- pencil-throwing kids, schoolyard squabbles and frenetic hallways. Children fail, we are told by guidance counsellor Ling Busche, not because they are stupid, but because they are unable to focus: ''There is this sense of nonstop entertainment and whatever is happening in the lesson often becomes secondary.'' So it is surprising, given this chaotic atmosphere, that Mr Ehnle's home room has been chosen for an innovative new program in self-reflection called ''mindfulness''. Actually mindfulness is not ''new'' at all. It originated more than 2000 years ago in the monasteries of south Asia. This form of bare-bones meditation, in wh... posted on Sep 10 2014 (25,796 reads)

at the beginning? They hypothesized that two mindful traits—a focus on the present moment and a non-judgmental acceptance of thoughts and experiences—would help people feel better about helping others. The research confirmed their hypothesis: present-focused attention and non-judgmental acceptance both predicted more helping behavior. Mindful participants were more likely to experience emotions like compassion, joy, or elevation while giving help. In part this was because mindfulness helped them to put their own anxiety aside in order to focus on the needs of others. They just felt better when helping people, which likely led them to engage in more helping behavior in ... posted on May 24 2015 (14,990 reads)

at the beginning? They hypothesized that two mindful traits—a focus on the present moment and a non-judgmental acceptance of thoughts and experiences—would help people feel better about helping others. The research confirmed their hypothesis: present-focused attention and non-judgmental acceptance both predicted more helping behavior. Mindful participants were more likely to experience emotions like compassion, joy, or elevation while giving help. In part this was because mindfulness helped them to put their own anxiety aside in order to focus on the needs of others. They just felt better when helping people, which likely led them to engage in more helping behavior in ... posted on Oct 24 2015 (14,797 reads)

can be stressful. Whether it’s the stress that comes with having too much work to do in too little time, fulfilling caregiving obligations, or dealing with a major illness or setback, sometimes it can be hard to cope. In response to stress, many people today are turning to meditation or mindfulness apps (myself included). But not all mindfulness practice is equally effective for combatting stress, a new study suggests. It’s possible that some of our practices may be missing a vital ingredient: acceptance. In this study, researchers randomly assigned 137 stressed adults of various ages and ethnicities to one of three programs: an eight-week Mindfulness-Ba... posted on Nov 6 2019 (7,878 reads)

Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge produced by Sounds True. My name’s Tami Simon. I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the Sounds True Foundation. The goal of the Sounds True Foundation is to provide access and eliminate financial barriers to transformational education and resources such as teachings and trainings on mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion. If you’d like to learn more and join with us in our efforts, please visit SoundsTrueFoundation.org. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Oren Jay Sofer. Oren teaches mindfulness meditation and Nonviolent Commu... posted on Sep 21 2022 (3,419 reads)

results make a convincing case for investing more in students’ social-emotional skills—which, according to prior research, are malleable and can be improved, with lasting and meaningful results. “Enhancing these skills can have an impact in multiple areas,” they write, “and therefore has potential for positively affecting individuals as well as community public health substantially.” Mindful people seem to make healthier choices. The first wave of mindfulness research revealed its positive impact on psychological health. The second wave is beginning to show how mindfulness improves our physical health—a link that, if proven, would serve a... posted on Jan 7 2016 (18,360 reads)

decided to ask the class how they could help him. “Caring practice!” exclaimed one of the children—and they all sat in a circle offering support and well wishes. The children immediately calmed and they continued with their lesson. Young students make "peace wands" as part of the Center for Healthy Minds' Kindness Curriculum.Image courtesy of the Center for Healthy Minds This is what’s possible when kids learn to be kind at school. Various mindfulness programs have been developed for adults, but we and our colleagues at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, wanted to develop a curriculum for kids. Every s... posted on Feb 10 2016 (32,056 reads)

class sitting in silence for half an hour,” a friend said to me, “than two lawyers sitting together in silence for five minutes.” Charles Halpern (left, foreground) leads a Qigong exercise at a retreat for 75 lawyers at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California.Richard Boswell But the class is no joke. In fact, it’s part of a ground-breaking movement that has quietly been taking hold in the legal profession over the past two decades: a movement to bring mindfulness—a meditative, moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, relationships, and external circumstances—into the practice of law and legal education. Judges have been meditating... posted on Jan 27 2017 (12,380 reads)

or the art form called Improv, may call to mind comedy shows but it is now also a serious business tool. Organizations are using it to foster team work, collaboration, positive engagement and mindfulness, says Bob Kulhan, founder and CEO of Business Improv, who is also a part-time comedian and an adjunct professor at Duke University and Columbia Business School. Kulhan describes his strategies in his new book, “Yes And: The Art of Business Improv", which he co-authored with Chuck Crisafulli. He recently discussed them on the Knowledge@Wharton show, part of Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111. Click here to play audio. ... posted on Oct 27 2017 (7,182 reads)

