Tabla de contenidos para Spring 2021 en Mindful

Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg introduced me to a compassion practice where you picture yourself surrounded by kind, warm-hearted beings who are sending you generous offerings of love and goodwill—I like to think of this magazine as a version of that practice. This Spring issue you’re holding is more than just a collection of articles—it’s a collection of hearts and minds sharing stories about how they’re showing up in the world with kindness, patience, humor, and grace. In these pages you’ll find Ashanti Branch (page 11), whose Million Mask Movement encourages us to embrace our authenticity by sharing what we let others see and what we keep hidden. Michelle Maldonado offers a calming breath practice (page 15) to soothe our overactive minds if we wake in the middle of the night.…

Whether it’s because we’re spending more time at home, or thinking more about supply chains and shortages, more people took up gardening tools in 2020. Seed companies report increased demand globally, and a study out of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, reveals that almost 20% of Canadians grew food for the first time in 2020. There’s some evidence that gardening can help reduce stress, increase feelings of well-being, and build community. Here are three recent stories that reinforce those ideas. Communities like Sudbury, Ontario, just went ahead and got their hands dirty. The Home Garden Project helped distribute free soil and seeds to hundreds of local households. The goal was to support mental and physical health during a challenging time, increase food security, and let citizens contribute to community…

The next time you leave your home for a walk, when you experience another person on the street, simply take them in. Don’t stare creepily. But just notice their body, their gait, the shape of their face. The mask that may cover their face. Does this experience of simply noticing a human being who is present in your visual field help you remove some of the divisions that your inner narratives might highlight? Can you identify some of the narratives you might place on this person? Can you create more space for compassion? It’s possible that this way of tapping into your experiential self can help you appreciate the complexity of people’s forms and their movements as beautiful in and of themselves. Appreciating ordinary, everyday beauty, says Winston, “can really…

1 Find somewhere to sit, stand, or lie down that gives you a sense of safety and stability. Take three deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Then settle into a natural breathing rhythm. 2 Feel your forehead relax, along with your eyes, your jaw, your whole face. Feel the relaxation and release of your neck, your shoulders, and your belly. Imagine a radiant sun beaming from within your heart. Picture yourself at the center of this warm and welcoming light. 3 Send these intentions to yourself, pausing before each repetition to just rest in the space: May I be free from suffering. May I find peace and joy. See if you can rest in these wishes for your own well-being. 4 Picture someone you have…

Vicissitudes. I’ve always loved that word. It seems onomatopoeic. You can hear the ups and downs of change and variation in there, and the pain of all that jolting. Just when things are going so…this other thing comes along. It does make sense that we’re so heavily wired for safety and security, and are therefore resistant to change and the challenges it brings. Because survival, right? Be safe, be secure, keep things the same, survive. Ah, but life doesn’t cooperate with that instinct. It’s right there in the definition of vicissitude in the American Heritage Dictionary: “the quality of being changeable; mutability.” One choice when the deep drive to be safe and secure meets up with the mutability of all of life is just to say, “F— it, I don’t…

@louiselieffering reminds us there’s beauty all around if we take the time to appreciate it. @livinginmommywood shows us how mindfulness can create safe spaces for people to share and learn. @iamlenafranklin shows how the stillness of breathing allows us to take time out for ourselves. How do you speak to yourself with self-compassion? “Me: I’m sorry… Also me: I forgive you.” Pamela C. “I remind myself every day that This Too Shall Pass.” Deanna B. “This moment does not have to ruin the rest of the day. A new day can start right now.” Tracey N. “Whenever doubt creeps in, I remind myself, ‘You’ve got this. You were MADE to handle this. You’re strong enough. Stronger than you think. Keep going.’” Kelly S. “I remind myself to be grateful.” Beverly J. “With positive…

DOG GONE When a rescue dog from Spain bolted out of a jet’s cargo hold in Toronto, staff at one of North America’s busiest airports worked through the night to find the panicked Podenco, suspending traffic for an hour, and using security and thermal cameras to track her down. “Boy, could she run,” worker Keith Everett told CBC News. The dog eventually laid down under his truck, and Everett joined her, gaining her trust before reuniting her with her humans. FAIR BALL When Kevin Ashford heard that a little leaguer in Fresno County, CA, lost her baseball cards in a wildfire that destroyed hundreds of homes, he stepped up to donate his own 25,000-card collection to nine-year-old Reese Osterberg. Ashford told NBC News that in this context, his collection is…

Find truly COVID-safe dining in Ransäter, Sweden, at the restaurant Bord För En (table for one)—consisting of one table and one chair, in a field. Diners pay-what-you-can to have a homemade meal delivered by pulley in a picnic basket, from the owners’ house to the table. Finally, a Twitter to warm your heart: The account “Respectful Memes” has 1M followers and posts adorable animals, animated characters, and general goodness. Its bio boasts “#1 Source of Memes to show your Grandma!” Cars aren’t going anywhere, but they can provide renewable energy. British company Alpha 311 designed a small wind turbine that converts the winds generated by highway traffic into energy that can power lampposts, as well as the main power grid. A supermarket in North Wales, UK, used absurd amounts of…

I’m standing on stage in front of 150 people, the spotlight bright in my eyes, the microphone solid in my hand. Their faces stare up at me, expectantly. I’m there to tell them a story. For a lot of people, being on stage in this way is a nightmare. Stage fright can make your heart pound, your mouth go dry, your limbs quake. But not me. I’m comfortable here. My worst nightmare awaits me later, at home. It’s also what I’m on stage to talk about. For decades—my whole life, practically—I’ve lived with a persistent, debilitating fear of being murdered in my bed, I tell the audience. They laugh uproariously. They’re not being insensitive—I’m telling it funny. That’s how I always tell it. I run through the list of ghosts…

