DIGITAL SAMPLER View selected pages from Mindful’s June 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
contents
Features
Ariana Huffington talks to Mindful’s Barry Boyce about how personal tribulations started her on a journey to mindfulness, and why she is convinced that its benefits will change the world. Infographic: An at-a-glance look at the dramatic consequences of stress, distraction, sleep deprivation, and lack of down time p 38
“If you learn how mindfulness can improve how you feel and you take up the practice for that reason, that’s a great beginning.” –Arianna Huffington 42 The Amazing, Tumultuous, Wild, Wonderful, Teenage Brain
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Renowned neuropsychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel explains the brain science behind teenage angst and how to turn parental concerns into understanding and confrontation into connection. Sidebars: Three teenagers talk about how meditation has helped them
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Second installment of our Getting Started series
52 How Meditating Helps You With Difficult Emotions Helpful practices to learn how to tame raw, difficult, emotions, and foster feelings that are positive, powerful, and beneficial.
60 Still Curious After All These Years Sue Moon’s take on how retaining a vivid sense of curiosity is an invaluable tool for aging well— and staying alive and vital.
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PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF DAMON SCHELEUR/THE HUFFINGTON POST (TOP), BY BÉATRICE PELTRE (BOTTOM), BY KARSTEN THORMAEHLEN (OPPOSITE PAGE). ILLUSTRATION BY NOMOCO.
34 Burnout, Tension, Tunnel Vision …are Not the Keys to Success
Departments 4 Your Thoughts
24 Body Mind
Readers write, tweet, post.
Blade Lover Even though Erin Sharaf doesn’t always manage the jumps she used to, she still skates in the moment, with pure joy.
6 Our Thoughts Our editor-in-chief shares his thoughts from a major meeting of mindful educators in San Diego.
News from the arts, technology, education, neuroscience, and psychology, including a roundup of current research.
20 Bookmark This
30 Mindful Eating
The writings, recordings, and apps that are capturing our attention.
22 Mindful-Mindless Utah solves homelessness while feckless gunowners keep airport security busy. Our take on who’s paying attention and who’s not.
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Artist Maira Kalman imagines what it’s like to be in the shoes of a police officer.
26 Mind Science The Truth About Mirror Neurons When researchers discovered “mirror neurons,” they quickly became the go-to explanation for empathy. Now, says Sharon Begley, the evidence that human beings have them is sketchy at best.
9 Now
80 MindSpace
The Good Egg Eggs are versatile, nutritional powerhouses that are welcome at any meal. Andrea Miller reminds us that although their form is deceptively simple, they can be amazingly complex. Recipes by Béatrice Peltre.
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65 In Practice 66 Techniques Tuning In Tips on how to be a good listener to yourself so you can be a better listener to others. 67 At Work Beat the Jitters; Learn to Delegate Michael Carroll and Mariann Johnson answer your workplace questions. 68 Ms. Mindful on Relationships Provide Feedback, Not Payback Practical advice on how to remain kind while delivering difficult information.
70 Insight
Taking Tension Out of Attention Chris McKenna suggests ways to go from tense and strained to relaxed and focused.
On our cover Arianna Huffington extols the virtues of mindfulness and the third metric—well-being. page 34 Photograph courtesy of Damon Scheleur/ The Huffington Post
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your thoughts
Are you sure this cushion isn’t for me?
you wrote in I was pleased to find your magazine, and even more pleased that Sandra Oh was on the cover. My wife and I love her work, especially since we are vegans and she practices the vegan lifestyle. It is exciting to see a magazine with great articles on mindfulness with emphasis on compassion. John Mooter Cincinnati, Ohio
Thanks for the gorgeous story and photos in “A Matter of Death and Life” (February 2014). I read it on my lunch break while working at home and felt the sense of connection that was so often mentioned by the students. I am keeping hospice care in the front of my mind as an option from now on. Nikki Narratil Minneapolis, Minnesota
Q: Do you have any tips on integrating pets into meditation practice? DANICE CASHIN Watertown, NY
A: One of the great things about mindfulness meditation practice is that it shows us that being present doesn’t require extraordinary feats of concentration. We don’t have to fight off distractions like a knight slaying dragons. If your dog or cat comes into the room where you’re meditating and barks and meows and brushes up against you or settles down on a part of your cushion, no big deal. Let it be. What works less well is to interrupt your session to relate to them. If that’s what’s going to happen, try to find a way to avoid their interrupting your practice.
connect To learn about future issues and upcoming events, 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.
