Mindful June 2017

How to Quiet Your Mind
When Panic Strikes
The Wisdom of
Making Mistakes
ZAPPED AT WORK? Simple
Tips to Boost Your Energy
HEALTHY
MIND,
HEALTHY
LIFE
5 Ways to Kick
Bad Habits
TRUST YOUR
CREATIVE BRAIN
& GIVE YOUR
INNER CRITIC
A BREAK
WHY YOUR
BODY IS
DESIGNED
TO MEDITATE
« Giselle Jones
Social Worker and
Psychotherapist
+ ANNE
LAMOTT
ON RADICAL
KINDNESS
JUNE 2017
mindful.org

mindful june
CONTENTS
68
46 28
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEVER RUKHIN, GETTY IMAGES/KIM KULISH, GETTY IMAGES/ANDY RYAN, AND PLAINPICTURE/AURORA PHOTOS/LESLIE PARROTT
“When I started this journey, I thought I
was searching for a magical bag of tricks
to help me turn dross into creative gold.
But what I discovered was that creativity
isn’t a fancy parlor game; it’s a more
intimate way of relating to the world.”
Hugh Delehanty on how mindfulness
nurtures creativity, p. 54
54
ON THE COVER
30
HEALTHY MIND,
HEALTHY LIFE
5 Ways to Kick
Bad Habits
8
The Wisdom of
Making Mistakes
36
Zapped at Work?
5 Tips to Boost
Your Energy
41
How to Quiet
Your Mind When
Panic Strikes
44
Why Your Body
Is Designed to
Meditate
54
Trust Your
Creative Brain
& Give Your Inner
Critic a Break
68
Anne Lamott on
Radical Kindness
June 2017 mindful 1

contents
june
44
10
30
FEATURES
Living
Practices
Departments
44 Take a Seat
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to
meditation posture. We offer guidelines
to help you find the right position for
your body.
46 Meditation on Foot
Leave your FitBit and pump-up music
at home, and try out mindful running.
This fresh approach to fitness tunes you
in to your mind as well as your body.
The result is a whole new experience
of fitness.
54 The Mind Set Free
Hugh Delehanty embarks on a
creativity and mindfulness retreat,
where he discovers that the key to being
creative is to strip away all but the
essentials of who and what you are.
68 Radical Kindness
Renowned writer, devoted grandmother,
and thought-provoker Anne Lamott
shares her latest fascination with an
act we rarely consider but desperately
need: mercy.
72 Go Toward What Hurts
Frank Ostaseski shares experiences
from his decades working with dying
people and those who are dealing with
the death of loved ones.
22
Food
A Tender Heart
Béatrice Peltre
takes a moment
to appreciate one
of her favorite
vegetables: the
artichoke.
28
Walk the Talk
Intimately
Mindful
Psychotherapist
and social worker
Giselle Jones talks
about using mindfulness
to help
people open up.
30
How to Live
a Mindful Life
Break the Chains
5 simple ways to
make healthier
habits.
34
Inner Wisdom
The Power of
Solitude
Spending time
alone with ourselves
may not be
easy or even desirable.
But it’s key
to getting to know
who we really are.
36
Work-Life
Balance
Running on
Empty?
Every workplace
harbors potential
drains to creative
energy. Do you
recognize yours?
41
The Mindful FAQ
Am I Doing This
Right?
The latest installment
in our series
of helpful answers
to common meditator
questions.
8
Point of View
Err on the Side
of Human
Barry Boyce on
why this year’s
Academy Awards
are a lesson in
embracing your
mistakes.
18
Brain Science
True, False,
or Hmm?
The latest findings
in psychology—
about our deepseated
thoughts,
emotions, and
behaviors—get
a lot of media
attention. Unfortunately,
they
often turn out to be
flawed or false.
4
The Mindful
Survey
10
Top of Mind
16
Mindful-Mindless
80
Bookmark This
88
MindSpace
On our cover: Giselle Jones,
social worker and psychotherapist.
Photograph by Lever Rukhin.
Hair/makeup by Alma Diffie.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOJO OLDHAM AND MICHAEL PIAZZA, ILLUSTRATION BY COLLEEN MACISAAC
2 mindful June 2017

