Why practice mindfulness? An explanation from Buddhist psychology


Why practise mindfulness? Buddhist psychology offers many answers  to this question  and one of these answers concerns our tendency to live in a trance.  The trance happens  when we relate more to what’s going on inside our heads than to what’s happening in reality. 

Add in a tendency to act out of habit and you can see that we spend a lot of time going around in circles.

Mindfulness helps us to step out of the trance and this improves our chances of seeing the choices that are open to us in any given situation. Here is the sort of procedure involved:

First, something happens. This could be external - my phone rings as I'm on the way out the door, late for an appointment,  with my laptop and car keys in one hand and my briefcase in the other. Or the 'something' can be internal - a memory of a slighting remark a customer made today, for instance.

We then have a reaction which is made up of physical, mental and emotional associations with the event (panic and confusion as I try to talk on the phone and leave the house at the same time, anger at the slighting remark).

Often we are swept away by the reaction, as if in a trance - I answer the phone, and walk off leaving the laptop outside the door or I allow my evening to be consumed by re-runs of that slighting remark.

Mindfulness teaches us that we spend much of our day in one trance or another, daydreaming, fantasising, remembering, resenting and so on. But it also offers a way to step out of that process by calling us back to awareness again and again.
In the example, for instance, I might step out of the panic and decide that whoever is ringing will just have to leave a message on my voicemail; or I might refuse to re-run the customer's criticism through my head again and again, instead bringing my attention back to my breathing or to whatever I am physically doing right now.

This becomes easier if you practise mindfulness over time because mindfulness calms our reactivity, an effect that has been observed by neuroscientists.

In this way, the practice of mindfulness opens up a space in which we can choose our responses. In this space we have the opportunity to try out new behaviours - or (sometimes the wisest course) to opt to do nothing.

It seems to me that this opening up of that opportunity is among the main benefits of mindfulness.

I have illustrated this process in the “Circle of Reaction” on my main website. Here’s the link.


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Six ways to make 2015 a mindful year

Practising mindfulness - or practising mindfulness more often - is an aspiration many people will have for 2015. To make it happen, try these six tips:

1. Don't start with long meditations.
It's good to sit and observe your breathing mindfully for 20 minutes a day - but most people give up after a few days. Instead, find short practices that help to bring you into mindfulness many times a day. The best mindfulness practices are the ones you will actually do - not the ones you "ought" to do.

2. Remind yourself often: Return. Invite silence.
A useful working definition of mindfulness could be: Returning your attention again and again with acceptance to what's going on outside your head right now. What's going on outside your head could be your breath, the feeling of your feet against the ground, sounds, a conversation you're having and so on. Acceptance means postponing judgement for at least a while. We usually judge through statements of condemnation or approval that we make to ourselves in our heads. So you could think of acceptance as inviting silence into your mind for a while. So, Return. Invite silence.

3. At the start of every day, form the intention to be mindful.
Form the intention before your feet touch the floor when you get up in the morning. This could be a simple as telling yourself, "I intend to be mindful today." Far better than grumbling on the way out of the bed!

4. Return to awareness of your breathing for a least a minute whenever you notice an hour has passed.
It is said that mindfulness is easy to do but hard to remember to do. Most of us are surrounded by reminders of the time, so resolve that whenever you notice an hour has passed you will come into awareness of your breathing for at least a minute. You don't have to be exact: just guess it. Your mind will drift even during that short time so bring your attention back without complaint or self-criticism.

5. Build mindfulness reminders into your day.
To do this, choose one or two routine activities which you normally do with little awareness of the moment. Let them remind you to be mindful and do them in awarenness. Examples: Brushing your teeth, boiling the kettle, starting the car, entering passwords, washing your hands, washing dishes, preparing food, eating, moving from room to room, showering, opening your door on the way to/from work.

6. Use a free mindfulness resource.
You'll find many free mindfulness resources on the internet. Thousands of people receive a brief daily mindfulness reminder in their email from myself. It's called The Daily Bell, even though it doesn't actually ring, and you'll find a sign-up box on the front page of this blog or on my website at www.padraigomorain.com You can also email me at pomorain@gmx.com and ask me to sign you up.