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I recently attended the Bridging Hearts and Minds of Youth Conference at the University of California-San Diego Center for Mindfulness. I got the sense from the conference and from Mindful magazine that this is an exciting time for the young field of mindfulness. Groundbreaking research is being done on mindfulness and its positive effects on mood regulation, academic success, attention and overall well-being for our children, teachers, parents, and neighborhoods. I think it’s great that mindfulness challenges us to examine the intention we are bringing to our relationships, jobs, and interactions with others. As mindfulness continues to grow, I believe we will begin to see shifts in our society: people will feel less stressed and more resilient.
you answered What’s your favorite kind of—formal or informal— mindfulness practice? I find that lying flat on my back with one hand on my heart to feel my heartbeat and one on my stomach to feel my breath works really well to get me grounded. Jennifer Horton Chapel Hill, North Carolina
I like to lay down on the bed with my headphones and a mindfulness app. Most of the time, I’ll do a body scan meditation. Marc Roelofs Veenendaal, Utretcht, Netherlands
Loving kindness meditation while I’m commuting makes for a stress-alleviating transition to and from home to work. Deb Kay Winnipeg, Manitoba
Lately, I’ve been trying to focus on one breath at a time and assess its depth and quality: is it natural and flowing? Or constricted and manipulated? Tom Fandre Los Gatos, California
I wanted to let you know that Mindful is the one periodical that I read cover to cover. I get a lot out of the stories on mindfulness science, lifestyle advice, and in-depth articles about other meditators practicing mindfulness. Can I suggest including ideas for meditation teachers to incorporate into their classes—that would be a much-appreciated addition!
My meditation “routine” varies. Sometimes, I love an early morning or late night seat. Other times, I prefer a moving meditation, like paddle boarding on the ocean. My favorite meditation happens when I remember to connect with my breath in moments that are unexpectedly stressful, like when someone runs a stop sign or a difficult conversation happens.
Jeffrey Thornton Hendersonville, North Carolina
Amanda Shepherd Long Beach, California
Katie Kenefick Edina, Minnesota
VOLUME TWO, NUMBER 2, 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
Barry Boyce Editor-in-Chief
Pamela Johnson Managing Editor
Carsten Knox Associate Editor
Stephany Tlalka Assistant Editor, Digital
Jessica von Handorf Art Director
Megumi Yoshida Associate Art Director
James Gimian Publisher
Beth Wallace Associate Publisher, Advertising & Partnerships
Alan Brush Associate Publisher, Circulation Melvin McLeod Editorial Director
Never Too Cool to Be Schooled San Diego is my new favorite place. For one thing, my hotel’s pool was designed by Olympian (and Tarzan-portrayer) Johnny Weissmuller. I could roll out of bed, swing open the double doors, and dive into a pool heated by solar cells. To add color and verve, the hotel was hosting a drag queen convention. There was discussion of jumping into the pool in gowns. San Diego is also world capital of the taquito, a cigar-sized tortilla roll filled with beans or cheese or meat. Mexican cannoli. What’s not to love? What’s also great about San Diego is that it’s home to UCSD’s Center for Mindfulness, which was sponsoring a gathering of educators using mindfulness in their schools. The highlight for me was taking part in a discussion about how to talk about mindfulness to people who aren’t quite sure what it means. In our circle were several teachers, principals, a mother who serves on the board of her public school, and college faculty. No group of theorists, these were pragmatic folks who deal with students, parents, and administrators. They are people who are interested in mindfulness as a result of a clear and present need they’ve felt, and they continue to feel it daily.
