An evening with Jon Kabat-Zinn (London, 2013)
Being in the NOW (Scientific American)
A focus on the present, dubbed mindfulness, can make you happier and healthier. Training to deepen your immersion in the moment works by improving attention.
By Amishi P. Jha, Scientific American, March/April 2013
DOWNLOAD THIS ARTICLE AS A PDF: Being_in_the_Now.PDF
Pulling into a parking spot at work, you realize you have no recollection of the drive that got you there,. On reaching the bottom of a page in a book, you are frustrated that you have failed to understand what you just read. In conversation, you suddenly become aware that you have no idea what the person speaking to you has said.
These episodes are symptoms of a distracted mind. You were thinking about a vacation while reading a report or reliving a hurtful exchange with a friend instead of paying attention to the road or conversation. Whether the mind journeys to the future or the past, whether the thoughts that whisked you away were useful, pleasant or uncomfortable, the consequences are the same. You missed the present, the experience of the moment, as it was unfolding. Your mind was hijacked into mental time travel.
Read the full article as a PDF here.
Copyright © 2013 Scientific American
Does Mindfulness Make You More Compassionate? (Greater Good)
Mindfulness is more than just moment-to-moment awareness, says Shauna Shapiro. It is a kind, curious awareness that helps us relate to ourselves and others with compassion.
BY SHAUNA SHAPIRO | FEBRUARY 27, 2013
I attended my first meditation retreat in Thailand 17 years ago. When I arrived, I didn’t know very much about mindfulness and I certainly didn’t speak any Thai.
At the monastery, I vaguely understood the teachings of the beautiful Thai monk who instructed me to pay attention to the breath coming in and out of my nostrils. It sounded easy enough. So I sat down and attempted to pay attention, 16 hours a day, and very quickly I had my first big realization: I was not in control of my mind.
I was humbled and somewhat distraught by how much my mind wandered. I would attend to one breath, two breaths, maybe three—and then my mind was gone, lost in thoughts, leaving my body sitting there, an empty shell. Frustrated and impatient, I began to wonder, “Why can’t I do this? Everyone else looks like they’re sitting so peacefully. What’s wrong with me?”
On the fourth day, I met with a monk from London, who asked how I was doing. It was the first time I had spoken in four days, and out of my mouth came a deluge of the anxieties I had been carrying around with me. “I’m a terrible meditator. I can’t do it. I am trying so hard, and every time I try harder, I get even more tangled up. Meditation must be for other, more spiritual, calmer kinds of people. I don’t think this is not the right path for me.”
He looked at me with compassion and a humorous twinkle in his eye. “Oh dear, you’re not practicing mindfulness,” he told me. “You are practicing impatience, judgment, frustration, and striving.” Then he said five words that profoundly affected my life: “What you practice becomes stronger.” This wisdom has now been well documented by the science of neuroplasticity, which shows that our repeated experiences shape our brains.
The monk explained to me that mindfulness is not just about paying attention, but also about how you pay attention. He described a compassionate, kind attention, where instead of becoming frustrated when my mind wandered, I could actually become curious about my mind meandering about, holding this experience in compassionate awareness. Instead of being angry at my mind, or impatient with myself, I could inquire gently and benevolently into what it felt like to be frustrated or impatient.
Read the full article at Greatergood.berkeley.edu
Article Copyright © 2013 U.C. Berkeley
MORE ON MINDFULNESS
Register now to join Shauna Shapiro, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and others for Greater Good’s conference, “Practicing Mindfulness and Compassion,” on March 8, 2013. Live Webcast available!
Watch Jon Kabat-Zinn talk about mindfulness and compassion.
Learn more about mindfulness and the science behind it.
How mindful are you? Take our quiz!
Does Mindfulness Make You More Compassionate? (Greater Good)
Read the full article at Greater Good:
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/does_mindfulness_make_you_compassionate
Mindfulness is more than just moment-to-moment awareness, says Shauna Shapiro. It is a kind, curious awareness that helps us relate to ourselves and others with compassion.
I attended my first meditation retreat in Thailand 17 years ago. When I arrived, I didn’t know very much about mindfulness and I certainly didn’t speak any Thai.
At the monastery, I vaguely understood the teachings of the beautiful Thai monk who instructed me to pay attention to the breath coming in and out of my nostrils. It sounded easy enough. So I sat down and attempted to pay attention, 16 hours a day, and very quickly I had my first big realization: I was not in control of my mind.
