DIGITAL SAMPLER
View selected pages from Mindful’s February 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
contents
Features 34 No Blueprint, Just Love When he started MBSR, Jon Kabat-Zinn didn’t have a detailed plan—just passion and an inkling that lots of good would come of it. Now, 35 years later, he talks with us about the present and future of mindfulness. Sidebar: How to try less and be more p 38
Jon Kabat-Zinn
42 A Matter of Death and Life
34
High school seniors at The Harley School in Rochester, New York, have the option of taking a class called “hospice.” Most who sign up for it don’t know what they’re in for, but none of them forget the experience when it’s over. Jennifer Campbell reports. Sidebar: Teenagers share their experiences at hospice p 49
52 Finding the Space to Lead Janice Marturano, former vice president at General Mills, says making space is the key to effective and satisfying leadership. She shows us how to do that—whether we’re leading our careers, our families, or our communities. Sidebars: Two practices to connect you to your best leadership qualities. p 55, 58
60 The Tango Lesson
42 2 mindful February 2014
You might think the Argentine tango is simply the most seductive way to get across a dance floor. Tracy Picha discovers it’s also a great way to learn how to dance with life.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIGITTE BOUVIER (BOTTOM), JOSHUA SIMPSON (TOP), DUSTIN AKSLAND (OPPOSITE PAGE). ILLUSTRATION BY LUKE BEST.
“People often say, ‘I always figured meditation was something weird and mystical. If I had known what it really is, I would have started years ago.’”
Departments 4 Your Thoughts
22 Mindful/Mindless
6 Our Thoughts
Spray-on caffeine and a building that fries the sidewalk? Our take on who’s paying attention and who’s not.
8 Contributors
80 MindSpace
After a meditation retreat, Maira Kalman finds a new kind of happiness.
24 Body/Mind
11 Now Veterans find a place on Facebook • Cities learn to slow down • An antibullying program makes a difference • Get some tech support to learn meditation • A new documentary tracks how kindness travels • Enjoy snapping photos with your iPhone a little too much? • Advice on love— just in time for Valentine’s Day • The latest science news
20 Bookmark This The writings, recordings, and apps that are capturing our attention now.
Off the Couch Travis Eneix knew he was in for trouble if he didn’t change his habits. Tai chi saved his life.
26 Mind/Body Collisions of Creativity When it comes to creativity, says Sharon Begley, having “leaky” filters in our brains is good news.
30 One Taste A Humble Head Angela Mears treats cabbage with a little respect—we share the delicious result. Recipes by Béatrice Peltre
24
65 In Practice 66 Techniques Body Language When was the last time you gave your body a break? And we’re not talking about sleep. 67 At Work Scared and Doing It Anyway What to do when getting a promotion triggers fear; how to tell if that new company you’re interviewing with will be a good fit. 68 Ask Ms. Mindful How best to deal with difficult people in public; how to get your parents to talk about making a will; and why you’re not over your ex yet.
70 Insight
70
What Happens After Now? The more awareness we develop, says Barry Boyce, the richer our lives get—and the more capable we are of enriching the lives of others.
On our cover We talk with Jon KabatZinn, one of the pioneers bringing mindfulness into the mainstream. page 34 Photograph by Joshua Simpson
February 2014 mindful 3
your thoughts
Are there techniques to help with stress while on the road?
you wrote in What a great issue (December 2013). I especially enjoyed the article about Eileen Fisher—had no idea what a great woman she is professionally and personally. “All in the Same Boat” about the teenagers sharing five days and nights in a wooden sailboat was such an uplifting article to read. Looking forward to many more years of Mindful magazine! Joann Petrosky Denver, Pennsylvania
Q: I am a sales representative for a large manufacturer, and my job is very stressful. I often have drive time between sales calls. Are there any mindfulness techniques to help reduce stress while on the road? MELISSA MCCLAIN Atlanta, Georgia
A: On the road, you’re dealing with both the drive time and the well-known stress of the traveling salesperson. Long hours in a car alone can be taxing, then you have to get out and ask someone to buy something. And they often say no! In addition to listening to some good audio about mindfulness—there’s one for drivers called Awake at the Wheel—you can use the time for meditation-in-action practice. Pay gentle attention to your hands on the wheel, your body upright, and your bottom on the seat. When your mind wanders and your jaw clenches, come back to your body. Breathe easy. From time to time, notice the big sky.