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the mindful survey
Your Inner Artist
Highlights from our reader survey on creativity
What’s the most creative thing
Have you ever dreamed of
Does your creativity thrive in
Then silence.”
64 % 36 % International Property Awards.”
“‘Dancing On My Own’ by Robyn.” “Made a model of the solar system.”
“Cooked awesome food that didn’t
becoming an artist?
peace or chaos?
you’ve done?
In peace: 61%
“Got through a shopping trip with
In chaos: 8%
two young boys.”
Doesn't matter: 31%
“Wrote and performed my own
acting monologue.”
“Developed a software ERP system.”
Do you have a song that pumps “At age three, I removed an entire box
you up when you’re doing creative of tampons from their tubes, tacked
work?
them all on the wall over my parents'
bed, then put all the tubes on my fingers
“I prefer quiet.”
and showed my mother.”
“Anything delightfully cheesy.”
“Raised children.”
“‘Lose Yourself’ by Eminem”
“Built and owned the ‘best apartment
YES
NO
“Random Spotify song. One song.
in the world’ in 2009, according to the
kill anyone.”
Are you more creative by yourself “I wrote a novel.”
What's your creative outlet
or with others?
“Sold String Cheese.”
of choice?
“Performance dancing in New York
BY MYSELF WITH OTHERS
in the '60s.”
In order of popularity:
“Designed a space suit.”
74 % 26 %
“Created a complete aluminum
casting foundry.”
“Sang and danced in a West
End musical.”
1 Writing
2 Cooking
3 Photography
4 Drawing
5 Textiles
Do you believe creativity is
learned or inherent?
Learned: 14%
Inherent: 46%
Not sure: 40%
6 Dancing
7 Painting
8 Music
9 Acting
Who is the most creative person
you know, and why?
“My son—he doesn't play by any
of the ‘rules.’”
“Leonardo da Vinci; he was creative on
all levels. Even in science and the arts.”
“My cat.”
“Earth. She creates, and stays
grounded.”
4 mindful June 2017

Barry Boyce
Editor-in-Chief
Claire Ciel Zimmerman
Deputy Editor
Heather Hurlock
Editor, Digital
Stephany Tlalka
Deputy Editor, Digital
Kaitlin Quistgaard
Editor-at-Large
Hugh Delehanty
Editor-at-Large
James Gimian
Publisher
Julia Sable
Business Development
& Partnerships Director
Andrew Karr
Finance Director
Kenneth Swick
Controller
Cindy Littlefair
Human Resources Manager
Christel LeBlanc
Graphic Designer
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Art Director
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Associate Art Director
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Contributing Editor, East Coast
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Contributing Editor, Midwest
Barbara Graham
Contributing Editor, West Coast
Katerina Sushko
Editorial Assistant
John Sheehy
General Manager
Daniel Scott
Associate Publisher,
Consumer Marketing
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Audience Development
Manager
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Circulation Planning
Director
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the mindful survey
Where in your house do
you have most of your
epiphanies?
31 %
OF PEOPLE HAVE THE
MAJORITY of their epiphanies
in bed, and 16% have
them while in the shower.
11% of people have them on
the couch, while another 11%
have them in their backyard.
6% report that most of their
epiphanies occur in the
kitchen, 3% have them in the
hallway, and less than 1%
have their epiphanies mostly
on the toilet. The remaining
22% report their epiphanies
occur in other places,
most notably in the bath,
while exercising, and during
meditation.
“Every sunset
and cloud
formation is a
one-of-a-kind
work of art.”
What was your favorite
creative activity as a child?
“Making clothes for my
doll from scraps of fabric.
I loved rummaging for
scraps and still do!”
“When I was supposed to
nap, I would jump on the
bed and make ridges and
valleys in my quilt. Then I
would sit quietly and imagine
towns and people living
between the ‘mountains.’
(I'm from Colorado.)”
“Needlework and cooking
with my grandmother.”
“Daydreaming.”
“Making a ‘radio show’ with
a tape recorder and my
siblings.”
“Putting on plays.”
“Puzzles.”
“Designing houses.”
“Melting crayons, building
bricks with the melted wax,
and building cities with the
wax bricks.” ●
connect
To meet and learn from the best writers and teachers on
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Comments chosen for publication may be edited for length and clarity.
All submissions and manuscripts become the property of The Foundation
for a Mindful Society.
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF VECTEEZY
6 mindful June 2017

