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 (136,363 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 (20,296 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 (15,941 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 (12,097 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 (6,927 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 (4,753 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 (5,890 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 (55,643 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 (20,571 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 (179,073 reads)

be avoided. “It’s important to say that there’s inherent stress in medicine and in caring for patients,” he says. “So, the goal of a stress-less preparation for physicians isn’t realistic.” A more realistic goal, perhaps, is to equip medical students and physicians with the skills to deal with the stress they face in a healthy way. One of these efforts may involve training in contemplative practices that help quiet and focus the mind, such as mindfulness meditation. In their paper, Burks and Kobus suggest that training in mindfulness could potentially help medical students increase their empathy for patients. At least one recent study, ... posted on Nov 14 2015 (12,792 reads)

Breathe Curious” is a mother-daughter collaboration that emerged from Anne’s growing interest in mindfulness and meditation and her daughter Ellie’s belief that art is a powerful tool for change. The project began when Anne developed a list of words to help with mindfulness during sleepless nights. Starting with “Allow” on the in-breath, the list grew over time to include all of the letters of the alphabet. She shared the idea with her daughter Ellie, whose mind instantly swirled with accompanying images. They decided to combine their passions to create a coloring book of postcards, in which each word is elaborated by Anne with a phrase and a unique... posted on Jun 1 2016 (17,204 reads)

or even make protest art. People who have never seen themselves as activists are now feeling the need to do something. Veteran activists are facing the challenge of a renewed effort without suffering burnout. Many of us are feeling a sense of fatigue, after months and months of threats to civil liberties, human rights, and the integrity of our institutions. At such a time, we all need to know how to sustain activism over the long run. Mindfulness offers a way. For many of us, mindfulness is more than an individualistic way of reducing stress. As Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, making peace begins within ourselves, but contemplation leads to compassion, and compassion involves ta... posted on Jun 23 2017 (9,951 reads)

Inner Strength Foundation (ISF) was established in 2014 to foster inner strength for outer stability in today’s youth. ISF partners with schools in the Greater Philadelphia area to offer the twelve-week ISF Teen Program — the only school mindfulness program in Philadelphia developed specifically for high school students. Through age-appropriate lessons on cultural development, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, students become budding archaeologists of themselves. Able to excavate layers of influence and vast cultural changes, adolescents learn the invaluable skill of being able to see their personal experience in a greater context. ISF was created with an older age-g... posted on Mar 11 2019 (5,980 reads)

afternoon, just a perfect day, mid-60s, peak foliage, just really crisp air; just beautiful. And stopped my mountain bike on top of a hill in a very remote part of the forest, and got off my bike and saw this beautiful oak tree about 50 feet off the trail, which was on a little hill overlooking a little valley, a wooded valley. And I went over and I sat down under this oak tree, and this was a time before I was married with children and when I was doing a lot of yoga, I was really deep in my mindfulness, yoga, meditation practice. And I sat down under a tree and I pulled my hood up over my head and closed my eyes, and I just started to meditate. And it was a really good time in my life... posted on Jan 14 2020 (8,025 reads)

what I do in the world involves intense and intimate interactions with people, and I figured that we always need an opportunity to “clear out” and refresh or reground ourselves. But there is more to it than that — at least for me. Solitude In Nature For Monasticization I find this immersion into nature – in total solitude – to be the most advantageous environment for cultivating deeper states, insights, and restoration. It is my monastery. As a mindfulness meditation teacher, I am, of course, always encouraging people to set aside time to practice – whether formal eyes-closed practice or incorporating mindfulness into daily activities ... posted on Apr 13 2020 (6,962 reads)

Goleman has laid out the cognitive science and theories behind our emotions and social interactions. In her work as a psychotherapist and in her best-selling book Emotional Alchemy, Bennett-Goleman has applied those theories to overcoming self-defeating habits of mind and improving our relationships. Now Bennett-Goleman has a new book called Mind Whispering: A New Map to Freedom from Self-Defeating Emotional Habits. In it, she builds on the theory described in Emotional Alchemy to apply mindfulness to overcoming the ingrained emotional habits that can hurt our relationships. I spoke with Bennett-Goleman and Goleman recently, just after a workshop they had conducted at the Spirit R... posted on Oct 6 2013 (30,708 reads)

toxic. That person now has a mental health problem. A lot of people with mental health problems are in loops they can’t escape. They ruminate about things that frighten them, they ruminate about being no good or inferior. They focus on all the negative aspects. This is not their fault, because we have a natural, old-brain threat bias. As Rick Hanson notes, the brain is Velcro for negative- and threat-based things but Teflon for positive ones. We’re all like this. How does mindfulness help fix the trouble? Fortunately, we also have the skills to reconcile the old brain with the new. One of them is a technique that we call mindfulness—moment-to-moment awar... posted on Jan 26 2014 (25,198 reads)

example, most of us are easily hijacked by intense emotions, like anger or worry—a tendency put to good use by advertisers, by the way. If we feel threatened, the fast brain takes over completely to allow us to respond quickly to threat until our slow brain gives the signal that the threat has passed. If we develop our slow brain circuits to more quickly calm our emotional reactivity to imagined threats, we lessen the chances of making bad decisions based on reactivity. Learning mindfulness—how to pay attention to one’s present thoughts, emotions, and surroundings without judgment—can help with this. Mindfulness lessens emotional reactivity, and improves bot... posted on Dec 20 2013 (26,310 reads)

toxic. That person now has a mental health problem. A lot of people with mental health problems are in loops they can’t escape. They ruminate about things that frighten them, they ruminate about being no good or inferior. They focus on all the negative aspects. This is not their fault, because we have a natural, old-brain threat bias. As Rick Hanson notes, the brain is Velcro for negative- and threat-based things but Teflon for positive ones. We’re all like this. How does mindfulness help fix the trouble? Fortunately, we also have the skills to reconcile the old brain with the new. One of them is a technique that we call mindfulness—moment-to-moment awar... posted on Jan 8 2014 (33,513 reads)