magazine that I need to read at the moment, but that’s not far from the truth. It’s my privilege to humbly call in a community of big, wise hearts—who are out there in the world, illuminating the edges of where the practice of mindfulness meets the sharp points of broken systems and battered spirits—and ask them questions about what they’re learning right now, so we can all learn it, too. As the founders of the Holistic Life Foundation say on page 41, “Learning…

Q I’ve been feeling a little world-weary and tired, and I’m looking for a way to restore. How can my mindfulness practice support me right now? A The simple practice of pausing and resting in awareness can bring about a great sense of restoration and renewal. Take a few moments to feel what it means to be alive in your body right now. Notice your body and ask yourself: How is my body expressing its aliveness in this moment? Here’s a simple practice: Allow your attention to lightly rest on the sensations of your body touching whatever is supporting it. Maybe it’s the floor, a cushion, a bed, or a couch. Feel your body being supported by whatever is under you. This is my body resting, supported by what’s under me at…

Ropeless fishing gear can help protect right whales and other endangered species, and make fisheries more sustainable. While the technology is costly, a new lending program in Nova Scotia allows fish harvesters to test out the gear. In just three months, according to the Canadian Wildlife Federation, over 800 buoylines have been replaced. There isn’t much LGBTQ+ visibility in his rural Texas town, so Marz Gamez is taking action to build community. With a grant from the It Gets Better Project, the 14-year-old is creating a queer youth conference in Mission, TX, to provide a safe, supportive space and to encourage more inclusive schools. Ever heard of Linda Skeens? Tiktok raved over her 25 awards for cooking, baking, and crafts at Virginia-Kentucky District Fair this summer. With a stunning 450…

“Know thyself,” was the advice inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The Tao Te Ching insisted that knowing others is intelligence, while knowing oneself is true wisdom. “To thine own self be true,” Shakespeare urged. Pithy advice. Good advice. Advice that spans centuries and civilizations. But…how exactly do we do that? University of Nevada psychology professor Russell Hurlburt thought a good start was paying attention to the thoughts in our head. Not the eureka! thoughts, necessarily, but the mundane. The “What should I make for dinner tonight?” thoughts. The “That’s a pretty shade of blue” thoughts. The self-reproaching “That was a dumb thing to say” thoughts or the self-encouraging “You can do this” thoughts. The thoughts that, in meditation, we’re taught to label as “thinking.” The thoughts that…

On a busy road in a neighborhood in the city where I live, there was a garage door I used to give the finger to every time I passed by. It was a pretty regular garage door in every way, except that stenciled on it, in two-foot-high letters, were the words be grateful. Nothing got my back up like that garage door. “What on earth are you doing,” my husband asked, the first time I broke out of our conversation to flip a door the bird. “That garage door doesn’t get to tell me how to be,” I groused. “It’s so sanctimonious. It makes me sick.” I continued to give the door the middle finger as we passed by. “It’s only asking you to be grateful,” he said, shaking his…

Give yourself permission to be outside. Go into nature without an agenda or expectations, just to be with it and move with it. If you are struggling with stress, anxiety, depression, or sluggishness, moving outside can ignite an internal shift. Movement doesn't have to be exercise: When you move with the intention of exercise, you quickly enter a state of doing. Mindful movement is free-flowing and allows you to enter a state of being. Try this simple practice when you're out in nature: Breathe and pay attention. Bring all the attention to your breath, its rhythm, its ability to inspire a reset with each inhale and exhale. Notice the air you are breathing in, the smells, the temperature, the freshness. Let each inhale be an opportunity to connect you deeper…

The phrase “A healthy dose of cynicism” implies that there are good reasons to maintain a level of hostility toward the world. Those who argue for cynicism make the point that distrust can be an effective defense against manipulation. Three years into a pandemic, many people would agree that cynicism has been a useful tool in dealing with the flood of misinformation about COVID-19. However, there is a difference between a transitory sense of distrust (the “red flag” that alerts us when something doesn’t feel right) and the scientific definition of cynicism. Research considers cynicism to be a worldview, made up of a set of beliefs about human nature and people’s motivations—namely, that other people can’t be trusted and everyone is out for themselves. CYNICAL CONDITION This kind of Oscar…

1 Go for a walk or sit in your favorite seat at home. 2 Observe your surroundings. Notice the colors, the weather, the sounds. 3 Listen to your heart and sense what is happening within. 4 Without much thinking, in two sentences, pause and write down what is capturing your attention. 5 Then write a third sentence that is not as closely related to the first two sentences. 6 See if you can draw some surprising connection between the first two sentences and the the third. 7 Remember, try to really get clear on what insight or message you want to reveal to the reader. 8 If you’d like a challenge, rewrite the three sentences following the traditional haiku structure: three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.…

