Sommaire pour Fall 2020 de Mindful

I love the opening line of our feature about women leaders in mindfulness: “This is why we practice.” It feels like a manifesto, capturing how to live now. Because as the world convulses with turmoil, my mind convulses, too. My thoughts fly like a storm in a snow globe: pandemic, death, disease, fear, invisible air particles, racial violence, social injustice, micro- and macro-aggressions, shouting, anger, political warfare, economic freefall, joblessness, uncertainty, anxiety—all are swirling in my snow globe. Yours too? I feel raw, unsettled, hurt, angry, sad, furious, compassionate, sorrowful. It’s all in there, around me, inside of me, all swirling. And I suspect you and your snow globe are swirling, too. I think we are all swirling. And this is why we practice, so in the midst of the…

A farmer in Michigan was behind on his planting as he recovered from COVID-19. Dozens of farmers came from around the state to help till the soil, plant seeds, and fertilize. “When people need help they come and help and I’m so proud… I’m so proud to be in a neighborhood where this works,” Steve Alt, who owns Alt Brothers Farms, told a local television station. Emerson Weber of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sent her mail carrier a thank-you note. “I make people happy with my letters, but you do too,” she wrote. When 11-year-old Emerson’s appreciation made its way to a United States Postal Service newsletter, she received thank-you notes from essential service workers all over the country—and beyond. Emerson’s dad, Hugh, told NPR: “There’s such a basic human…

TITA ANGANGCO Cofounder, The Centre for Mindfulness Studies “What’s really important is to change the very fundamentals of our values, and our beliefs about each other.” TITA ANGANGCO Tita Anganco cofounded, along with Patricia Rockman, the Centre for Mindfulness Studies. Anganco knew mindfulness meditation could help those who practice be gentler, more open, less reactive, and more resilient—and that could be a boon for people who are involved with government systems like corrections, health, housing, and more. “I really am very interested in system change because that has the greatest impact for a lot of people,” Anganco says. She’s retired from the Centre she cofounded, serving now on its board. Now she’s involved in a project in the Philippines, providing mindfulness training through schools and universities. “The global mental health…

Find a comfortable posture—walking, standing, lying down, or seated. With open eyes, move the head side to side, breathing in and pausing when the chin is over a shoulder, breathe out as the head moves, pausing with the chin over the other shoulder. Notice your space—the colors, shapes, height, width, and depth of the room, the elements of nature. Rest the eyes—open, but with a soft gaze, looking down, or close them. Breathe, and feel into the moment. How is the mind? How is the body? How is the breath? And how is your heart? Feel into the posture of your body. Feel gravity pulling down, rooting this body, connecting it to the Earth. Feel the sense of solidity, knowing this body as Earth element. Feel Earth holding Earth. In…

Pick a significant change in your life. What transition took place as a result? Do you have a pattern in how you deal with endings? Do you just keep moving or make space to mourn or acknowledge what was lost? Do you accept that something or someone has passed? What endings are incomplete? How can you create a way to bring closure to unfinished business? How do you handle sensations of discomfort in transitions? What happens when you lessen your resistance and increase acceptance to not knowing? Try new things, go to new places, meet new people, learn new skills as if you’re trying on new clothes, asking, “Does this feel right?” Create a system of support. Sense what enjoyment or being refreshed feels like in the body. What do…

ACCESS MBCT is an international listing of mental health professionals who are committed to excellence in the delivery, training, and dissemination of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. accessmbct.com The International Mindfulness Teachers Association is a certification and accrediting body and membership organization that includes a member directory of Certified Mindfulness Teachers and Accredited Mindfulness Teacher Training Programs. imta.org Mindful Directory Ltd—a collaboration with mindful.org—is a platform where mindfulness teachers and other professionals register their credentials and list their events. mindfuldirectory.org The Mindfulness Center at Brown University maintains a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher Recognition List, which includes teachers who have provided appropriate documentation of their teaching credentials. brown.edu/public-health/mindfulness/learn-more/mbsr-teacher-recognition Mindful Leader offers an MBSR Certified Teacher Directory provided to the organization by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, which has verified the credentials…