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As we batted around experiences of talking with people about mindfulness, several simple guidelines emerged: 1. There is no textbook definition of mindfulness—it’s not a thing; it’s experiential, so speak from your experience. 2. If someone wants to know about mindfulness, listen to them more than you talk; find out what matters to them. Speak to their needs—don’t sell it as if it were a product. 3. Don’t preach and proselytize. That’s a sure way to turn newcomers off. 4. Cite promising scientific research but don’t overstate it. Science moves slowly. Research into mindfulness is in its early stages, and results are promising, but much more work needs to be done. Science and cheerleading don’t mix. It’s inspiring to see such hard-working people taking time to reflect wisely on what they’re doing. As things were wrapping up (taquito time!), Cindy Marten, the San Diego school superintendent, made a surprise visit to offer her support to the teachers and assure them that their work is not a fad. Mindfulness has a real role in our schools. —Barry Boyce, Editor-in-Chief barry@mindful.org
Daniel Scott Publishing Office Associate
Edward Boyce Associate Publisher, New Media Andrew Karr Finance Director
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., University of Virginia 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.
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June 2014 mindful 7
now
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHLOE EDWARDS / MILLENNIUM IMAGES, UK
News and Reviews from the Mindful World
Contents Profile 10 News 11 Research Roundup 19 Bookmark This 20 Mindful–Mindless 22
June 2014 mindful 9
Tired? Stop what you’re doing. Give in to the tiredness totally. Drop head, relax shoulders. Now look up, refreshed. Repeat if needed. Find more on Twitter @mindinterrupter
now
john powell’s Affirmative Mindfulness University of California, Berkeley, and is director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, where his work is mostly in social justice. Born and raised in Detroit in a Christian family—his father is a retired minister—he saw social problems in the city around him. He says it was easy getting angry about those things. “I don’t think anger is necessarily bad,” he says. “In fact, I like Dr. King’s notion of righteous indignation. In some ways it feels good, the power associated with anger. But when we have contemplative practices, self-reflection, when we’re quiet, it’s harder to sustain. Instead we become sad because our connectivity, our shared-ness, is being violated.” In a recent talk to students, powell suggested creating a universal circle of human concern, with everyone in it—even people who are racist. “What’s important with this work, and it’s not easy to do, is to really connect with a person who is primed to be your enemy,” he says. “You can see an expression of life in them, and see yourself in them.” One of the biggest problems we face is that society is structured to keep people
john a. powell, director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. To counter our tendency to segregate, powell encourages his students to use quiet contemplation to experience a more fluid sense of self that connects us to our fellow human beings, regardless of their racial identity.
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apart. It makes us afraid of anyone and anything that seems different. “Think about how we organize our physical spaces. We segregate. And when we see someone who doesn’t belong in our space, we have heightened fear. We don’t even like the idea of public anymore. Public is too messy—too many people who are not our brothers and sisters. We want private.”
. . . porches on houses used to be primarily in the front, in the public, shared space, but now the back deck is preferred, a private enclave where permission is required to enter.