connect To learn about future issues, sign up for our email newsletters at mindful.org. To share your feedback on this or other issues, email us with your full name, city, and state or province at mindful@mindful.org. You can also visit facebook.com/mindfulorg or tweet us @MindfulOnline. For subscription questions, email subscriptions@mindful.org. Letters chosen for publication may be edited for length and clarity. All submissions and manuscripts become the property of The Foundation for a Mindful Society.
4 mindful February 2014
Thank you for the informative and necessary article “To Pause and Protect” (October 2013). I am a meditation teacher and work with veterans experiencing PTSD. With a background as a prosecutor, I am aware of the extreme on-the-job stress, which is often not discussed within the ranks of our neighborhood police departments. Kudos to Lieutenant Goerling for bringing this life-changing practice to Hillsboro Police Department and to his department for being open enough to participate. Sara Erlbaum Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania
I won’t be renewing my subscription. I am finding the magazine to be just too sugar-coated and simplistic. Leafing through, I get the impression that just a little bit of mindfulness will solve all our problems. This, of course, is nonsense. Meditation can be really hard work. Your magazine would be a whole lot more meaningful if it explored the shadows and the dirt. Frank Forencich Leavenworth, Washington
I was intrigued by your “Take Five” editorial in the June 2013 issue. I was particularly interested by the benefits that meditation brought to your weekly meetings. I recently moved to New York and started work in a relatively conservative corporate environment. I found that if I take even five minutes to clear my mind and sit in silence before a meeting, I’m much more composed and relaxed throughout that meeting. I’m not in a position to change corporate culture just yet, but I’m thankful that you inspired me to bring mindfulness into my daily routine. Keep up the good work of not only writing about mindfulness but living it too. Jacob Hallac New York, New York
you answered How do you make your day more mindful? Be on the lookout for things to be grateful for and then take a minute to really appreciate whatever I find. Rosanne Hagel Gerritsen Facebook
Just breathe! And pay better attention to my surroundings! Liz Massey @AudioStory
Stop and listen. Sometimes we are more focused on our words and less on what people really say to us. Stefano Pace @StefanoPace5
Tell everyone who has supported me how much I appreciate them. KadampaDuck @kadampaduck
Sign Up for Mindful’s Newsletter Mindful is excited to bring you our new community newsletter, full of information to keep you tuned in to mindfulness news and events. Sign up at mindful.org/newsletter. We’d also like to send a big thank you to everyone who completed our reader survey!
VOLUME ONE, NUMBER 6, Mindful (ISSN 2169-5733, USPS 010-500) is published bimonthly for $29.95 per year USA, $39.95 Canada & 49.95 (US) international, by The Foundation for a Mindful Society, 1776 I St, NW, #90046, Washington, DC 20006 USA. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Mindful, PO Box 469018, Escondido, CA 92046. CANADIAN POSTMASTER: Send undeliverable copies to Mindful, 1660 Hollis St, Suite 701, Halifax, NS B3J 1V7 CANADA. Printed in U.S.A. © 2014 Foundation for a Mindful Society. All rights reserved.