For more ideas try these posts on this blog:
A mindfulness routine
Morning grouch? Try a mindfulness routine
Mindful walking from The Irish Times

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Mindfulness improves relationships in these four ways

Mindfulness can improve relationships, if only because the practice tends to make people more empathic. Mindfulness also makes people less reactive and that helps relationships too. I would summarise the benefits of mindfulness practice on relationships like this:

1. We become more empathic.
Empathy is the ability to understand how another person feels. It improves relationships at home and at work. In neuroscience research, it has been found that the “insula”, a structure in the brain which is involved with empathy, is strengthened in people who practice mindfulness.

2. We become less reactive.
This “pause for thought” improves listening skills and gives us time to choose more helpful responses. Improvements in the interaction between ‘thinking’ and ‘emotional’ parts of the brain help to lower reactivity and to give us a vital space in which to make better choices. These improvements result from mindfulness practice and have been observed by neuroscientists.

3. We brood and ruminate less.
Ruminating or brooding on the faults of others, from intimate partners to work colleagues, worsens relationships. Because in mindfulness we are encouraged to return continually from our thoughts to our direct experience of reality, with acceptance, we are far less likely to spend time and energy on rumination. This is an extremely valuable effect of mindfulness practice. Rumination can prolong negative emotions and can harm relationships and our own well-being for years.

4. We become less 'clingy.'
Because of that fall in reactivity (Point 2 above) we notice automatic reactions such as 'clinging' and can step back from them. 'Clinging' to another person (unless, of course, you're a baby!) can lead the other person to push you away as they seek to maintain their psychological space. Mindfulness helps you to arrive at an empathic relationship between two independent people who are choosing to be in the relationship. You should also get better a spotting situations in which 'clingyness' leads you into destructive relationships.

Using a smartphone? Click here to learn about my online, two hour and six week mindfulness courses.

Drop the drama - using mindful acceptance to replace exaggerated emotional reactions

Mindful acceptance of situations means dropping the exaggerations and drama we generate almost by reflex. This allows us to deal with the reality of the situation which, usually, is easier to handle when we don't exaggerate.

So let's say you're waiting for the bus on a rainy night. The bus sails by without stopping. This is outrageous, you tell yourself, I have been treated with complete contempt. Actually, it's very, very annoying and inconvenient but it isn't outrageous. And you have been treated carelessly and not with "complete contempt." We are also tempted to use words like "outrageous" when we are kept waiting in a queue at a call centre. Once again, what's happening is annoying and frustrating but hardly outrageous.

Mindful acceptance means you pause, silence the drama in your head and connect with the reality of situations. To help you with this, you can bring your awareness back to your breath or  to your body, for instance to your feet.  In other words return to awareness and invite your mind to remain silent for a while.

We tend to exaggerate our emotions almost by reflex and helping us to step out of our exaggerations is one of the ways in which the practice of mindfulness safeguards our emotional wellbeing.

This and other aspects of mindfulness will feature in my 6-week Mindful Living course in Dublin this spring and also in my online Mindfulness without Meditation mindfulness course in February.

It's well worth your while to work with acceptance which is at least as important, as a mindfulness practice, as "being in the now". 

From awareness to thoughts and back again

Sometimes you "know" thing for a long time before it finally clicks. For me, the thing I knew is that in mindfulness practice we learn to distinguish, as we go, between awareness and our thoughts about what we are aware of - then we continually move out of our thoughts and back to awareness.

Let's say I am aware that a dog is mooching along the street. As soon as I become aware my thoughts start up. These can include memories of dogs I have owned, wondering where the owner of the dog is, an opinion that people who have fierce dogs ought to muzzle them in public as the law requires, and so on. If I practice mindfulness, then when I spot these thoughts buzzing around like flies  I  return to awareness which is simply awareness of the dog.

So you begin with awareness, move automatically into thoughts and then move deliberately back to awareness again. You would be surprised at how much unnecessary stress this simple practice can remove from your life. Yesterday I drove to the wrong terminal at Dublin airport. The error would mean leaving the airport and coming back again to get to the right terminal.  While staying with the awareness of what had happened and of what I needed to do next, I was able to spend only microseconds in thoughts about how inconvenient it was, how unfair it was, blah blah. Even when I discovered along the way, but too late, that I could still have got to the correct terminal without leaving the airport, I was able to stay with the awareness of that, including awareness of the fact that I didn't like having missed that particular turnoff. But I stayed out of the storm of thoughts that my mind wanted to kick off so badly it was practically jumping up and down. I was quite surprised by the complete absence of stress in the whole experience thanks to that simple mindfulness practice.