point of view
Err on the Side of Human
Barry Boyce
Editor-in-Chief
barry@mindful.org
Our must-read story this issue:
In “The Mind Set Free,” Hugh
Delehanty learns how to let his
creativity run wild. On page 54.
Read a short report on the scientific
research behind the value of making
mistakes at mindful.org/mistakes
At this year’s Academy Awards,
the night’s big award, best picture, was
largely a contest between two movies:
La La Land, a bubbly, lighter-than-air
musical depicting beautiful people
traipsing through the hills, valleys,
boulevards, and freeways of LA; and
Moonlight, a gritty coming-of-age story
about a young African American marginalized
not only through racial discrimination
but because he is poor, gay,
and being raised by a mother addicted
to drugs. Despite its grave theme,
Moonlight uplifts; it’s about resilience
and love in the face of untold odds.
In the inevitable social media wars,
La La Land was denigrated for even
being considered in the same league
as a movie of the depth of Moonlight.
So, when La La Land won the night’s
final Oscar, many Moonlight fans
turned off their TVs. When the La
La Land acceptance speeches were
halted to announce that the true winner
was Moonlight, it shocked everyone
involved. A truly human moment
emerged when the teams from both
movies expressed their respect and
admiration for their counterparts.
The pettiness stirred up in the social
media universe was not in evidence
onstage. Though they made very
different movies, their behavior suggested
a mutual appreciation for the
artistry involved in depicting the light
and comic and the heavy and tragic.
That’s what made it striking: Something
delightful and heartwarming
emerged from a mistake. Having
been blown out of proportion, things
returned to appropriate size: Hey,
we’re just human beings here doing
our thing, and whether we win or lose
is not the end of the world. Aren’t mistakes
wonderful that way?
Yet we so often shrink from mistakes.
Many of our organizations
make it a habit of punishing mistakes
harshly, meting out shame that makes
people feel small. That’s such a foolish
strategy, though, since mistakes are
essential for life. Without genetic
“mistakes”—mutations—the variability
that life needs to continue into
future generations would not emerge.
Things would be too static.
We need random acts of failure to
move forward. In our human interactions,
flubs keep us real. Our natural
vulnerability, which we so often hide,
emerges, promoting connection with
others. Errors can inspire the truly
lovely emotion of forgiveness. How
pleasant is the sound of “That’s OK”?
Mistakes are also the key to learning.
As psychologist Kelly McGonigal
points out, “…the process of
‘failing’—when you’re willing to pay
attention—is often what leads to the
greatest successes,” and early work
by Jon Kabat-Zinn demonstrated that
practicing mindfulness could trigger a
brain shift that decreased the overreaction
to things not going as planned.
This responding-not-reacting quality
is the essence of becoming resilient.
The practice of meditation is
founded on making mistakes. Our
attention will wander, which gives us
the delightful opportunity to return
home—with a smile. And above all,
mistakes happen with ease. We don’t
have to try to mess things up. A mess
awaits us just around the corner. ●
VOLUME FIVE, 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, 228 Park Ave S #91043, New York, NY 10003-1502 USA. Periodicals
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Suite 703, Halifax, NS B3J 1V7 CANADA. Printed in U.S.A. © 2017 Foundation for a Mindful Society. All rights reserved.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARVIN MOORE
8 mindful June 2017