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON LEE
you asked
our thoughts
Just the Beginning We are pleased to bring you issue six of Mindful, completing our first year of publication. Like any start-up, it’s been an intense, uncertain, and exciting ride—and we’re still here! That’s because of you, our readers. Mindful couldn’t flourish if it weren’t for your inquisitiveness and dedication to being mindful, which translates into support for Mindful and Mindful.org in so many ways. This will continue to be a wild ride, as the landscape for mindfulness is changing rapidly, so keep it coming. I’m so pleased this landmark issue features an exclusive interview with our friend Jon Kabat-Zinn talking about the state of mindfulness in the world. We launched Mindful after conversations with Jon about how we could support the emerging interest in mindfulness, so he’s been a thought partner from the beginning, and we’ve learned a lot from him. One conviction Jon has is also a core assumption underlying Mindful: “fundamental trust in people’s intelligence and intrinsic mindfulness.” Every week we see “intrinsic mindfulness” showing up in everyday life. Our job at Mindful is to help that along. If you’re a longtime mindfulness advocate, we want to support
6 mindful February 2014
your work and connect you to others. If you’re new to mindfulness, we want to give you an accessible introduction so you can experience its benefits— which continue to be confirmed in scientific studies. One way we do this is by having Mindful at grocery store checkouts. That may seem retro in a digital world, but it helps show that mindfulness has become a routine part of life in our society. Also, it brings mindfulness to new audiences. For example, the publisher of the largest law-enforcement publication in the U.S. discovered Mindful and asked if she could send our cover article about police practicing mindfulness to every police chief in the U.S. Our big initiative in year two will be the launch of Mindful video, bringing reports, news, and feature stories about mindfulness to your computers, tablets, and mobile phones. We’re excited about adding such a great medium for telling stories and increasing interactivity with our readership community. Thank you for being a part of Mindful and supporting us in so many ways. We’re here because of you. Stay tuned; it’s just the beginning. —Jim Gimian, Publisher jgimian@mindful.org
Barry Boyce Editor-in-Chief
Tracy Picha Editor
Jessica von Handorf Art Director
Megumi Yoshida Associate Art Director
Carsten Knox Associate Editor
Line Goguen-Hughes Assistant Editor
Stephany Tlalka Assistant Editor, Digital
Jane Doucet Copy Editor
James Gimian Publisher
Beth Wallace Associate Publisher, Advertising & Partnerships
Alan Brush Associate Publisher, Circulation
Andrew Karr Finance Director
Melvin McLeod Editorial Director
Daniel Scott Publishing Office Associate
Board of Advisors Susan Bauer-Wu, Ph.D., R.N., University of Virginia Jeffrey Brantley, M.D., Duke Integrative Medicine Mirabai Bush, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison Rich Fernandez, Ph.D., Founder, Wisdom Labs Soren Gordhamer, Wisdom 2.0 Patricia Jennings, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society Tim Ryan, United States Congress, Ohio, 13th District Diana Winston, Mindful Awareness Research Center, UCLA Organizations included for identification purposes only.
Advertising Inquiries Mary Beth Gaik, Peace Media 312-656-9260 mbgaik@peacemedia.biz Customer Service Subscriptions: Toll free: 1-855-492-1675 subscriptions@mindful.org Retail inquiries: 732-946-0112 Moving? Notify us six weeks in advance. We cannot be responsible for issues the post office does not forward. On occasion, we make our subscriber names and addresses available to select organizations we feel will be of interest to our readers. If you would prefer that your name and mailing address not be used in this way, contact us at our addresses listed right.
The Foundation for a Mindful Society An independent, nonprofit corporation. Publishers of Mindful and mindful.org. 1776 I Street, NW, 9th Floor Washington, DC 20006 USA Editorial & Central Business Office 1660 Hollis Street, Suite 703 Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 1V7 Canada mindful@mindful.org
We wish to thank our partner, the Hemera Foundation, without whose strategic guidance, expertise, and generous support the Mindful initiative would not be possible.
www.mindful.org
February 2014 mindful 7
now
Mindfulness practices help everyone involved in the bullying triad— the bully, the victim, and the witness. Janice Houlihan, left, and Laura Bakosh, cofounders of the nonprofit organization Inner Explorer, which offers mindfulness programs for schools.