FINDING OUR WAY Episode: “Feeling Whole with Sonya Renee Taylor” Returning guest Sonya Renee Taylor joins host Prentis Hemphill to discuss what, to Hemphill, feels like the edge of something. The edge of a paradigm shift. While the pair toss what that means back and forth, the idea of practice becomes central to the conversation. “Systems don’t afford you the space to practice without drastic consequences,” Taylor says. For Black children that often means not being able to practice being an adult, Taylor notes; they aren’t given leeway to get it wrong and be forgiven. The solution, both agree, is complex. It requires breaking down systems, yes, but also infusing our actions, decisions, and reactions with grace. –KR RETHINKING WITH ADAM GRANT Episode: “Satya Nadella is building the future” To…

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 Mindful at Work • Well-being for modern workplaces Mindfulness video courses Visit online at mindful.org Get More Mindful…

SEW KIND In celebration of an Ontario quilt shop’s fifth birthday, quilters across Canada are sewing blankets for women transitioning out of homelessness. “Quilts symbolize warmth. They’re like a big hug,” Michaelanne Hathaway, owner of Stache Fabric & Notions, told CBC. The quilts will be given to the women as housewarming gifts. HEALING SPACE Late-stage colorectal cancer patient Aaron Banfield used some of his remaining time to turn an underused hospital chapel into a welcoming, neutral space that supports connection and mindfulness. “Anyone that has spent time in a hospital knows you get into a limbo-state,” he said. His hope for the space is that it will facilitate psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being for patients at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in British Columbia, where Banfield himself spent time. ON TRACK…

VOICES RISING • VIDYAMALA BURCH Vidyamala Burch was 25 when she first practiced mindfulness. Two years earlier, she had been in a car crash that caused the second spinal fracture she had experienced within 10 years. At 25, after a physical breakdown from pushing herself too hard, she was back in the hospital. “It was a total dark night of the soul,” she says. “I got obsessed with getting through until morning.” She told herself, “You just have to live this moment, and this one, and this one,” and moment by moment, she reached the morning. “I was one person before that and I’ve been another person since.” With no way to fix her spine or stop her pain, the physicians sent a hospital chaplain who led Burch in a meditation.…

By the end of my first year as president of Starcom MediaVest Group—a global advertising and media company—I’d traveled 500,000 miles while managing over 100 offices across the globe. I had also learned the staggering cost of excess stress. Just one example: I was grinding my teeth so badly at night that I needed six root canals. A problem for me, yes. But also a problem for those I was leading. It became clear to me then that when leaders are overwhelmed and depleted, we’re going to consume the energy of those around us. Effective leaders understand the importance of maintaining and sharing positive emotional energy. It sets the tone for workplace culture, motivates teams, and creates space for innovation. To achieve that, though, we have no choice but to…

The most radical acts of gratitude are also the simplest, but they connect us with the wonder and majesty of every moment. Try these three lovely ways to get your gratitude wagon rolling: • Say thank you! What do you notice about the effects of your genuine appreciation for what’s here? • Make a list. Journaling about what you appreciate strengthens cognitive awareness, and helps you notice what you might otherwise miss out on. • Rise and remember. Wake up every morning with the awareness that life is a gift. Be grateful, and notice how this simple act of gratitude sets the course for your mood and your day.…

Let’s start by taking three nice big breaths. Breathe in for a count of three and out for a count of five. Do you notice? You're alive. It’s actually kind of amazing. Can you bring your attention to the jaw-dropping wonder that is the human body? Let’s start with the toes, bringing attention to your feet touching the ground. You may be amazed by how many sensations there are to experience: tingling, pulsing, restlessness, hot, cool, moist, dry, ticklish, itchy, numb, neutral. What do you notice about paying attention to these small experiences? Is it possible that they could help you cultivate gratitude for this body that’s going to accompany you through your life? As you move up the legs, what do you feel? Whenever I feel anything uncomfortable, I notice…

To begin this gratitude practice, I'd like to start by considering one of the biggest obstacles to gratitude: resentment. We can dress up our resentment with a sophisticated storyline about how others—one, or many, or multitudes—are doing us wrong, but what it simply boils down to is being upset because we’re not getting what we want. The world is too complex and multifaceted for us to continually get our way. It’s good to aspire for the best for ourselves and others, while nonetheless remaining committed to the journey more than the satisfaction of achieving a fixed outcome. If everyone gets their way, we can't have a cooperative world. From time to time, we need to undercut our own perspective and see things from the other side—maybe even from all sides.…