powell observes that porches on houses used to be primarily in the front, in the public, shared space, but now the back deck is preferred, a private enclave where permission is required to enter. Where mindfulness can play a role is in helping us engage with who we really are, diminishing those anxieties about others. It can affect the way we identify ourselves, too. powell encourages us to embrace “the fluidity of self. Believing in a permanent sense of self can make things quite scary. Can you embrace a softer, fluid, social self? Rather than prescribe it, I would say let’s relax and observe. If we really get quiet, we’re able to see different expressions of ourselves come forward.” And while “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, powell worries that our concept of happiness is too often defined in opposition to the idea of pain or discomfort. “I think, in some ways, the challenge is to be present with suffering, both our own and others. I think we often turn away from suffering, but when we do we’re not getting the lessons that it teaches us. As a result, we can even lose the capacity to be open and compassionate. “Mindfulness allows us to hold the suffering and the joy at the same time. But it doesn’t hold us.” ●
PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM BLOCK
At 6'3", john a. powell (who spells his name without capitals) is a strong presence. He tells a story of waiting for an elevator in a Boston office building recently. A white woman in her 30s entered first, and he followed, but before the doors closed, she hastily exited. “I had a rush of emotions,” he says. “And, obviously, I don’t know what was happening. Maybe she forgot something.” He pauses, then adds, “but I don’t think so.” As a young man he would have been angry—at the situation and the woman. “But now, I was sad,” he says. “And, at the same time, I knew it was complicated—I could feel what she must be going through, to be afraid of a tall black man.” Powerful fears can segregate us, separate us, powell believes. Mindfulness can help people overcome these fears and the anger and racism they generate. In fact, he sees being mindful as a way to connect people—even when some of us would prefer to stay distinctly apart. Contemplative practices have allowed powell that perspective, and they inform his profession. He’s a lawyer and former national legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, teaches law at
Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s June 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
body mind
Blade Lover Focus on: Erin Sharaf
Even though I can’t always complete the jumps I used to, I still manage to stay balanced and focused. In the movement and in the flow, everything else falls away and I skate with pure joy.
Name: Erin Sharaf Age: 46 Profession: Clinical Instructor, Northeastern University Activity: Figure Skating Location: Boston, Massachusetts
mind science
The Trouble With Mirror Neurons When researchers discovered neurons in monkey brains that fired when an action was performed or observed, they were dubbed “mirror neurons.” And they quickly became the go-to explanation for empathy. Decades later, says Sharon Begley, the evidence that human beings have them is sketchy at best. 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.
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In 1992, scientists at Italy’s University of Parma announced the genuinely exciting discovery that certain neurons in the premotor cortex of macaques fire under two quite different conditions: when the monkeys execute a specific action like reaching for food and when they merely observe an experimenter performing that
action. Until then, the textbook wisdom in neuroscience had been that brain cells execute an action or observe one—not both. The Parma find seemed to show that “cells in the motor system fire when I see you make a movement, and they’re the same ones that fire when I make that movement,” according to neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni of the University of California, Los Angeles. “We didn’t think the brain was organized this way.” In 1996, these cells got their intriguing moniker, reflecting that the neurons “mirrored” observed behavior by firing as if the observer were not just seeing the action but also executing it. It was like a starter’s pistol had gone off in the neuroscience lounge.
The discovery of mirror neurons would launch a “revolution” in understanding empathy and cooperation, predicted one researcher. Mirror neurons were “the driving force” behind the “great leap forward” in brain evolution, claimed another. They “will provide a unifying framework and explain a host of mental abilities that hitherto remained mysterious,” asserted a third, calling these cells “the neurons that shaped civilization.” Other researchers asserted that mirror neurons spurred the development of language (the human analogue of the monkeys’ premotor region is Broca’s area, which is involved in producing spoken language) and of theory of mind, our ability to infer →
Read the restIllustration of this article Mindful’s by Gavinin Potenza June 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
Incredible eggs are nutritional powerhouses: • contain all 9 essential amino acids necessary to form complete protein. • have only about 75 calories per egg. • provides 7 g of the highest quality protein and 14 key nutrients (including vitamins A, B2, B6, B12, folic acid, choline, iron, calcium, and potassium). Source: WebMD
Recipes and photographs by Béatrice Peltre. Find more of her work at latartinegourmande.com
mindful eating
The Good Egg Scrumptious eggs can make all sorts of dishes. Andrea Miller reminds us that although their form is deceptively simple, they can be amazingly complex. I started collecting eggs when I was ten. The first one I ever got—made of green marble—had belonged to my mother. Others in my collection are made of cedar, cut glass, polished stone. One is engraved with the Chinese character for happiness. Another, from the Middle East, is painted with tiny camels. My favorite teacher collected decorative eggs and he inspired me to do the same. But my reasons went deeper than imitation. That is, I was fascinated by the freedom in the form. Though the creators of my eggs all worked within the confines of one basic shape, they crafted endless variety in color and texture and image. There is potency in this form. Eggshells, largely composed of calcium carbonate, are a natural marvel— at once fragile and herculean. Tap an egg sideways on the rim of a bowl and
its contents are yours for the scrambling. Nonetheless, if you squeeze an egg in your hand, you’ll feel the unbroken strength of its double arches. Eggs keep moisture in; they keep moisture out. They’re food in their own perfectly sealed containers. And between white and yolk, eggs are nutritional powerhouses, high in protein, low in fat. But, for me, the most amazing thing about eggs is the feeling I get from resting one in my palm. The fit is so perfect that there is no chicken and egg dilemma. With my fingers curled around the smooth form, I understand it as both pinnacle and promise. This, I believe, is why protestors hurl eggs. Beyond the wet mess, an egg is a nugget of power. As much as I’ve always appreciated their esthetics, I didn’t always relish eating eggs. Now, however, I stock my fridge with flats, not cartons; I can’t get enough. Some people say that when you crave a particular food, it’s because your body lacks what that food is packing, so perhaps my current consumption is rooted in a need for complete protein, for vitamins A, B, and E. I suspect, though, it’s more about pleasure than health.
