Teaching mindfulness to beginners for many years, I’ve learned that people tend to focus on certain aspects of the teaching and forget or have a harder time grasping others. Specifically, people focus on the “being present” part of mindfulness but quickly forget both the intention and the heart qualities of kindness, compassion, and nonjudgment that
Our midlife years can be riddled with changes, stress, anxiety and uncertainty, which often cause us to lose sight of how precious and amazing they can actually be. If you’re currently feeling unfulfilled and unmotivated in your midlife journey, you’re not alone, and it doesn’t have to be this way! Join me and 20+ other
It’s the fourth week of the Eat for Life program and some people are wondering why on earth I am asking them to do the body scan every day (a formal mindfulness exercise that asks people to systematically bring attention to their body from head to toe). All kinds of comments are made after we
Everybody loves the feeling of falling in love. Even more, we cherish the constant love of companions, be they the family we were born with or the families we form along the way. As the song goes, “Love makes the world go round.” When we love someone, we invest a lot of ourselves into
I recently spoke to my boss and told her that I could not continue working as hard as I have been. The impact of working too much was taking a toll on my body—specifically my back which structurally starts to misalign when I am under too much stress. It has cost me a lot of
Acceptance is a term that is used a lot in yoga and Buddhist circles but often causes a lot of confusion. The confusion stems from (a) a misunderstanding of what it does and does not mean and (b) how difficult it can be to change our habitual resistance to the unpleasant moments in our lives.
While I am not always perfect at it, I know that the biggest benefit of mindfulness practice is in its ability to help me hold emotional discomfort without bypassing it. When things are going well in our lives, mindfulness helps us deeply experience the pleasure of being alive. However, it is when the going gets
The quality of resilience is something particularly important during these challenging times that we are all facing. Everyone I know has had friends or family members fall ill or die, encounter difficulties through employment and housing, feel the loss of hugs and other benefits of intimate relationships, and much more. According to the definition, people
Many things will be different this Thanksgiving, because it’s 2020! The most unbelievable things have happened this year, and limiting the number of people we spend Thanksgiving with is really just a small part of it. And, staying tucked safely at home with a very few people seems like a more than reasonable response to
Loving others (particularly the ones you don’t want to) is a great strategy for increasing your own well-being. This recently became very clear to me when I noticed the suffering I had because of my judgment of someone I’ll call Charlotte (definitely not her name!). I don’t even know Charlotte personally, but she did something