OUT OF MY SKULL The Psychology of Boredom James Danckert and John D. Eastwood Harvard University Press A plethora of books that attempt to rehabilitate boredom as a normal, even valuable, experience have found their way to the Mindful offices in recent years. The benefits of boredom are still trending. This tome by Danckert and Eastwood, both professors of psychology (at University of Waterloo and York University, respectively), stands out because it explores not just what boredom can do for you, but what boredom is and why it (paradoxically) deserves our attention. “Boredom reveals an important aspect of being human: We have a strong need to be engaged with the world around us,” they write. It’s the interplay between our circumstances and our brain’s response to them—being stuck in an…

FIGHTING INFLAMMATION Chronic stress increases inflammation, upping our risk of many chronic diseases. Two studies find that mindfulness practice may lower this risk in those most vulnerable to stress: midlife-to-older adults, and those with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or more. In the first study, 153 stressed adults attended one of three groups: Monitor+Accept; Monitor Only; or a Stress Management education control group. Participants provided blood samples before and after training to test for changes in C-Reactive Protein (CRP), a commonly measured biomarker of inflammation. After two weeks of listening to recorded mindfulness practices, there were no differences in CRP among the groups. In a follow-up study, 137 new adults attended either an in-person Monitor+Accept group or a Monitor Only group (both MBSR-based), or a no-training control group.…

Grocery shortages and the news of COVID-19 outbreaks in meat-processing plants led many consumers to consider their food choices this year. In the first quarter of 2020, Beyond Meat, a plant-based meat company, reported a 141% increase in net profits over the same period in 2019. Mindful eating can take many forms—from noticing how the food we eat feels in our body, to being aware of where our food comes from and what went into producing it. Mindful eating may have been on the rise throughout the spring. American media outlets reported a 264% increase in plant-based protein sales over a nine-week period ending in May.…

1 Get comfortable with tolerating the flailing insecurities that are the fins of floundering. 2 Flounder with presence and intention: Instead of resisting, check out what happens when you allow life’s inevitable moments of helplessness to be part of the picture. Learn and grow for the benefit of all. 3 Remind yourself that floundering is a natural part of life. I’m not suggesting you invite floundering to your next party, but you can offer it some tea if it stops by. Flounder. Find it. Fly.…

CHERYL JONES Founder, The Mindful Path “Be willing to be with yourself as you are with love and compassion.” CHERYL JONES Cheryl Jones became an expert at using mindfulness to navigate difficult times out of sheer necessity. She was in a marriage with a spouse who was “a stressful person” when she read Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. “I lit up like a Christmas tree. It just resonated with me at such a core level.” And while her mindfulness practice couldn’t change the outcome of her marriage, it was a pillar for her in the aftermath. “My mindfulness practice enabled me to break down the madness into manageable moments, and get through the most turbulent time of my life,” Jones says. “We don’t trust that we…

JESSICA MOREY Founder, iBme Jessica Morey finds all kinds of hope and inspiration about the future in the teens she works with on retreat with Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme). Morey was working at the World Bank, with two master’s degrees in sustainable development and international affairs (“I was fully on a track of international climate policy and finance and clean energy,” she says), when the opportunity to start a nonprofit retreat program for teens presented itself. Quitting the World Bank to run a nonprofit was a scary step, but it also felt, in a way, inevitable. She’d been volunteering with Insight Meditation Society’s teen retreats each summer. “When I was on teen retreat, it was the happiest and most meaningful time in my year. And there was never a…

How do you face endings? Create a mess to break things off and run away? Silently ghost yourself from the scene? Endings remind us that we are not in control, that things could get unpleasant and emotional—and there are so many diversions on Netflix to escape into instead. However, cycles of renewal, shedding, and transforming are ever-present in nature. Life is nothing but a series of transitions from the very moment you left your mother’s body. Letting go creates the space for the next stage to unfold. Rituals officially demarcate the ending and time of transition. A good ritual will shift your consciousness so you see yourself and the world in a different and expansive way. In my work with clients, I often guide them through a Letting Go ritual.…

1 Thoughtfully organizes curriculum How well is the teacher prepared and how well do they cover the curriculum content of the session? Can they balance the needs of the individual, the group, and the requirements of teaching the course? 2 Connects authentically Consider the interpersonal connection between individual participants and teacher. Characteristics of a good teacher include empathy, authenticity, compassion, warmth, curiosity, and respect, among others. 3 Naturally embodies mindfulness To embody a practice of mindfulness is to bring the core attitudes of mindfulness practice—nonjudging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go—to the practice of teaching mindfulness. 4 Clearly guides practices How well does the teacher describe what participants are being invited to do in the practice, including all the elements required in that practice? The teacher should…