So the method is awareness, realising that you have moved from awareness into thoughts and then returning to awareness again. You could think of it as awareness-thoughts-awareness. Or ATA.

 As I said, this is something I always knew or at least always knew since I began to practice mindfulness a long time ago but it really clicked for me when I read about the distinction between awareness and thoughts in Dan Harris's book 10% Happier,  a witty and very useful look at his journey into mindfulness and Buddhism.

What is acceptance in mindfulness? The story of a stolen watch

Acceptance is one of the most difficult concepts in mindfulness practice. It doesn't mean agreement and it doesn't mean dismissing the impact of hurtful events that happen to us. What does it mean? Here are some possibilities but first a true event: 

Many years ago somebody stole a watch from me. I really liked the watch and the person who gave it to me had gone to a lot of trouble to buy it and get it engraved. Then the watch was taken. Another person was able to confirm my suspicions as to who the guilty party was but the guilty party had moved on and so had the possibility of getting the watch back. 

What has acceptance got to do with the watch? Well, the loss of the watch still hurts - though only when I think of it - and if I could get it back I would. On the other hand the loss of the watch doesn't interfere in any way with my life. So here are some thoughts on acceptance:

1. Acceptance is awareness without interference. We interfere with our awareness largely through self-talk and, to a lesser extent, talking to other people. When I remember the watch I feel a little dart of loss - but I don't interfere with the feeling by talking to myself or anyone else about the watch, and the dart of loss goes as quickly as it arrives.

2. Acceptance means not deliberately re-running an experience in a loop in the mind. So I choose not to repeat to myself the story of the watch, the loss, and the judgments about the theft (what a rotten thing to do, etc). Instead I acknowledge and feel the loss and then move forward. Which brings me to:

3. Acceptance is a way of relating to our experience that enables us to move forward with today and tomorrow. I could relate to the theft of the watch by dwelling in the story and the feelings surrounding the story. Instead I allow myself to feel the feeling and then move on to the next thing I need to do.

Acceptance has many other facets and I will amend this article as time goes by so as to arrive at a comprehensive attempt at an explanation.

 

No, you don't need to meditate for 20 minutes a day - mindfulness is not meditation

"I tried to do mindfulness but then I let it go," is a statement I hear again and again on my mindfulness days.

What the speaker means is that he or she was told to practice mindfulness of breathing or of the body for twenty to forty minutes a day, managed to do so for a few days and then gave it up.

Life and its demands got in the way. So did the fact that mindfulness meditations can be somewhat boring. So they gave it up. What they gave up, though, was meditation and not mindfulness. We tend to get the two mixed up because of the Buddhist origins of mindfulness as it is practised today and because meditation forms part of Buddhist practice (though whether most Buddhists sit down and meditate is another question - I suspect they do not, but live more or less by Buddhist principles).

To me mindfulness, especially as we practice it in a non-secular form in the West, is an attitude we bring to daily life. We cultivate that attitude by returning our attention again and again to awareness of whatever is going on in reality in the moment and doing so without becoming lost in self-talk about it. What we are returning from are the fantasies, memories and mental talk in which we frequently lose ourselves and our well-being.

To do this we need to use short mindfulness practices that remind us to be mindful: coming back to awareness of breathing or of the body for instance many times a day.

This is similar to the approach taken by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche in his book The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness and is a traditional approach taught to him by his father.

So if you can't/won't meditate, don't drop mindfulness: build it into your day with the sort of short practices you will read about on this blog and on my website.

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One dog mindfulness

Imagine you are walking through a forest on your own. Suddenly a large, angry looking dog appears in your path, baring his teeth.

You tell yourself how awful this is - but it’s not over yet: another dog has appeared beside the first one.

This isn’t just awful - it’s a catastrophe, you think. Suddenly two more dogs appear.

How unfair this is, you declare. All you wanted to do was to walk through the forest to relax and now you are confronted by these four scary dogs. Oh, they’ve been joined by another four so now you have eight scary dogs to contend with.

Just suppose seven of these eight dogs have been conjured up by your imagination. So there’s actually just one dog. The problem is, you’re reacting to eight dogs, not one. And you may not even be focussing your attention on the real dog.