I started buying free-range eggs from my local farmers market because of two ugly facts: In factory farms, hens are crammed into cages so small that they can’t even spread their wings; and their beaks are frequently cut off—without anesthesia—so that in their distress they don’t injure each other. But ethics aside, the large brown eggs the farmer sells me are also simply better, tastier. Crack a poor or mediocre quality egg onto a hot griddle, and the white will spread thin and wide. In contrast, the eggs I buy at the farmers market have such thick whites that the yolks sit high, like perky suns. Not too long ago, I perfected my technique: Since a cold egg will break in hot water, I begin by warming one in my pocket. Next I boil it for exactly five minutes and crack it quickly open with a spoon. I add a sprinkle of salt, a dash of pepper, and then I tuck into the creamy richness—the incomparable yellow on yellow of butter melting into a hot yolk. ● Andrea Miller is the editor of the anthology Right Here with You: Bringing Mindful Awareness into Our Relationships.
Deviled Eggs with Fish Roe and Smoked Paprika Makes 24 12 large eggs 1 ½ tsp Dijon mustard ⅓ cup mayonnaise Juice of ½ lemon Sea salt and pepper Smoked paprika, to taste 2 tbsp fish roe 2 tbsp chopped chives Olive oil, to drizzle
Place eggs carefully in a pot and cover with water. Once the water is simmering, cook for 8 minutes. Place in an ice water bath and cool. Peel the eggs. Using a sharp knife, slice eggs in halves, lengthwise. Using a small spoon, scoop yolks into a small bowl. Place egg white halves on a serving platter. Mash up egg yolks and stir in mustard, mayonnaise, and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon yolk mixture into egg halves (or pipe in using a pastry bag). Finish with a dash of paprika, fish roe, and chopped chives.
Read the rest of this article Mindful’s June 2014in mindful 31 June 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
well-being
BURNOUT TENSION TUNNEL VISION …are not the keys to success
When she collapsed from exhaustion, injuring her head, Arianna Huffington had a rude awakening. She’d been measuring success without considering well-being—a mistake many of us make, including the most influential people in the country. Talking with Mindful’s Barry Boyce in her office, the media magnate shares her thoughts on the changes we need for a more fulfilling life, why she started HuffPo’s “Third Metric” campaign, and what her new book, Thrive, is all about.