TED TALKS DAILY Episode: “10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation” with Celeste Headlee “This world in which every conversation has the potential to devolve into an argument… It’s not normal,” Celeste Headlee, seasoned radio host and author of We Need to Talk, asserts. Part of why we’re so polarized, she argues, is that our “conversational competence” is in critical decline. Headlee’s Dos and Don’ts for rich conversations include: “Enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn.” “Don’t equate your experience with theirs.” And the encouraging, “Forget the details: What people care about is you, what you have in common”—whether or not you see eye-to-eye. BALANCED BLACK GIRL Episode: “How to Heal Through Breathwork” with Kathleen Booker Host Lestraundra Alfred offers a grounded and uplifting take on self-care…

3 WAYS TO TRANSFORM TOUGH EMOTIONS 1 A 7-Minute Guided Meditation to Embrace Fear from Loch Kelly Not just for fear, this practice can be engaged with any emotion, pleasant or unpleasant. As you hone your awareness of what’s going on in your mind and body, you’ll recognize what emotions are present for you. By practicing this, you will learn that you can feel sad without being sad, feel anger without being angry, and include any fearful part of yourself, from a place of natural open-hearted awareness. 2 An 8-Minute Practice to Notice Positive Moments from Mark Bertin In this practice for children, we learn to shift our thoughts and emotions away from dwelling on something we don’t like. You may feel stressed by a test, or a friend, or…

In Seattle, 20 miles of street have been permanently closed to motor traffic so people can bike and walk safely in the road. The Stay Healthy Streets project offers routes to essential services and expands the city’s parks system, part of “rebuilding better than before” after COVID-19. A volunteer campaign in Bolivia called Adopt a Grandparent encourages young, healthy people to protect senior citizens in their area. Volunteer “grandkids” help with food deliveries, paperwork, and words of support during quarantine. To uphold the Roman Catholic tradition of blessing Easter baskets, while respecting social distancing, Rev. Tim Pelc in the Detroit area donned a mask, face shield, and rubber gloves and used a squirt gun to spray holy water into the car windows of parishioners as they drove by. “Ghost kitchens”…

SEBENE SELASSIE Mindfulness Teacher, Author, and Speaker As a teacher and writer (Sebene Selassie’s first book, You Belong: A Call for Connection will be out this August with Harper One; see review on page 68), Selassie is looking outward at what she calls a “huge movement in spiritual consciousness raising that is probably unparalleled in modern history.” Even before COVID-19 further shone a light on deep inequities in our political and social systems, Selassie notes, more of us were becoming more aware of the depth of human suffering. “The way I relate to what’s happening is a lot is being revealed that was maybe hidden—and particularly hidden from particular people for a long time. Dominant culture—white culture, more privileged people—are becoming aware of suffering that they hadn’t been aware of…

In my college days, a thousand years ago, I used to hang out in part of the library that contained a large multivolume work: Pokorny’s Indo-European Etymological Dictionary. I would idle away hours looking up the derivations of words and tracing their meanings as they wended their way through many languages and cultures. It instilled in me a spirit of looking beneath the surface of a word to find the depth and breadth that lay within. When I first discovered that the word “education” derives from an ancient root roughly meaning to draw out, to lead out, it lit up my mind. At that point, education had seemed mainly to be a process of having information and ideas poured into you, or wisdom bestowed on you from on high. This…

The pandemic marks “a turning point in history,” the celebrated historian Margaret MacMillan wrote in The Economist. Fault lines have been exposed in the world we’ve constructed that could, she wrote, lead us either to “reform or calamity.” She said this before the uprising that emerged in cities worldwide after the killing of George Floyd. The pandemic had reduced distractions, so that hyper-tragic event exposed another fault line that could no longer be put out of mind. We can choose to care and do more about the world we’re making—or not. Optimistically, the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson wrote in an essay on newyorker.com that “The virus is rewriting our imaginations. What felt impossible has become thinkable… We know we’re entering a new world, a new era. We seem…