Photograph by Dustin Aksland
February 2014 mindful 11
NEXT TIME you drink something today, drink it with gusto. Take a moment to really appreciate the refreshment (what a great word!). Find more on Twitter @mindinterrupter
now
Why Do Bullies Bully? Everyone knows how harmful bullying is. Even bullies know, because many of them experienced the suffering of being bullied themselves. So why does it persist? Laura Bakosh and Janice Houlihan are cofounders of the nonprofit organization Inner Explorer, which offers mindfulness programs for schools. They don’t think a copy of Lord of the Flies is enough to answer that question. The need is as urgent as ever. Despite the proliferation of anti-bullying programs and legislation in America, high rates of bullying persist. Incidents of repeated aggression and intimidation among children—some leading to suicide—continue to push their way into the nightly news. Bakosh and Houlihan say they know why anti-bullying efforts haven’t worked and how to address the problem more effectively. The cofounders of the Franklin, Massachussettsbased organization have been reviewing years of research about anti-bullying programs. They say many initiatives are
ineffective. While they may seem comprehensive—students learn how to define bullying, that the behavior is unacceptable, where to find help, etc.—this knowledge isn’t always helpful in the heat of the moment. In the moment when someone is being bullied, Bakosh says, “the emotional response is so strong that it overcomes the intellectual knowing.” The gap needs to be bridged between what students know and what they do. For that to happen, children need to be able to regulate themselves in a way that brings out their innate competencies—compassion, kindness, and empathy. “Mindfulness brings us closer to those innate skills and allows us the opportunity to bring them forth, to close that gap,” says Bakosh. “It’s really the discipline of the daily practice that is going to help in a way that’s sustainable.” Over time, Houlihan explains, mindfulness practices help everyone involved in the bullying triad—the bully, the victim, and the witness. By connecting with their deeper selves, bullies are more likely to develop awareness and the ability to regulate emotional responses by pausing before
they act. Victims develop resilience, and because of their newly developed selfconfidence may become less of a target. Lastly, bystanders develop a greater sense of compassion, which can inspire them to take action to help a victim.
In classrooms that implemented Inner Explorer’s mindfulness programs, early results show an estimated 50% reduction in reactive behavior.
Bakosh and Houlihan have research to back up their claims. During the 2012-13 school year, Inner Explorer conducted a randomized controlled trial of the kindergarten through fifth-grade classrooms that implemented their mindfulness programs. Early results show an estimated 50% reduction in reactive behavior. Bullying incidents, broken out as a separate category, were also reduced by half. Inner Explorer programs are based on the MindfulnessBased Stress Reduction pro-
gram and are audio-guided, allowing students and teachers to easily practice together for about 10 minutes every day. To date, there are instructors in 111 preschool and elementary classrooms in 12 schools in California, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, and New York teaching the program. Inner Explorer is in the process of creating programs for middle school and high school students as well. Houlihan says every institution that has sampled the programs so far has wanted to increase the number of classrooms involved. Inner Explorer could be described as the latest chapter in Bakosh and Houlihan’s 43-year friendship, which began in the first grade. It’s the result of their long-standing desire to run a business together that could “make a difference in the world.” Before they partnered on Inner Explorer, both women worked in corporate America. Houlihan went on to earn a master’s degree in education, and Bakosh, who has been a mindfulness practitioner for 20 years and is an MBSR teacher, has a master’s in transpersonal psychology. ●
“It’s more important to be kind than clever and good-looking.”
As part of the Inner Explorer program, children learn to slow themselves down and regulate their emotions.