For most of my life, I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with my brother. I loved him fiercely, and knew he felt the same, yet somehow our encounters were frequently followed by drama and misunderstandings. After a challenging conversation, I’d often pull out paper and pen and write my feelings down. Thoughts would swirl and emotions would spill out onto the page, my right hand sometimes aching from all that poured out of me. Airing my feelings through writing allows me to not only “blow off steam” when I feel sad, frustrated, or angry, but also to take pause and see, with a bit of distance, a clearer view of my experience. Why writing is so cathartic Mindful writing, also known as expressive writing, is a healing form of writing that…

SONOROUS DESERT What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks—and What it Can Teach Us Kim Haines-Eitzen • Princeton University Press Most of us likely think of deserts as barren with no redeeming value. Not so for Kim Haines-Eitzen, who finds a rich soundscape there that promotes solitude. That gift of solitude, she says, explains why some of the earliest contemplative practitioners, the Desert Fathers, sought refuge there. Haines-Eitzen grew up in the Middle East and, from an early age, was taken with the power of the desert, both the simplicity of its landscape and the “sound of desert silence.” When you sit quietly in a place with seemingly so little going on, you hear the sound of air and animal noises in a way that might escape notice when you’re…

Discover newfound freedom in life’s ever-changing flow of endings and beginnings with the wise words of Pema Chödrön, beloved Buddhist nun and bestselling author of When Things Fall Apart. Using the lens of ecopsychology, Returning the Self to Nature shows that the pervasive and extreme forms of narcissism we find in many modern societies are fundamentally the result of alienation from the natural world. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Gorgeously illustrated 52-card deck and guidebook with empowering archetypes of the sacred feminine to amplify your innate knowing and invigorate your potential. The feminine creates and transforms, adapts and abides, loves and consoles. Your own potential is reflected in her many faces. Experience the powerful, revitalizing, feminine “lunar” energy at the heart of Kundalini yoga practice, through this…

THE TEACHINGS – DR. FREDERICK LENZ “ A brilliant and wonderful distillation of Rama’s recorded talks.” –James F. Chiles, Software Systems Consultant This beautifully organized synthesis of Rama’s core teachings, with commentaries by long-time student Lawrence Borok, has just been published. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING American-born Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz practiced and taught a radical pathway to Enlightenment. He adapted the venerable Eastern practices of Tantric Buddhism to a modern-day Western setting. Larry Borok does a wonderful job of organizing and distilling Rama’s core teachings in a manner that preserves their original essence while retaining their nuance, depth, and humor. – Andrew Jurkevics, Director, The Adi Da Foundation I was especially drawn to feeling the subtle energies of the actual words of Rama that are presented in each chapter. Lawrence…

GET SMART Researchers at the University of Innsbruck in Austria wanted to study how different meditation styles would affect automatic behaviors. They randomly assigned 73 adults to one of four groups for internally focused meditation, externally focused meditation, open monitoring meditation, or a waitlist control group. All meditation group participants were asked to attend two sessions per week of roughly 30 minutes each for four weeks. The internal meditation group focused on sensations related to breathing. The external meditation group paid attention to a candle flame. The open monitoring group observed sensations that arose while meditating. Before and after the four-week interval, all participants completed two cognitive tasks testing their ability to pay attention and to select an appropriate response. In general, those in the meditation groups were more…

Blackfullness With the new app Blackfullness, founders Sonia Russell and David Walker aim to highlight the ways African Americans are already practicing mindfulness—though they may not call it or think of it as such. The app welcomes users into regular and customizable practice, where Black folks can experience the benefits of stress reduction and awareness. “ It’s the love we have for humanity that is really driving us,” Walker told The Root. Marco Polo In recent years, social media users have been surprised with reports about the collection and selling of their data by platforms like Facebook. Video-based social media app Marco Polo offers an alternative. “We do not run third-party ads because our community of Marco Polo members is our customers, and that’s who we work to support,” says…

Taking purposeful pauses can allow you to be more fully present, and that presence is felt by those around you. 1 Choose some activity you do every day—like walking to your desk or filling your water bottle. 2 Be present for the activity. Each day when you walk to your desk or fill your water bottle, make it a purposeful pause by staying focused on the activity—notice your feet striking the ground, the air on your skin, the colors of the walls, the people you pass, the sounds you hear. Notice them, but don’t get carried away by them. 3 Be kind to your wandering mind. Each time your mind tries to carry you into the future or the past, redirect your attention to the experience of walking to your desk…