what’s new
Top of Mind
Things that spark our minds, touch our hearts, make us smile—
or roll our eyes. Keep up with the latest in mindfulness.
Putting Emotions on the Map
It’s hard to talk about emotions and to get a feel for how they work. To
offer some aid, emotion researcher Paul Ekman teamed up with the Dalai
Lama and data visualization firm Stamen to create the Atlas of Emotions, a
website that allows you to explore the dimensions of your emotions to help
“increase choice in what we become emotional about and how we respond.”
Universal emotions,
clockwise from top:
anger, disgust, sadness,
enjoyment, and
fear. Clicking one at
atlasofemotions.org
shows an interactive
diagram with more
detail on that emotion.
The New Picture of Health
We all know that engaging in healthful
habits—and eliminating the
unhealthy ones—promotes physical
and psychological well-being. But
knowing what to do to be healthier
and actually doing it isn’t the same
thing. A new initiative aims to make
it easier to adopt a healthy lifestyle by
modeling what that looks like. Calling
itself a “behavioral pharmacy,”
the nonprofit Open Source Wellness
offers weekly drop-in events in Oakland,
California, that include exercise,
meditation, healthful meals, and community
interaction—the four pillars
of physical and psychological health,
according to organizers.
“We’re providing structure and
support to fill the ‘behavioral prescriptions’
doctors give patients:
Eat healthier, exercise more, reduce
your stress, connect meaningfully
with others,” states cofounder Ben
Emmert-Aronson, PhD.
There are no lectures, classes, or
intakes, just experiential participation
designed to show people how to move
more, eat better, and get connected.
Kind of like a community potluck,
plus. And the big vision for this experiential
preventive health model? To
become integrated into healthcare
centers and communities nationwide,
and be paid for on a sliding scale by
individuals and by health insurers.
ILLUSTRATION BY ATLASOFEMOTIONS.ORG, THE OPEN SOURCE INITIATIVE
10 mindful June 2017

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOJO OLDHAM, FREDDIE RAMM
After decades of internalizing unsolicited
remarks from others about her body, British
designer Jojo Oldham displayed all the commentary—nasty
and nice—on a dress, illustrating
her challenging journey to self-acceptance.
Taking a Measure of Compassion
All too often, medical care is dismally short on
compassion, even though reports have identified it
as an essential ingredient for providing quality care. A
major barrier to change is the lack of a valid, reliable way
to assess compassion in clinical settings. Recently, Shane
Sinclair of the University of Calgary and other Canadian
colleagues surveyed the existing methods out there.
Scouring through research databases, they turned up
nine studies describing seven different compassion measurement
tools, ranging from a self-report questionnaire
for nurses in Korea to a survey of patients’ perceptions
of hospital physicians’ caregiving from the Boston-based
Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare. All
seven methods have “significant limitations that warrant
careful consideration,” the authors concluded. No single
instrument measured compassion in a comprehensive or
rigorous enough fashion; for instance, most of the tools
didn’t directly evaluate the desire to help ease suffering,
a key element distinguishing compassion from empathy.
And for most of the methods, there was little evidence of
the measurements’ reliability, validity, or interpretability.
Making
Space to
Just Bee
Awe Yeah!
We’ve all experienced awe
in the face of the momentous:
A moment of stunned
awareness, when our bodies
are suffused with wonder,
vitality, and presence.
What’s more, research is
finding that the experience
of awe produces some powerful
benefits. In addition to
promoting altruism, lovingkindness,
and magnanimity,
awe may boost the body’s
defense systems and help
people better cope with
stress. Another bit of good
news: Awe doesn’t have
to be a once-in-a-lifetime
experience. Even something
as simple as a walk can
bring it about.
To explore the first-ever
virtual-reality guided awe
walk, go to mindful.org/
awewalk
If It Is Broke, Do Fix It!
It’s scary how easily
most modern devices fall
apart, and how hard (and
expensive!) it is to repair
them. Yet the financial
and environmental cost of
replacing our broken stuff is
reaching a breaking point.
Enter iFixIt, the Wikipedia
of repair manuals, which
offers a virtual library of
manuals for fixing phones,
staplers, cars—pretty much
anything you can think of—
all written and edited by
the site’s audience.
A small Iowa town is doing its bit to reduce the bee-population
crisis: Cedar Rapids plans to seed 188 acres with
native prairie grasses and wildflowers. Eventually, the city
hopes to dedicate 1,000 acres to bee-friendly foodstuffs.
CRAZE
OR
CRAZY
Sometimes you
just can’t decide
if something’s
groundbreaking or
totally bonkers. Our
jury’s out. What’s
your verdict?
A MIND CLEANSE
Okay, so you start by
grabbing some soap
and a scalpel, and
then...just kidding!
“Mind Cleanse” is
becoming a popular
term to refer to various
activities and programs
with the aim
of a clearer, calmer
mind. Just because it
sounds suspiciously
similar to “brainwashing,”
doesn’t make it
the same thing, right?
WEED YOGA
People have been
smoking joints and
doing stretches for
decades, but recently
yoga studios have
opened up that
specialize in yoga
“enhanced” with
marijuana.
MEDITATION
TRUCKS
Picture a food truck—
only for meditation.
The latest in portable
services, meditation
trucks have
been popping up
and wheeling around
US cities, including
Detroit and Austin.
June 2017 mindful 11