12 mindful February 2014
—Ricky Gervais, as Derek, from the Netflix series of the same name
STILL IMAGE COURTESY OF INNER EXPLORER
OVERHEARD
Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s February 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
30 mindful February 2014
Recipes and photographs by BĂŠatrice Peltre. Find more of her work at latartinegourmande.com
one taste
A Humble Head Raw, steamed, stewed, sautéed, braised, or pickled: cabbage shines in plenty of supporting roles. For maximum enjoyment, treat it with some respect. By Angela Mears Like opera singing, cabbages can be sublimely pleasing or ridiculously unpleasant to the senses. It depends on the preparation. One of the best things I’ve ever eaten was a humble dish of marinated raw cabbage served at a Szechuan restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown. The chili-flecked amuse-bouche arrived at our table almost immediately, better than a basket of warm bread, giving off an irresistible aroma of numbing chili oil, vinegar, and soy. It was unutterably good—so good that the restaurant got wise and stopped giving it away for free. Cabbage also starred in the worst meal I’ve ever eaten. Served in the kitchen of a childhood friend by her indifferent
father, the heap of unseasoned red cabbage on my plate had been boiled for so long it had started to yellow. I hadn’t seen an ingredient treated with so little respect—and, thankfully, I haven’t since. That was the first time I encountered the unpleasant odor of overcooked cabbage. It comes from hydrogen sulfide, the same noxious gas produced by hot springs, volcanoes, and some well water. In large quantities, hydrogen sulfide can be corrosive and quite poisonous. In smaller doses, it’s a smell you just don’t want in your kitchen. But even sulfurous clouds have their silver linings. When not evaporated away by too much boiling, the compounds that give cabbages their distinct stink are thought to be powerful cancer fighters. Red cabbages in particular, with their high antioxidant levels, have earned a place among nature’s most nutrient-rich superfoods. Their dense-leaved, purple-veined heads also contain healthy amounts of beta-carotene, vitamin C, and fiber. Cabbages peak in cold weather months, when the chill brings out their sweetness, but they can be enjoyed
any time of year, in both winter soups and summer slaws. They’re adaptable and versatile—silky or crunchy, bland or bright, pungent or sweet. Split open a head of red, and you’ll find an intricately veined, jewel-toned cross section that looks like white sunlight bursting through shattered stained glass. There’s just something about the mix of humbleness and utter beauty. And the red stuff is just as versatile as the more common green. A resourceful cook can summon up countless recipes from a single head. There’s warm and chewy red cabbage braised with bacon, the crunchiness of a vinegary coleslaw, or the bite and beauty of an entrée-worthy salad. Above all, though, I love cabbage at its plainest, sautéed with butter, sprinkled with salt. It’s proof that even the simplest ingredient, treated well, can become a feast. ● Angela Mears writes about food at thespinningplate.com
Red Cabbage and Apple Stew (Serves 4) 2 tbsp butter 1 red onion, chopped ½ medium red cabbage, finely sliced with a mandoline (about 6 cups) 2 red cooking apples, peeled, cored, and diced 1 cup fresh apple juice 1 bay leaf 2 tbsp red wine vinegar 2 tbsp chopped parsley Salt and pepper, to taste
In a large pot, heat the butter. When melted, add the red onion. Cook over medium to low heat for 3 minutes or until fragrant, making sure not to brown the onion. Add the red cabbage and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until it softens. Add the apples, apple juice, bay leaf, and red wine vinegar. Season with salt and pepper, cover, and let the mixture simmer, stirring occasionally, for an hour to an hour and a half. Sprinkle with parsley and serve to accompany grilled meat.
Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s February 2014 mindful 31 February 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
body/mind
Name: Travis Eneix Age: 43 Activity: Tai chi Location: San Francisco
mind/body
Collisions of Creativity The capacity to generate original ideas is, arguably, the most important cognitive trait that human beings possess. No wonder more neuroscientists and psychologists are working to understand it better. By Sharon Begley
Sharon Begley is the senior health and science correspondent at Reuters, author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, and coauthor with Richard Davidson of The Emotional Life of Your Brain.
26 mindful February 2014
Even Sigmund Freud, the modern world’s best-known investigator of the mind, admitted he was befuddled by human creativity. His colleagues and those who followed in his footsteps agreed that creativity was something mysterious and out of reach. But today’s scientists are not giving up so easily. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and others are probing as never before the mechanisms that underlie
those “eureka!” moments of creativity. These range from the most momentous, like the moment when some unknown Paleolithic genius discovered how to light a fire, to the most routine, such as when your third-grader announces he needs a dinosaur costume for school tomorrow and you come up with a bedsheet-andhanger T. rex. Early research on the neural basis of creativity focused on what scientists call “small-c creativity,” the kind that allows you to crush that dinosaur assignment. To probe small-c creativity, researchers monitor people’s brains when, for instance, they search for a word that
goes with sauce, pine, and crab. (That would be “apple,” by the way.) But that kind of creativity isn’t necessarily predictive of “big C creativity,” the kind that brings forth math proofs and maps of Middle Earth. Big C had long been out of reach, scientifically: it’s one thing to put someone in a brain-imaging device and ask her to come up with 20 uses for a brick; it’s quite another to ask her to toss off a Keats-quality sonnet. But with the growing recognition that the capacity to generate novel and original ideas “is perhaps the most important cognitive trait that human beings possess,” as neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen of the University of Iowa has put it, →
Read the rest of this article inRosenqvist Mindful’s Illustration by Malin February 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
health
no blueprint, just love In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn recruited chronically ill patients not responding well to traditional treatments to participate in his newly formed eightweek stress-reduction program. Now, 35 years later, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and its offshoots have entered the mainstream of health care, scientific study, and public policy. We talk to the health and well-being pioneer about why mindfulness has attracted so much attention and why it will continue to do so.