That’s how it is when the mind leaps to add memories, fantasies, fears and assumptions to our reality. Suddenly challenges can seem many times worse than they really are and we can easily lose touch with the reality of our situation.

When we practice mindfulness, we return our attention back to reality - back to that one dog in this case - whenever we find we have drifted out of touch with what’s actually going on. This helps us to negotiate our way through life with less fuss, less stress and fewer complications than would otherwise be the case.

And the method really is as simple as moving our attention from our imagination and back to our breathing, our walking, our posture or to whatever it is we use as a focus for mindfulness. The trick lies in being willing to bring our attention back and in doing so often.

If we do that, we will become skilled at reducing the number of dogs from eight to one and perhaps that one dog will just come and look to be petted. And if he turns out to be unfriendly it is better to deal with one real dog on his own than with one real dog and seven imaginary dogs at the same time.

One paragraph to mindfulness

Does it take months to experience the benefits of mindfulness? No - in my case it took minutes. I discovered mindfulness in the late 1980s while browsing in Easons bookshop in O'Connell Street in Dublin. I noticed a book called “The heart of Buddhist meditation” which was so unusual to see on a bookshelf at the time that I picked it up. The book opened at a page on Bare Attention which it described as follows: “ … attention or mindfulness is kept to a bare registering of the facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech or by mental comment which may be one of self-reference (like, dislike, etc), judgement, reflection. If during the time, short or long, given to the practice of Bare Attention, any such comments arise in one’s mind, they themselves are made objects of Bare Attention, and are neither repudiated nor pursued, but are dismissed, after a brief mental note has been made of them.”

I tried it there and then and I liked it. I have been practising mindfulness, to a greater or lesser extent, ever since. The point I want to make is that I began to practice mindfulness after reading that paragraph, and so can you. You don’t have to undertake lengthy periods of focussed meditation - such periods were probably designed for people living as Buddhist monks or nuns and not for those in the hurly burly of wider society. Mindfulness is an attitude you can bring to your experiences as you go through your day. The purpose of the short practices I write about here and elsewhere (including my forthcoming book Mindfulness on the Go) is to remind us to be mindful. If you spend a few minutes every day observing your breathing and perhaps another few minutes observing your posture as you walk or sit, without getting caught up in thoughts as you do so, this should help you to bring a useful degree of mindfulness to your normal activities.

(The author of the book was Nyanaponika Thera and its full title is "The Heart of Buddhist Meditation - A handbook of mental training based on the Buddhist way of Mindfulness.") His book, The Power of Mindfulness, is free on Buddhanet.

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Mindful walking from The Irish Times

Journalist Anna Carey quoted me in her New Year's Eve article on walking in The Irish Times. The article disappears behind a paywall in a few months' time but it's well worth a read meanwhile. Here are the two paragraphs on mindful walking:

Walking is also a good way of practising mindfulness, which has been shown to have a positive effect on mental health. “Mindful walking means bringing your attention back to your walking as you go along,” says Padraig O’Morain, whose book Mindfulness on the Go will be out in May. “Mindfulness really can be seen as returning your attention again and again from the wandering mind to the present moment. Mindful walking is one way of doing that. If you’re a person who enjoys walking along and thinking about everything and anything, that’s fine. Just try to give the first 10 minutes or so to walking with awareness.”

Walking, says O’Morain, “is very conducive to practising mindfulness – if you are a person who finds it difficult to sit and be mindful of your breathing, for instance. But it’s also a really good mindfulness practice if you’re feeling agitated. I think the rhythm of walking is helpful. Also when you’re walking mindfully you can, if you prefer, try to be aware of movement in your field of vision. This could be birds in the sky, cars on the road, ripples in the river. Or you could be aware of the feeling of the breeze against your face or hands.”

Using a smartphone? Click here to learn about my online, two hour and six week mindfulness courses.

Ruby Wax on mindfulness and sane living

Here's a link to a Daily Telegraph article in which Ruby Wax, author of Sane New World, talks about mindfulness and bringing a little sanity into your life:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/wellbeing/10539430/Ruby-Wax-why-mindfulness-is-the-secret-to-a-happy-new-year.html

Second arrows - how we add to our own distress and what we can do about it

I recently mentioned the Buddhist metaphor of the two arrows in relation to regret but the metaphor is relevant to all forms of distress.