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well-being
Mindful: Why are you so strongly motivated to promote the idea of a “third metric”? Arianna Huffington: Several trends have been converging that demonstrate that the time has come to put much more emphasis on well-being in our lives—personally, professionally, societally. For one thing, we’re beginning to recognize in larger and larger numbers that the way we’ve run our lives and the way we’ve worked is not sustainable. We’re paying a heavy price for the way we’ve been living. Three-quarters of health care costs in the United States are now for chronic stress-related diseases, and the numbers are similar right around the globe. A second trend is the principle that it is necessary for us to include an inner focus in our lives has acquired scientific legitimacy. Through the work of people like neuroscientist Richie Davidson we have data and fMRI images (functional magnetic resonance imaging) that demonstrate the beneficial effect of meditation and mindful living on our brains, on our overall health, and on our ability to make critical decisions with insight and foresight, rather than expedience. A third major trend is our growing desire to take charge of our own lives in order to increase our happiness and well-being—and technology can be a big help in that. Technology has made it harder to be mindful and easier to be trapped in the little world of our devices, but it has also made it possible for us to track sleep, movement, and food intake. We can research the data of our own behavior. Because they involve taking personal responsibility for our well-being, do you think programs to promote mindfulness and well-being can transcend the culture wars? Absolutely. These campaigns go completely beyond left and right. For me, the entry point into a bigger conversation is the notion of success. As long as our culture defines success as money and power, we’re stuck on a treadmill of stress, sleep deprivation, and
In a culture that defines success as money and power, we’re stuck on a treadmill of stress, sleep deprivation, and burnout.
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burnout. When I collapsed in April 2007, I was—by our society’s definition—very successful, but by any sane definition of success, I was not. I was lying in a pool of blood, having struck my head, and had to go for a battery of tests to see what was wrong with me. It turned out to be burnout and exhaustion, but it could have been much worse. It seems that leaders who have this traditional view of success become addicted to stress and adrenaline. We believe we’re making sound decisions because we’re pouring all of our energy into it. How can we reverse that kind of addiction? Different people have different entry points. For many, it’s a health wakeup call. For example, Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, had a skiing accident, and after a year of using narcotics to manage pain, he discovered meditation, yoga, and acupuncture. Following that, he wanted to integrate them into the lives of his 34,000 employees. But it doesn’t have to be a traumatic health event. It can emerge when someone reads poetry that resonates with them or a scientific study that makes sense, or simply realizes that they want to make fundamental changes in their life—because the life they’ve been living is not sustainable. Everyone will have their own moment of truth. And what I wanted to do in writing Thrive is accelerate this conversation. Some commentators have felt that mindfulness is no more than a fad. Esquire, for example, listed “being mindful” as one of the 27 things to give up in 2014 at the same time that The Huffington Post declared it to be the year of being mindful. Why, in your view, isn’t it just a fad that will pass? Anyone who is declaring it a fad must obviously not be aware of all the scientific findings. People can always deny the evidence whether it’s on global warming or mindfulness or the earth being round, but the majority of people who take the time to look at the evidence and make changes realize that Socrates’ dictum that “The unexamined life is not worth living,” is not a matter of dispute. In my commencement speech at Smith College I ended by saying “upward, onward, and inward.” We need to continue going upward and onward and engaging in our work and in the life of our community but at the same time we need to go inward. By including wisdom, wonder, and generosity in your definition of the third metric, it’s clear that you’re not talking about simply having a relaxation technique, but about genuinely inquiring into your life and circumstances. Yet some people are skeptical of programs within corporations because they feel that they may just be tied to trying to increase productivity. How would you respond to that critique? →
Finding Wonder Excerpted from Thrive by Arianna Huffington
Museums and galleries remain among the few oases that can deliver what has become increasingly rare in our world: the opportunity to disconnect from our hyperconnected lives and experience the feeling of wonder. Museums are where we go to commune with the permanent, the ineffable, and the unquantifiable. Maxwell Anderson, the CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, describes a museum’s mission as providing visitors with “resonance and wonder…an intangible sense of elation—a feeling that a weight was lifted.” What Aristotle called “catharsis.” My younger daughter Isabella, an art history major, was given an assignment to spend two hours in a museum in front of a painting and write down her experience. She described the assignment as both “exhilarating and unsettling: unsettling because I realized that I have never seen a painting and exhilarating because I was finally seeing one.” She had chosen to look at J.M.W. Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire in the National Gallery in London, and she describes the process of looking at the painting for two hours as “parallel to going on a long run. As odd as it sounds, looking at a painting for two