I was humbled and somewhat distraught by how much my mind wandered. I would attend to one breath, two breaths, maybe three—and then my mind was gone, lost in thoughts, leaving my body sitting there, an empty shell. Frustrated and impatient, I began to wonder, “Why can’t I do this? Everyone else looks like they’re sitting so peacefully. What’s wrong with me?”
On the fourth day, I met with a monk from London, who asked how I was doing. It was the first time I had spoken in four days, and out of my mouth came a deluge of the anxieties I had been carrying around with me. “I’m a terrible meditator. I can’t do it. I am trying so hard, and every time I try harder, I get even more tangled up. Meditation must be for other, more spiritual, calmer kinds of people. I don’t think this is not the right path for me.”
Read the full article at Greater Good:
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/does_mindfulness_make_you_compassionate
Stopping Teacher Burnout (Greater Good)
The SMART-in-Education program helps teachers cope with rising academic demands and falling budgets.
BY MARGARET CULLEN | JANUARY 19, 2012
Joan, a Bay Area elementary school teacher, was struggling with managing her fourth grade classroom, especially a student who wouldn’t stop speaking out of turn or bullying other students. She held it together during the day and then came home and yelled at her own kids. She came to doubt her ability to meet the ever-increasing demands placed on her by the double-whammy of budget cuts and rising academic mandates.
Seeking help, she signed up for the eight-week SMART-in-Education program, which I launched in 2008 to help teachers relax and manage their stress. There she discovered that she was not alone. In fact, she was facing the same kind of stress that leads nearly half of teachers to quit within their first five years on the job.
The SMART-in-Education program takes place over nine evenings and two Saturdays. It is based primarily on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, an evidence-based practice that emphasizes the cultivation of mindfulness, the moment-to-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations.
But SMART (which stands for Stress Management and Resilience Training) has added several components to the basic MBSR curriculum, in order to respond to the special demands put on teachers. Participants spend time exploring the inner geography of emotions, especially fear and anger. Using mindfulness tools such as meditation and body awareness, they develop the capacity to recognize, tolerate, and even transform challenging emotions into insight, self-acceptance, and vitality.
Participants also spend a great deal of time developing skills like kindness, compassion, and forgiveness, through exercises and discussions tied into their actual experience in the classroom.
For example, when practicing with kindness and compassion, the teachers spend one week bringing to mind a challenging student and taking a few minutes in their home practice to silently send him or her wishes of kindness and well-being, such as “May Sam be happy, and feel loved,” or “May Sofi find peace in her heart, and develop her gifts.” Another week, they are invited to bring to mind a student they tend to overlook, who is neither delightful nor frustrating.
Read the full article at Greatergood.berkeley.edu
Copyright © 2012 Greater Good Magazine
RESOURCES
Want to learn more about mindfulness in education? On February 4-5, 2012, the University of California, San Diego, Center for Mindfulness will host a conference, Bridging the Hearts & Minds of Youth: Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, Education and Research.
Some Reflections on the Origins of MBSR, Skillful Means, and the Trouble With Maps (PDF)
The following article by Jon Kabat-Zinn explores the foundations of MBSR and the importance of meditation practice and retreat attendance.
“As I will recount a bit further along, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) was developed as one of a possibly infinite number of skillful means for bringing the dharma into mainstream settings.1 It has never been about MBSR for its own sake. It has always been about the M. And the M is a very big M, as I attempt to describe in this paper. That said, the quality of MBSR as an intervention is only as good as the MBSR instructor and his or her understanding of what is required to deliver a truly . . . . “
Download the original PDF article here: kabat-zinn-on-mbsr-origins.PDF
Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 12, No. 1, May 2011 ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/11/010281-306 q 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639947.2011.564844
Jon Kabat-Zinn: What is Mindfulness? (Greater Good Science Center, 2010)
Buddha Lessons (Newsweek)
by Claudia Kalb, Sept. 26, 2004
For decades, Dalia Isicoff has suffered the agony of rheumatoid arthritis–joint pain, spinal fusion, multiple hip surgeries. Painkillers dull the aches, but it wasn’t until she took a course at the University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Medicine that Isicoff discovered a powerful weapon inside her own body: her mind. Using a meditative practice called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR, Isicoff learned to acknowledge her pain, rather than fight it. Her negative and debilitating thought patterns–“This is getting worse,” “I’m going to end up in a wheelchair”–began to dissipate, and she was able to cut back on her medication. The pain hasn’t gone away, but “I view it is an ally now,” she says. “Mindfulness is transformational.” Continue reading “Buddha Lessons (Newsweek)”