what’s new
EXTRA-
ORDINARY
ACTS OF
KINDNESS
When a man
showed up at an
airport with his
toddler daughter,
he was unpleasantly
surprised to
learn that, having
just turned two,
she now needed
her own ticket,
and he couldn’t
afford it. A nearby
stranger noticed
and, without hesitation,
she bought
the $749 ticket.
The city of Indianapolis
installed
tiny ramps along
its downtown
canal in order to
save ducklings
and other small
semi-aquatic animals
from drowning.
The ramps,
made of wood
and insulation (to
help them float),
allow the birds to
mount the canal’s
concrete edge
with ease.
Starting Off Right
Here are some exciting projects that are bringing
mindfulness to future generations.
A Kinder
Sesame Street
We know Oscar is grouchy,
but can he learn to be more
kind? The folks behind
Sesame Street think so.
Responding to parental
concerns about the unkind
state of today’s world, the
show dedicated its 2017
season to kindness. And
mindfulness plays a role.
To formulate its Kindness
Curriculum, Sesame Workshop
tapped the expertise of
researchers and educators,
including the University
of Wisconsin–Madison’s
Center for Healthy Minds,
which developed a mindfulness-based
kindness curriculum
that’s being taught in
area schools. Early research
shows improvements on
academic performance and
measures of altruism among
participating students.
It even works for Oscar
the Grouch: After some
reluctance, he agrees to take
his pet worm, Slimey, to a
garden party to celebrate Be
Kind to Your Worm Day.
“Cognitively it’s hard for
children to take on the perspective
of someone else.
Through the characters, we
can model that behavior,”
says Sesame Workshop’s
Rosemarie Truglio.
Farmers of the Future
A high school in South Los
Angeles might just be training
the agricultural and
environmental leaders of
tomorrow. The Gardening
Apprenticeship Program
at John C. Fremont High
School has taught city kids
about urban agriculture,
environmental justice, nutrition,
and healthy cooking
since 2012. The program also
provides training in basic
agricultural techniques and
exposure to career opportunities
in the agriculture and
environmental studies.
Mindfulness K-12
Kids in Australia are being
taught to meditate thanks
to a new initiative by the
country’s state media.
Mindfully…Back to School,
a project of the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation’s
Radio division and the nonprofit
mindfulness education
organization Smiling
Mind, offers guided meditations
designed for kids at
the different stages of their
youth, from primary school
all the way up to their university
years, accessible on
the ABC website or app.
Being Humble Can
Have Its Strengths
Based on national
survey responses
from 2,800 participants,
researchers found correlations
suggesting that more
humility may help people
cope better with stressful
life events. Perhaps
humble folks are more
willing to reach out for
support, buffering against
mood problems.
It’s Official:
Americans Are
More Stressed
In its annual survey
on “Stress in America,”
conducted in August,
the American Psychological
Association found that
a little more than half of
Americans were finding
the election a significant
source of stress, prompting
the surveyers to do a follow-up
in January, which
revealed that Americans’
stress had increased from
4.8 to 5.1 on a 10-point
scale in the intervening
months, representing the
first significant increase
since the poll began 10
years ago. Both Republicans
(59%) and Democrats
(76%) reported being
stressed about the future
of the country.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY SESAME WORKSHOP, GRATISOGRAPHY
12 mindful June 2017