THIS ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE The Path Back to Connection in a Fractured World Sarah Wilson • Dey St. Anyone who read Sarah Wilson’s First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, her remarkable 2018 memoir about shifting our approach to anxiety and mental illness, will have high expectations for this new book. Her goal, she writes, was to find a way to talk about the feeling that “Something is not right. We’re not living life right. To try to grasp such a pain, to find the beginning and end, is like trying to bite your own teeth.” Instead of grasping too hard, then, she bravely explores what feels so wrong in her unforgettably wholehearted way. The common link among our personal, social, and global struggles—climate chaos, environmental destruction, local and…

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GIVE MORE Can mindfulness meditation help people to be more giving? A team of researchers at Yale University and UCLA assigned 326 workers who were registered with a laborcrowdsourcing platform to either a mindfulness group or a control group. Those in the mindfulness group watched a short breathing meditation video. The control group saw a video teaching kids how to draw Mickey Mouse. Both groups provided demographic information, and were told that they would receive either $1, $2, or $3. They were then given the opportunity to donate part or all of the funds to United Way, a well-known nonprofit organization that helps people with few financial resources. Those in the mindfulness group donated at a rate 2.61 times higher than those in the control group. Mindfulness group participants who…

Once considered an occupational hazard of hermetic life, acedia took a turn as a Deadly Sin before largely falling out of the lexicon. It has resurged, thanks to a certain pandemic, as it describes a thoroughly modern condition: listlessness, ambient anxiety, and an inability to concentrate. Practice: While we all get caught up in moments of distraction and avoidance, we can practice the ART of presence. Bring mindfulness to a daily Activity, a daily Routine, and a daily Trigger. Replace your trigger-reaction with a flash of being present.…

The practice of mindful looking starts with unburdening ourselves of the stories we’re constantly telling ourselves, says Diana Winston, director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. It’s the difference between “looking,” she says, and “looking to see something.” It’s not as easy as it sounds. Each day, most of us think nothing about the fact that we wake up and don’t make a move until the sunlight or a light turned on in our room is there to guide us. In the grand scheme of the planet, however, that’s an unusual orientation. Most species, including all manner of insects, plants, and animals, primarily navigate the world through pheromones. While we all know that dogs have a better sense of smell than we do, the same is true…

I once had a patient who was confused as to why I talked about her gut while treating her mind. To her, it seemed irrelevant. “After all,” she said, “it’s not like they are actually next to each other.” While your gut and brain are housed in different parts of your body, they are physically connected. The vagus nerve, also known as the “wanderer nerve,” originates in the brain stem and travels all the way to the gut, connecting the gut to the central nervous system. When it reaches the gut, it untangles itself to form little threads that wrap the entire gut in an unruly covering that looks like an intricately knitted sweater. Because the vagus nerve penetrates the gut wall, it plays an essential role in the digestion…

Know when to seek help While Kaylee Friedman, a licensed associate counselor in New Jersey who uses mindfulness-based techniques with her clients, believes everyone can benefit from therapy, she notes that a therapeutic relationship may be particularly helpful when your ability to function is curtailed by “feelings of anxiety, lack of motivation, feeling lost or hopeless, social issues, dealing with oppression, relationship struggles, grief, family crisis, unprocessed trauma, etc. If you’re spending at least an hour each day worrying or thinking about these issues and they cause you to feel distracted or to underfunction in important roles in your life, you’d probably benefit from therapy.” Know that the first hurdle will be the hardest “Meeting a therapist is stressful, especially for somebody who’s already struggling,” says Friedman. But, she adds,…

MEDITATIVE STORY Episode: “Stories of New Beginnings” In the season 2 finale of Meditative Story, we get a melting-pot perspective on new beginnings from five different people. Each of their stories is rooted in a shared human experience, from the unspoken conversations surrounding life and death to feeling like an outcast and finally finding a space that feels like home. It’s a podcast that makes you feel a little less isolated—reinforcing that you’re not alone in your feelings. Among the wide range of guests you’ll be sure to hear a voice that resonates, especially in the times we’re living in right now. It makes us excited for what season 3 has in store. -OL TAKING OFF THE MASK Episode: “The Conqueror Narrative” In this insight-filled conversation on his recently launched…

Visit mindful.org for featured meditations from Ed Halliwell, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Mark Bertin THREE WAYS TO NAVIGATE TOUGH EMOTIONS 1 A Guided Meditation for Resting in the Flow from Ed Halliwell One of the many joys of being human is that we are dynamic and multifaceted. However, the impact of this is that we often have a front-row seat to a wide range of issues, which can cause a loss of perspective. Issues seem bigger than they are, and we grip them more tightly. This meditative practice allows us to experience the joy of losing control. When we let go, we can give ourselves a break and have a moment to catch our breath. 2 A Meditation on Observing Thoughts Nonjudgmentally from Jon Kabat-Zinn It’s easy to fixate on one…

In 1946, at the outset of the baby boom, readers of the “funnies”—what comic strips were often called back then—saw uber-cop Dick Tracy communicate for the first time with his squad using the “Two-Way Wrist Radio.” In the sixties, it became a wrist TV, and the cops communicated using an early form of FaceTime. Like many children, I thought the wrist TV was super cool, and my friends and I even pretended we had one. We never dreamed that such a gadget could become a reality. Apparently, engineer Martin Cooper thought differently: The two-way wrist device inspired his invention of the mobile phone, which morphed into today’s smartphone, and ironically enough, wrist phones of all kinds. Now, almost everyone is Dick Tracy—connected to our squad and the rest of the…