We can think about how we acted in the past and plan how we will act in the future, but only in the present moment can we actually decide to do something. This makes being in the present all the more important. Mindfulness Being present is not only about noticing what is happening in the external world; it is also about noticing what is happening in our minds. In fact, you can’t have one without the other because we cannot perceive anything without the mind. This is the basis of mindfulness. Mindfulness can be defined as maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our sensations, feelings, and thoughts, without getting caught up in them. We just notice our experience and simp... posted on May 3 2021 (58,730 reads)

she says. "In the middle of craziness ... you can't recognize [intuition] above all of the noise of everyday life." They create. "Creativity does its best work when it functions intuitively," writes researcher and author Carla Woolf. In fact, creative people are highly intuitive, explains Burnham, and just as you can increase your creativity through practice, you can boost your intuition. In fact, practicing one may build up the other. They practice mindfulness. Meditation and other mindfulness practices can be an excellent way to tap into your intuition. As the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute explains, "Mindfulness can help y... posted on Apr 30 2014 (136,144 reads)

greed, or to create economic policies that decrease the gap between the rich and the poor. These are moral issues that require compassion. JS: Compassion can be cultivated through mindful meditation. But, I think a lot of people start meditating for personal reasons—to decrease stress and to learn to be more accepting of what is. How does that lead to social activism? DG: I don’t agree with that interpretation of what meditation or spiritual practice is for. That view of mindfulness leaves out the traditional coupling of mindfulness with a concern for other people—loving kindness practice, compassion practice. I think the Dalai Lama’s view is that that&rsq... posted on Jul 9 2015 (20,235 reads)

greed, or to create economic policies that decrease the gap between the rich and the poor. These are moral issues that require compassion. JS: Compassion can be cultivated through mindful meditation. But, I think a lot of people start meditating for personal reasons—to decrease stress and to learn to be more accepting of what is. How does that lead to social activism? DG: I don’t agree with that interpretation of what meditation or spiritual practice is for. That view of mindfulness leaves out the traditional coupling of mindfulness with a concern for other people—loving kindness practice, compassion practice. I think the Dalai Lama’s view is that that&rsq... posted on Sep 4 2015 (15,892 reads)

attitudes. And those increased pro-nature attitudes, in turn, were tied to more pro-environmental behavior. How to boost connection to nature Still, researchers don’t know exactly what it is about being in nature that impacts environmental concern and action, though many agree that emotional engagement is critical. So, how can we augment that engagement in our children? Mindfulness may be one potential avenue. At least one study with adults has found a link between mindfulness, connection to nature, and well-being, while another found that mindfulness is associated with “green behavior.” Perhaps mindfulness allows people—and would all... posted on Nov 3 2016 (12,016 reads)

light of compassion, and no other person. ‘No other person’ experience was something that I hadn’t encountered prior to that. At that point, I realized that he was a special being! And after I realized this, I remember sitting on the step of this one big building and thinking here is this great enlightened master living in this building and nobody's paying any attention to him -- and what does that say about our culture?” “There's a lot of talk about mindfulness, and mindfulness is obviously a prerequisite for a lot of stuff. But we have to see the context in which mindfulness is discussed. So just becoming mindful is not enough. You have to ... posted on Jan 21 2019 (6,904 reads)

Fox M.A. is the founder and director of the Prison Yoga Project, (PYP), an organization dedicated to establishing yoga and mindfulness programs in prisons and rehabilitation centers worldwide. Since 2002, Fox has been teaching yoga and meditation to prisoners at San Quentin Prison as well as other California State prisons. The Prison Yoga Project helps incarcerated men and women build a better life through trauma-informed yoga with a focus on mindfulness. It helps prisoners make grounded, conscious choices instead of reactive ones. Fox says the practice of yoga was “a gradual awakening” for him. With a background in international affairs, he was recruited into ... posted on Apr 25 2019 (4,722 reads)

to say that the world faces a plethora of issues on which people are divided. The fate of what is rightfully ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’ echoes in the streets, whether expressed around the state of border controls, proclaiming intellectual superiority over our neighbours, or using milkshakes as missiles to bolster our ideals - as British right-wing politician Nigel Farage experienced to his cost in May of 2019. At the same time, we are supposedly in the midst of a ‘mindfulness revolution,’ through which a spirit of calm, focus and non-judgement will come to reverberate around our classrooms, courtrooms, parliaments, global conglomerates and even the NHS. B... posted on Jul 8 2019 (5,843 reads)

of mind training are providing. The antidote to these afflictive mental states is to learn not to identify ourselves with this negative mental state. You know, if we have the flu or we have a fever, we say, “I have the flu” or “I suffer from the flu.” You don’t say, “I am the flu.” But when we are filled with anxiety or jealousy or craving, it seems that we are the craving, so we identify with it. There are ways, with mindfulness, not to identify with craving. You can have the gaze of mindfulness, of awareness, looking at anxiety or envy or craving, and what is aware of craving is not craving. It’s just aware... posted on May 14 2013 (55,556 reads)

compassion toward self, family, friends, enemies, and strangers. Compassion cultivation techniques have been shown to increase positive emotions and social support, reduce negative distress at human suffering, and reduce people’s fears of feeling compassion for others. Such training programs may prevent the collapse of compassion, by letting people overcome fears of fatigue and accept their own compassion. In ongoing work with Barbara Fredrickson, I am exploring how levels of mindfulness predict helping behavior as well as the emotions associated with helping. Mindfulness has two important sub-components: the ability to attend to the present moment and the ability to accep... posted on Mar 9 2014 (20,535 reads)

they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things." They constantly shake things up. Diversity of experience, more than anything else, is critical to creativity, says Kaufman. Creatives like to shake things up, experience new things, and avoid anything that makes life more monotonous or mundane. "Creative people have more diversity of experiences, and habit is the killer of diversity of experience," says Kaufman. They make time for mindfulness. Creative types understand the value of a clear and focused mind -- because their work depends on it. Many artists, entrepreneurs, writers and other creative workers, such as David... posted on Mar 24 2014 (178,913 reads)