Photographs by Joshua Simpson
Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s February 2014 mindful 35 February 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
health
In early 2005, I met Jon Kabat-Zinn at his home in Massachusetts. I came as a meditation practitioner and journalist with a bit of skepticism about MBSR. I was curious whether the attempt to bring secular mindfulness to the broader society could be effective. In a lengthy, impassioned conversation, I began to be persuaded of its validity and power, and as a result we started down on a path of further investigation that led us to Mindful and mindful.org. Since then, we’ve met scores of people who are bringing this approach to mindfulness into many different contexts and helping all sorts of people. And Jon and his many colleagues have just kept on going, bringing mindfulness into every corner of life. I returned to Jon’s home recently, on the occasion of the publication of a revised and updated edition of his groundbreaking book Full Catastrophe Living, to talk about his work. Fittingly, we began with a little bit of silence and then embarked on a stimulating conversation about the present and future of the practice he has devoted his life and heart to. —Barry Boyce Editor-in-Chief, Mindful
“If there’s an instruction manual for being human, then Western science and medicine have supplied one part of it, and the contemplative traditions have supplied another—the part that has to do with discovering and cultivating our deep interior resources.”
36 mindful February 2014
Mindful: Did you ever think the work that started in a modest clinic in a spare room of a hospital in Central Massachusetts would become so influential? Jon Kabat-Zinn: In a word, yes. I never thought of this work as a small thing. I don’t think of myself as a big deal, but I always thought of this work as a very big deal. It wasn’t just about thinking that meditation had a modest contribution to make to Western medicine. MBSR was built on the conviction that the insights, wisdom, and compassion of the meditative traditions were equal in import and magnitude to the great discoveries about human life we’ve made in the West. If there’s an instruction manual for being human, then Western science and medicine have supplied one part of it, and the contemplative traditions have supplied another, the part that has to do with discovering and cultivating our deep interior resources. My hope was that by starting a stress-reduction clinic based on relatively intensive training in mindfulness meditation and yoga—and their applications in everyday living—we could document how these practices might have a profound effect on the health and well-being of individuals. The larger purpose was to effect a kind of public-health intervention that would ultimately move the bell curve of the entire society. And it grew to the point where we now talk about mindfulness-based interventions in all sorts of areas— depression, childbirth, education, addiction, to name just a few. We didn’t have a specific blueprint, but I am very gratified that so many developments have been happening on so many different fronts. It’s really a matter of planting seeds. You never really know what will sprout from these seeds and how they will spread. That’s the beauty of it. It’s based on not-knowing—approaching the world inquisitively, with a fresh mind. If we had come in with a plan, with an ideology, with all the answers, I think it would have remained small. Instead, those of us involved in this work have paid close attention to just a few essential elements. One is that mindfulness is not a special state you achieve through a trick or a technique. It is a way of being. I have a lot of faith that if people just learn how to be in the present through simple mindfulness meditation, then the practice does the work of transformation and healing. We do not need to do it for them. People are so creative and intrinsically intelligent that given a chance, they perceive the truth within their own experience. “When I get attached to something, I suffer,” they realize, “and when I don’t get attached, I don’t.” What else makes MBSR work?