As I wrote at the time: "If you were struck by an arrow you would be in pain, no doubt about it. But if you dwell on that experience by going over and over it in your memory or by entertaining revenge fantasies for years afterwards, then you are shooting a second arrow into yourself."

Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön says this, in Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living:

“If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart...”

(Yes, you would be dead if someone shot an arrow into your heart but this is a metaphorical arrow so that's okay).

Part of the practice of mindfulness is to be willing to experience the first arrows that come every day (let-downs, bad turns, cravings, pain) and to do what you need to do but without adding to them by cycling scenes and thoughts in your head again and again. For instance, you could practice returning your attention to your breath or to your surroundings whenever those old scenes start re-running.

This is easier to do if you have a formal mindfulness practice but even if not, you can adopt the two arrows metaphor as part of your approach to daily living.

A mindfulness routine

To help with mindfulness practice it can be very useful to have a short routine that you can go through a few times a day. If the foundation of that routine is awareness of your body, it becomes easier to remember and implement. Here is an example:

As you are reading this, notice your shoulders and let them relax a little. We tense up our shoulders, often unconsciously, if we are stressed so it is helpful to begin by noticing and relaxing your shoulders.

Next notice your breathing but without trying to control it. When your mind drifts away, return your attention gently to what you are doing.

Now notice your posture. Awareness of posture has been regarded as a valuable mindfulness practice for centuries. Whether you are sitting, walking, standing or lying down, become aware of what this feels like.

What you have done with this routine is to step out of the stream of the wandering, drifting mind and into deliberate awareness, in this case of your breath and your posture. Whenever you use this routine - or one of your own if your prefer - it will bring you presence of mind instead of having a mind that is easily swept away by events, thoughts or emotions.

Using a smartphone? Click here to learn about my online, two hour and six week mindfulness courses.

Four mindfulness books for that new Kindle

Mindfulness for Health: A practical guide to relieving pain, reducing stress and restoring wellbeing 
by Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman

I'm currently reading this and really impressed by it. Vidyamala Burch's work is essentially with people suffering chronic pain (through the Breathworks organisation) but this is actually a really good guide to the practice of mindfulness.

Light Mind: Mindfulness in daily living
by Padraig O'Morain

This mindfulness guide, by yours truly, aims to bring clarity and simplicity to the practice of mindfulness. So far as I know, it was the first Irish guide to mindfulness when published in 2009 and may still be.

The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness
by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

You're most likely to enjoy this book if you are already practicing mindfulness or interested in Buddhism. The author, a master of a lineage of Tibetan Buddhism takes a clear and friendly approach, recommending short mindfulness practices.

Sane new world
by Ruby Wax

This book, about Ruby Wax's psychological journey through some dark periods of her life, is funny, engaging and informative. The section on mindfulness is refreshingly free of piousness and bullshit.

Returning: the essence of mindfulness practice

What would you call mindfulness if you were not allowed to use the word? For me, the alternative name is "returning." Because the mind wanders ceaselessly, it is necessary to return our attention again and again to whatever we're doing just to get through an ordinary day. When we practice mindfulness we return as a deliberate act, not just to get through the day. We find that returning our attention to the moment whenever we find we have drifted away, enhances our experience of living.  

We return our attention in a particular way. In other words, we return our attention with acceptance of reality. So if it's raining, and I wish it wasn't, I don't waste emotional energy condemning the fact that it is raining. It is raining, and there it is. The thing that needs to be done if I'm going out into it is to put on a raincoat or carry an umbrella. Maybe I am not going out. In that case, maybe the next thing that needs to be done is to make a cup of tea. 

But at the heart of all this is returning - and doing so without criticising ourselves for having drifted away.

A mindful approach to regret

’No regrets’ may be a fine name for a song but it won’t work in real life. To live is to accumulate regrets. What gives regrets their sharp edges is the belief that we could have made things work out differently if we had made different choices and it’s too late now. If I had made this choice I could have spared that person some pain; if I had made another choice I could have brought myself more happiness; if I had thought to say ‘No’ or ‘Yes” back then, everything would have been different and so on and on.

Since regrets are inevitable, how can mindfulness help us to deal with them in our lives? First, we accept the pain we have to accept; second we drop the tendency to re-experience the pain; third, we accept that regret is a fact of everybody’s life.

