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Mindfulness Matters

It’s been a a while since I’ve linked to my weekly posts on Connecticut Watchdog website. These columns, DESTRESS, focused on how to apply mindfulness to everyday stressful circumstances. I’m changing the emphasis from DESTRESS to THRIVE to include a positive psychology approach. Mindfulness fits well within the broader field of positive psychology, so look…

The 4th of July will be celebrated around the United States to mark our independence from the British. And while that event happened on 4 July 1776, 231 years ago, have we achieved all the independence we can? Like most holidays, I have an issue with this one. Why only celebrate one day per year?…

One of the most frequent complaints I get from my meditation students is the concern that they can’t meditate because they can’t concentrate; can’t clear the thoughts, clutter, and commotion from their minds. Relax. The goal of meditation is not clearing the mind of thoughts or making it a “blank slate” (at least not the…

Do we really need yet another book on mindfulness? In this case, yes. Jan Chozen Bays, M.D., author of Mindful Eating, has written How To Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventures in Mindfulness (Shambhala 2011) a collection of mindfulness practice gems in this accessible, helpful, and thoughtful book. Starting with the Buddha’s metaphor of…

The point of life is that there is no point. We are biological beings equipped with impulses, intelligences, and insights that interplay with recent human creations such as language, culture, religions, and the arts. With memory, relics, and writing, we have history. Culture attempts to tell us what the point of life is, but in…

I caught some of On Point today and the topic was boredom and the book by Peter Toohey, entitled, Boredom: A Lively History. Here is an excerpt: Predictability, monotony and confinement are all key. Any situation that stays the same for too long can be boring. Road trips, gardening and – my own special bête…

Meditation can happen in any moment of your day. It can happen while you are taking your shower, walking to work, and eating your lunch. There are many opportunities to meditate including doing a formal practice where you are doing nothing other than meditation. Something that is always happening now is that you are breathing.…

The Buddha urged us not to get hooked by greed, desire, aversion, and so forth. Don’t be taken in and away by the temptations of transient things (or confusing them to be anything but transient). The fisher’s hook provides an apt metaphor. The fish gets tricked into thinking the lure is something that it is…

In a recent comment, one of Mindfulness Matter’s readers shared her questions in the wake of the loss of a loved one. She wondered whether mindfulness was really as simple as it is sometimes portrayed. She also wondered how to handle the grief in a mindful way. What I typically say, and did in a…

The instructions for meditation couldn’t be simpler. The instructions are as follows: Pay attention to what is happening now, when you’re attention moves into the future or past or starts talking about the present, bring it back. Repeat as necessary. Got it? Not too complicated. Focus. Get distracted. Return your attention. Repeat. Something called “awareness”…
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