health
The eight weeks of the MBSR curriculum offer a reliable protocol that is used in many studies of the effects of mindfulness meditation practice. People who have taught it a lot have seen that it has an integrity of its own. If they try to switch things around—a little more of this, a little less of that, take this out, put this in—they find it isn’t as effective. Yet it’s only a framework. It’s only as effective as what the teacher brings to it and how he or she “holds the space,” as we say. It simply will not work if it is scripted or formulaic. If the teacher doesn’t feel competent in one of the elements, say yoga, it doesn’t work if they bring in an outside expert. They have to get the training and embody it themselves. Everything that is taught has to be lived. Life is the curriculum. As a teacher, you are trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed in words. Mindfulness is also heartfulness—you need poetry as much as prose. What truly makes mindfulness training work is love. If the teacher holding the class is profoundly in love with what they are doing and with the people in the class in a fundamental way, it will work. If they are not, it will peter out.
“Mindfulness is not a special state you achieve through a trick or a technique. It is a way of being.”
20,000
The benefits of mindfulness go far beyond stress reduction. Why did you call your program that, and are you still satisfied with your choice?
meditators
I wanted it to speak to universal experience. Everybody can relate to stress. It’s a common English word and a common experience. The science on stress is proving that it was a good choice. We find out more every day about the negative effects of stress on the body, on the immune system, on aging, and so on. Likewise, there is a correspondingly strong interest in how we can develop resiliency in the face of stress, which is a benefit of mindfulness practice.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEGUMI YOSHIDA (TOP); STUART MCCOY, FROM THE NOUN PROJECT (BOTTOM)
More than 20,000 people have completed the MBSR program at the UMass Stress Reduction Clinic and countless more in other locations. Source: Center for Mindfulness
477
You often say that mindfulness is not about attaining benefits or fixing problems—that it’s about discovering there is more right with us than wrong with us. Yet a “stress-reduction” program can seem very benefit-oriented.
mindfulness studies in 2012 The number of research publications on mindfulness per year grew from zero in 1980 to 477 in 2012.
500
Source: mindfulexperience.org
0 1980
2012
That is an unavoidable paradox. There are tremendous benefits that arise from mindfulness practice, but it works precisely because we don’t try to attain benefit. Instead, we befriend ourselves as we are. We learn how to drop in on ourselves, visit, and hang out in awareness. It’s essential when you’re teaching mindfulness to remember this and embody it in your own way of being. People come to a mindfulness course because they’re in pain or angry or depressed or afraid. The one thing they want is to get somewhere else, so the teacher needs to continually convey that mindfulness is not about getting anywhere. The teacher’s own practice and way of holding him- or herself →
February 2014 mindful 37
education
A Matter of Death and Life 42 mindful February 2014
At The Harley School in Rochester, New York, senior-year students who sign up for hospice class learn to care for people who are dying. These are lessons in compassion unlike any other. By Jennifer Campbell Photographs by Brigitte Bouvier
Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s February 2014 mindful 43 February 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
in practice
70 mindful February 2014
insight
What Happens After Now? Being in the here and now is what mindfulness is all about. Yes and no, says Barry Boyce. It’s also about being aware of what’s inside and outside, past, present, and future.
Illustrations by Luke Best
Once we steady our mind with mindfulness, our awareness shines a light on not just the present moment, but where we’ve come from and where we’re going.
Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s February 2014 mindful 71 February 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
It’s who you are You want the best for your family and friends. You enjoy work that is meaningful and satisfying. You’re dedicated to a more caring and sustainable society. You know the simple practice of being in the moment brings out the best in who you are. You are mindful. And this is your magazine.
When you subscribe to Mindful, you will: • Discover practical, effective tools for everyday living • Learn about the latest brain science and the many ways mindfulness is changing our society • Enjoy better health and relief from stress • Improve your performance and capacity at work • Deepen the relationships in your life • Be inspired by stories of other mindful people like you Mindful is the groundbreaking new magazine dedicated to helping you live mindfully.
Don’t miss the next great issue of Mindful. Mail the attached card or call toll-free 1-855-492-1675. Subscribe online at www.mindful.org.
Subscribe Now
mindful.org 1-855-492-1675