hours requires you to push yourself and go past the point of what’s comfortable. But what was so interesting was that when I was finished I had what felt like a runner’s high. I felt like I had just experienced something magical, that I had created a tie between the art piece and me.” She’d had an experience that cannot be captured on Instagram or Twitter. After she had been looking at The Fighting Temeraire for about an hour, a security guard came up to her and asked what she was doing. “I found this hilarious because what I was doing was looking at a painting. But we have gotten to the point where someone standing in front of a painting just looking at it for a long period of time is suspect.” Fully giving our attention to anything—or anyone—is precisely what is becoming more and more rare in our hyperconnected world, where there are so many stimuli competing for our time and attention and where multitasking is king. The museum experience provides us with mystery, wonder, surprise, self-forgetfulness—vital emotions most undermined by our always-connected 24/7 digital culture, which makes it a lot easier to
shy away from introspection and reflection. Increasingly, the world around us, or at least the one that’s presented to us by the tool we choose to surround ourselves with, is designed— and very well, at that—to take that element of surprise out of our path. The ever-more-sophisticated algorithms on the social media sites where we live our lives know what we like, so they just keep shoveling it to us. It’s celebrated as “personalization,” but it often caters to a very shriveled part of who we really are. They know what we like but they don’t know what we don’t know we like—or what we need. They don’t know our possibilities, let alone how vast they are. ●
Excerpted from Arianna Huffington’s Thrive: The Third Metric To Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-being, Wisdom and Wonder, © 2014 Christabella, LLC. Published by Harmony Books. Reprinted with permission.
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Bryan Burns, 45, has been practicing meditation and yoga for 10 years. “It helps to separate myself from problems and situations, and allows some emotional breathing space. In yoga, combining breath with movement, enables more focused thinking. Physically, it’s made me more relaxed —my blood pressure’s lower than it was in my 20s. My doctor always mentions it.”
getting started: emotions
how meditating helps you with difficult
EMOTIONS
Meditation is not all calm and peace. It opens up a space for you to see what’s going on in your mind, including the vivid and powerful movement of your emotions—up, down, and sideways. You can learn to fight with them less, and make friends with them more. Photograph by Marvin Moore Illustrations by Jason Lee
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in practice
insight
Taking Tension Out of Attention Thanks to computers, smartphones, television, and other technology, our senses are extremely busy. The more our bodies strain to pay attention, the more our minds space-out. Chris McKenna suggests ways to help us go from tense and strained to relaxed and focused.
“You need to concentrate harder!” How many times did I hear this phrase—or some variant of it—during school. My second grade teacher delivered it as a hostile bark from the back of the room during study hour, and I immediately felt it in my gut. It made me feel like my classmates and I were being lined-up against the wall, bolt-upright, in military formation. We felt a palpable sense of what I would now call “nervous system activation”, and it was definitely not conducive to absorbing and retaining information. For many of us the act of paying attention is intertwined with a subtle (or gross) sense of strain, a physiological effort to pull it all together, and—in many cases—a low-grade fight-or-flight response.
Chris McKenna is the Program Director of Mindful Schools and has taught mindfulness practices to diverse youth & adult populations.
Illustrations by Nomoco
We felt threatened. In remembering his own schooling, Keith Johnstone, one of the masters of modern improvisational theatre, recalled: “If you screw your face up and bite on your pencil to show you were ‘trying,’ the teacher may write out the answer for you. In my school, if you sat relaxed in thought, you were likely to get swiped on the back of the head.” Over my years of teaching meditation in youth mental health, juvenile justice, and K-12 education, I see two main modes that people shift between on the attention spectrum, in their effort to be present. The first mode is characterized by the coupling of contracted, unskillful effort and focused attention. In this mode, we usually bring much more effort than we need as we attempt to stay connected to a mental or physical task. Signs of this way of acting are fairly easy to observe from the outside: tight and shallow breathing, deep tension in the facial muscles, strain in the eyes, unconscious contraction or gripping in the hands and shoulders, chest, and →
Read the rest of this article Mindful’s June 2014in mindful 71 June 2014 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
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