Regret is made up of physical sensations, memories, recurring thoughts (“how could I have been so foolish, blind etc.”)  and fantasies (what might have been). When I take a mindful approach I am willing to experience the physical sensations (for instance a tightening of the stomach, a shortening of the breath) but I allow the memories recurring thoughts and fantasies to pass by. They may arise but I don’t follow them, I return to that physical sensation and allow them to pass.

Think of the old Buddhist metaphor of the two arrows. If you were struck by an arrow you would be in pain, no doubt about it. But if you dwell on that experience by going over and over it in your memory or by entertaining revenge fantasies for years afterwards, then you are shooting a second arrow into yourself.

That sudden awareness of regret, that comes now and then - maybe very often - is the first arrow. Wallowing in memories, fantasies and recurring thoughts about the regret is the suffering we add on.

Finding your anchor point

If you practice noticing your breathing for a few minutes at a time you will also notice that you are particularly aware of the breath at a particular place in your body. Typical points of awareness are the tip of your nostrils,  just inside your nostrils, in your chest, your diaphragm (between rib-cage and tummy) or your tummy.

When you find this place you can think of it as an anchor point that can "anchor" you to awareness for short periods of time. If your attention is a boat drifting on the water or  tossed around by the waves, mindfulness can be the anchor that holds you in place. You can get straight into mindfulness by going to your anchor point.  

In a busy office, a crowded street, a noisy kitchen - whatever the circumstances - bringing your awareness to your anchor point will give you a sense of presence of mind, a steadiness, in the swirl of events, emotions and thoughts.

A mindful space doesn't have to be quiet or secluded - the kitchen works fine

Choosing a mindful space in your environment is a really good way to remember to stay aware. What's a space you are in every day? Kitchen? Bathroom? Bedroom? The great thing about a mindful space is that it doesn't have to be secluded and it doesn't matter if you can't light candles or burn incense in there. For most of us, for instance, the kitchen is none of these things but because we are in and out of the kitchen many times a day - including first thing in the morning - it makes a really good mindful place.

How does it work? You simply decide that whenever you're in the kitchen you'll be mindful. You will not be a million miles away in your head. Whatever you are doing, you will do in awareness. Even if you have to work fast to prepare food or to wash up afterwards, you won't work so fast that you cannot be mindful. You will work at a speed that allows you to be aware of what you're doing.

Apart from providing a frequent reminder to be mindful, any space you designate as a mindful place might just end up being tidier and more user friendly. But the main benefit is that the kitchen, in this case, will become the room in which you get relief from the endless spinning of your mind. And if you don't have a separate kitchen maybe you have a kitchen space in your apartment.

But the mindful space doesn't have to be the kitchen. It could be the bathroom. It could be the bedroom. It could be your garden or even your window box.

Whatever your circumstances, just designate an everyday physical space as your mindful place and see how that works for you.

Mindfulness is not an anaesthetic

You can feel despair, depression, fear, anger, frustration although you practice mindfulness every day - that’s my experience anyway. Claims that mindfulness will put you into a state of permanent peace are just that - claims. 

It is necessary to be willing to practice mindfulness alongside painful emotions. Mindfulness practice keeps you out of the forest of thoughts, rumination and brooding which worsens any and all of these experiences. Moreover, your day includes good experiences that have nothing to do with negative emotions and mindfulness practice allows you to notice these too. 

So you can allow emotional pain to accompany you through your day so that you do not become consumed by your pain although it is still pain and it is still unpleasant. Thich Nhat Hahn writes somewhere that you should “walk like a free man and not like a slave.”

In a sense, that is what mindfulness of emotional (and physical) pain is about: going through your day like a free person who has pain but who is not a slave to that pain.

The Los Angeles Times - three mindfulness links

Tapping into the power of mindfulness - Companies are embracing meditation to train better leaders, one breath at a time
February 23, 2013 By Robin Rauzi, Los Angeles Times

Mindfulness, being in the moment is now of the moment - In Los Angeles, drop-in meditation sessions help bring awareness and release stress.
September 29, 2012|By Mary MacVean, Los Angeles Times

Learning to Enjoy the Everyday Magic of Living Our Lives - Focusing on the here and now is helping many people reduce anxiety and worry.
November 28, 2001|ELIZABETH LARGE | BALTIMORE SUN