Early in my recovery from addiction, I attended the wedding of an old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. I arrived at the event alone and was standing by the bar when an ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, who I had only met once before, approached me. She noticed I was sipping water, and it seemed to really bother her that I wasn’t indulging. She said hello, then immediately launched into, “Why aren’t you drinking tonight?” She didn’t know I was in recovery and I wasn’t comfortable sharing, so I just said I was good with water and that I liked her dress, thinking that would be the end of it. It wasn’t. Later we found ourselves in a group together, and she “jokingly” asked why I was being such a…

The belly breath is like a circuit breaker for a brain that is careening out of control and taking the kid (or adult) along for the ride. Belly breath can be a peaceful practice: getting you centered and your head straight for a day at work. Or it can be a lifesaving practice: overriding adolescent instincts that can take a kid from a bad situation to a terrible one. Either way, you need the belly breath in your practice, and so does your kid. Here’s a simple practice you can do by yourself, or with your child. If you’re doing this practice with a child, let the kid burn off some energy first, in the gym or on the playground. Figure out a way to release that restless energy that…

Mindfulness, gratitude, and self-compassion help free us from isolation. These practices open our minds, awaken our hearts, and deepen our sense of connection. We begin to realize that we are never just practicing for ourselves. Transforming ourselves creates echoes in the universe: As we heal ourselves, we heal each other and our world. As Arianna Huffington puts it, “Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace.” 1 Begin by settling the mind and body, taking a seat on a chair, on the floor, or wherever you can sit comfortably upright. Allow a soft smile to rest on your lips, not as a way to paper over how you are feeling, but simply to invite in rest and ease. 2 Bring your awareness to the simple sensations of…

In this practice, we will be connecting ideas and thoughts with bodily sensations. I'll walk you through all of it. Follow along and do what works for you. 1 Begin by choosing a posture that’s comfortable for you: standing, sitting, or lying down. Allow your gaze to be soft. Take a nice big inhale, and then exhale slowly. 2 Notice the length and strength of your body. Whatever posture you are in, just notice your feet all the way up to the top of your head. Bring to mind this idea of length, and also the idea of strength and pride. Feel yourself, standing tall or lengthening long, and connect with the sensation of your feet all the way up to the top of your head, so the entire length…

Life has so much to offer, if we’d only listen. The evening was young and my body tired from being in motion all day. There was an intrinsic quietness in the air, with gray skies above and an unceasing but very tender rainfall. I sat at my desk, looking out of my back window as I often do after a long day of reading or writing. The usual sounds of insects and animals on a late summer evening seemed to be very few. The candle flame to my left on my ancestor altar reminded me of the sacredness of resting, so I allowed myself a moment to just be. I enjoy cracking my window a little to listen to the rain with the coincidental thunder on the horizon. As I…

Visit mindful.org for featured meditations from Vinny Ferraro, Atman Smith, and Jon Kabat-Zinn 3 PRACTICES TO EMBRACE LOVING-KINDNESS 1 Directing Compassion Toward Ourselves from Vinny Ferraro Most of the time, we’re our own harshest critics. We strive to hide our flaws and mistakes so we can project a perfect image into the world. With this practice, we choose to instead bring compassion to our imperfections. This shift helps us grow more comfortable with the human difficulties we’ve been desperately trying to avoid—a radical shift that also uncovers the opportunity to develop our inner wisdom and equanimity. 2 A Loving-Kindness Meditation for Your Loved Ones from Atman Smith Relationships can be full of complexity and conflict. Sometimes it’s difficult to express our love to those we care about the most. Maybe we find…

Julia Child—the celebrity chef whose life has lately been chronicled in an HBO series and a CNN documentary—was surprised to find that when her gawky, quirky public television cooking show became a hit, viewers seemed to think they knew her. More than that, they wanted to show up and be part of her life. She needn’t have been so surprised by all this since, only a few years before, sociologists Richard Wohl and Donald Horton had stumbled upon this phenomenon, calling it “parasocial interaction.” These fancy words describe something we’re all familiar with: the feeling that we truly know someone we’ve been repeatedly exposed to (or magnetically drawn to) on television, or nowadays through myriad forms of social media, and yes, even through magazines. Psychologists point to parasociality as a…