Turning attention into engagement is similar. Think of it as “directed presence” or as cultivating presence in the midst of the activities we engage in both at work and at home. Psychologists have a name for this state of full engagement. They refer to it as, ‘flow.’ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the first psychologists to carry out research on this experience, talks about it in his book Flow. He describes flow as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it....

title: “Magazine” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-19” author: “Audrea Payne” title: “Magazine” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-27” author: “Leonard Pietrowski” title: “Magazine” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-24” author: “Rene Desir”

Close to 1,500 mayors participated in this year’s event hosted by local Meals on Wheels affilates. The purpose of the event is to promote the Meals on Wheels program and raise awareness about the hunger problem in the United States, particularly amongst the elderly. In an article from USA Today, Meals on Wheels president and CEO Enid Borden stated that 1 in 9 seniors in the US today are hungry, which equates to a total of about about five million elderly Americans....

From Goerling’s article: Police training, generally, devotes much energy in training concepts of situational awareness […] Awareness of the landscape (physical, environmental, human, industrial, etc.) is the first factor in staying safe in all emergency response professions. Assessing the behavior of persons confronted by police officers is an equally critical ingredient to officer safety. Mindfulness training is situational awareness “graduate school.” Through greater self-awareness, police officers can learn greater situational awareness and develop the ability to be present, focused, and grounded in the naturally occurring fog where heroes meet crises....

Using the image of caring for trees, the speaker argued that the education field tends to focus too much on the tree’s fruit (outcomes like test scores) while ignoring the roots. If you ignore the roots for too long, he continued, you don’t get any fruit at all. The takeaway: mindfulness and compassion feed the roots. I heard this analogy when I was lucky enough to witness the mid-term review of Louisville’s “audacious” 7-year Compassionate Schools Project (CSP) serving over 10,000 K-5 students at 45 schools....

Long-time organizational change consultant Pravir Malik has recently begun working on mindfulness in the workplace as a tool for individual, team, organizational, and ultimately, societal change. Through his research organization, Aurosoorya, Pravir introduced a fractal-based system of mindfulness into the Stanford University Medical Center’s Leadership Academy training four months ago. His hypothesis suggested that by addressing dysfunction at the micro level (i.e., personal discontent, frustration, anger), that larger patterns at higher levels would be affected in a positive manner....

From senior senior author Sara Warber, M.D., associate professor of family medicine at the U-M Medical School and member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation: Walking is an inexpensive, low risk and accessible form of exercise and it turns out that combined with nature and group settings, it may be a very powerful, under-utilized stress buster. Our findings suggest that something as simple as joining an outdoor walking group may not only improve someone’s daily positive emotions but may also contribute a non-pharmacological approach to serious conditions like depression....

“We’re very lucky to have Robyn leading the Institute,” says Diana Calthorpe Rose, Garrison’s Board of Trustees Chair and founding President Emerita. “I am honored to be stepping into this position at this point in The Garrison Institute’s development,” says Brentano, who previously served as Executive Director of The Tibet Fund. “By pioneering effective approaches to social and environmental change rooted in contemplative insight and practice, the Institute is having a powerful impact on fields of vital importance to our future....

David Levy, a computer science professor at the Information School at the University of Washington, says the results reflect his personal experience with meditation and work stress. On a broader level, the results are encouraging for scientific literature that discusses human attention as a trainable resource, and also for individuals interested in designing workplace and technological interventions that draw on meditation practices. To read the full results of the study in USA Today, click here....

The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University presents a talk on compassion in healthcare with Robin Youngson, MD. Dr. Youngson weaves together scientific evidence with personal stories from both patients and practitioners. He will address the reasons behind burnout in the industry and how compassionate practices have lead to surprising, evidence-based solutions. This event is free and open to the public. Registration required Register for the Compassion in Healthcare talk....

A 20-Minute Guided Meditation to Ease Holiday Stress read more Oyinda Lagunju December 10, 2021 Mike Rucker November 26, 2021 Mark Bertin January 5, 2023

Here’s a posture practice that can be used as the beginning stage of a period of meditation practice or simply as something to do for a minute, maybe to stabilize yourself and find a moment of relaxation before going back into the fray. If you have injuries or other physical difficulties, you can modify this to suit your situation.

In a cherished friendship, we’re mindful to be as caring and wise as we can be to keep our relationship on good terms. But we don’t often afford ourselves the same caring attention. This animation from The School of Life reminds us how to treat ourselves like we would a good friend. Here are the two most important ways you can be a better friend to yourself: 1) Accept yourself for who you are — then begin to grow A friend has an easier time reading situations and avoiding emotional traps than the involved party (you)....

In this video from the PBS science series BrainCraft, creator and host Vanessa Hill explains that our phones—specifically, the apps and the algorithms that guide how we interact with them—tinker with the habit-forming parts of our brain so that we’re triggered to keep coming back to them, and to linger long after a notification has been answered or an interaction has taken place. Everything from the hypnotic buzzing alerts to the brightly colored notifications are tailored to ensure that we’ll come back to an app or website, again and again, in order to receive a “mental reward....

“Mindfulness is one of those things that you just want to share,” Beemer told Mindful. “Oftentimes you enter it perhaps because you’re in pain or because you want relief from maybe stress or whatever. And then as soon as you start to see the benefits, it’s so easy to share and the desire is there to share. And it’s just utterly transportable. It’s free. Everybody can do it. It’s secular....