Strength, stability, and clarity of mind are said to be the fruits of mindfulness meditation. That sounds good, but if your back is sore, your digestion is sluggish, and your nerves are fried, it’s tough to stabilize any kind of mental wakefulness or confidence. Yoga is a path to these same fruits, but when your mind is jumpy, sleepy, or full of angry thoughts, your body will reflect that with a tight jaw, saggy shoulders, or a knot in your belly....

When Pierce challenged Weiss to come up with a mindfulness-based development program that could be available at all levels of the organization and potentially transform the culture, Weiss replied that she knew of no existing model. Pierce realized they had to create one. They started by introducing mindfulness classes, but the real goal was to develop a program that used mindfulness—but without calling it that. The initial mindfulness classes were well received, and they are still offered regularly, but Pierce wanted something that would have more impact, something where people wouldn’t have to sign up for mindfulness per se....

Siegel also started a blog. You can read his first post, “Relationship Science and Being Human.” If you’re looking for more on teenagers and mindfulness, you may want to read “W.A.I.T. a Minute” from the December issue of Mindful magazine. Tristan Gorrindo, child and adolescent psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, talks about the teenage brain in relation to social media and how to get teens to pause before they post online....

A burgeoning science of mood is here to disabuse you of that belief (and perhaps give solace to those with mood disorders who find the effects of their moods anything but wimpy). Not only can moods, even ones that are at odds with our typical emotional state, leave lasting imprints on our mental and physical health; they also influence how we perceive the world and learn from experience—a function that, new research suggests, may explain the mystery of why we even have moods and why we don’t always want to immediately shake off negative ones....

Kalman says her meditation practice at present does not involve sitting, but she takes moments throughout the day to check in and focus on her breathing. So preparing to go on a retreat has stirred up a mixture of joy and trepidation. Although, she says the silence part doesn’t bother her as much. “The nice part of it is that I don’t know what will happen during the retreat, which is exactly the point,” she says....

In the April issue, Susan Stiffelman, author of Parenting Without Power Struggles, lays out how we can become the captain of our own ships, and how the parent-child dynamic changes when we’re not at the helm. The handy guide below will help you figure out who’s in charge in your household. (Click on the chart to enlarge it, or click here.) For more than just this Glimpse: See the full table of contents for Mindful‘s April 2014 issue....

February 14, 2018, was supposed to be a day of love. Instead of a romantic dinner with my wife, the plan was to watch our wedding video with our fourteen-year-old daughter and sixteen year-old son as a way of showing them the beauty of Valentine’s Day. My daughter Jaime had come up with the idea. Our family drill that morning started off like any other day. The kids were running late for school, the dogs were barking because they wanted to be fed and walked, and Jennifer and I were scrambling to get ready for work....

After all, you know you’ve made it, and are no mere flash in the pan, when kids start dressing up like you. Sure, the adults will go out as whoever’s “hot” at the moment. But kids often go for classics. There are and ghosts, zombies, and vampires, of course, but you’ll also see virtues and values embodied. Little angels, faeries, soldiers, and firefighters are unlikely to stop coming to our doors any time soon....

In Mindful‘s October issue, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Maureen O’Hagan reported on how the program came into being, first through Richard Goerling, a lieutenant with the department. “We are so impacted by the toxicity of our profession, so consumed by our jobs, we don’t know what to do,” Goerling told O’Hagan. Goerling took up mindfulness himself a few years ago and after finding the practice helped him deal with stress and be more focused on the job, he was determined to bring the benefits to his fellow officers....

These apps make a promise: Rather than investing countless hours and dollars in mindfulness classes or mindfulness-based therapy, we can choose to meditate from the comfort of our smartphones. Users are flocking to mindfulness apps in hopes of cultivating kind attention to their own thoughts and feelings, and of reaping the mental and physical benefits that go along with mindfulness. But do they work? What does science say about mindfulness apps?...

Compared to others, how generous are you? 52% Say they’re average, while 45% consider themselves more generous than others and just 4% report being less generous than others. We’re not mathematicians here at Mindful, but something about this doesn’t quite add up. What time of year are you most likely to be generous? 88% Try to give throughout the year, while 8% tend to be more giving around the holidays, and less than 1% are most generous around tax season....

Using novel statistical models to analyze the responses of more than 800 men and women to over 2,000 emotionally evocative video clips, Keltner and his colleagues at UC Berkeley created a multidimensional, interactive map to show how feelings like envy, joy, pride, and sadness relate to each other. “We found that 27 distinct dimensions, not six, were necessary to account for the way hundreds of people reliably reported feeling in response to each video,” said study senior author Keltner, whose findings recently appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

Overcoming Life’s ‘Twisties’ and Turns When Simone Biles decided to withdraw from this year’s Olympic competition, it wasn’t just her physical well-being she was concerned about but her mental state as well. Her reason for withdrawing? The twisties. In an Instagram live, Biles gave a simplified definition for what the twisties were by saying, “Not having your body and mind in sync.” Athletes are typically seen as a beacon of strength, and the Olympic games is a stage where the strongest are sent to compete....

Researchers have identified a variety of reasons why it’s so hard to give up Facebook and eat more salads, as well as a ton of strategies for overcoming those barriers. Unfortunately, many of the December Do and Don’t Lists miss the big one, the game changer, and I’m not talking about the latest habit tracking app. I’m talking about self-compassion. The thing is, you’re probably going to fall off the wagon....

And by truth, I’m not talking about some moralistic parting of clouds and downward-shining declarations from on high. I’m not even referring to what most people are focused on when talking about “honesty” in relationships—not the absence of lying or casting around blame about the who, what, where, when and how of our daily doings and misdoings. No, I’m focused on big “T” truth that is always accurate, can never be dismissed or argued away, and is always available....

According to author and mindfulness teacher, Diana Winston, “awareness is a state of open, spacious, relaxed well-being where we’re deeply cognizant of what is happening without trying too hard.” Oftentimes we get so caught up in our busy lives that it can become difficult to fully engage in the present moment; awareness can help ground you in that present moment. If you’ve ever sat in nature and deeply listened to the breaking of sticks under your feet, the chirping of crickets in the distance or inhaled the scent of pine trees; chances are you’ve experienced one of the ways it means to be fully and effortlessly aware....