what’s new
INQUIRE
Choose from these programs
The Cost of Happiness?
Across six studies, a
New York University
researcher and colleagues
found that participants
rated extremely happy
individuals as more naïve
than moderately happy
individuals. Such inferences
may lead people to
try to take advantage: One
online experiment asked
476 adults to sell a used
iPad for much more than its
true value to earn a bonus.
Choosing between two
buyers to negotiate with,
most participants picked
the very happy-looking
one—the one they rated as
easier to exploit.
Mindfulness & Education Conference
Timothy P. Shriver, PhD, Jennifer Buffet,
Daniel Goleman, PhD, and More
Loving What Is | Byron Katie
Unleash Your Super Memory:
A Brain Performance Training | Jim Kwik
A Silent Retreat Inquiring Into
the Heart of Mindfulness &
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Saki F. Santorelli, EdD, MA
Florence Meleo-Meyer, MS, MA
Bob Stahl, PhD
Rhinebeck, NY • Just 90 miles north of New York City
Explore more at eOmega.org or call 800.944.1001
“Science tells us…there is a strong connection
between emotional well-being and health outcomes,
and that you can proactively cultivate emotional wellbeing
through relatively simple practices like sleep,
social connection, and meditation.”
Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General in the New York Times
When Narcissists Won’t Forgive
Narcissists often won’t
forgive people who cross
them. Curious if having
more clarity about one’s
emotions about a wrongdoer
would mollify or reinforce
this unforgivingness,
German psychologists
asked 1,041 adults to recall
a time when someone hurt
them. Among participants
tending toward arrogant,
self-defensive narcissistic
behavior, the lack of
forgiveness was stronger
in those who responded
more quickly—indicating
greater clarity—in rating
their feelings about the
transgressor. ●
Research gathered from Greater Good Science Ctr. at UC Berkeley, Ctr. for
Healthy Minds at U of Wisconsin–Madison, Ctr. for Mindfulness at UMass
Medical School, and American Mindfulness Research Association.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
14 mindful June 2017

culture
Mindful–Mindless
Our take on who’s paying attention and who’s not
Litknitbits is an Etsy
shop that buys and
sells high-quality
knitted goods made by
senior women living in
poverty or alone. The
page reads: “We pay
them generously, visit
them and provide an
opportunity to still feel
needed and participate
in the society.”
Beth and Dave Cutlip,
co-owners of Southside
Tattoo parlor in
Baltimore, set aside
time to cover up harmful
tattoos for free.
Many of their customers
got inked with
gang signs, swastikas,
and other offensive
symbols in their youth,
and the Cutlips want
to help them put their
past in the past.
Peaceful Cuisine,
a YouTube cooking
channel from Japan,
abandons the
cacophony of your
average food show.
Each episode walks
through a single
recipe, often without
any soundtrack but
the soothing sounds of
slicing and dicing.
Working with Toys Like
Me, a UK initiative that
adapts toys to represent
disability and
difference, students at
Roanoke College fitted
toys with hearing aids
to donate to kids with
hearing loss, so they
can see themselves
reflected in their play.
Ruby Cup sells silicone
menstrual cups—a
durable, ecologically
friendly alternative to
pads and tampons—
and for each one sold,
it donates one to a girl
in East Africa, where
periods are taboo and
limited access to menstrual
products results
in their missing school.
mindful
mindless
Yes, mistakes are part
of life (see page 8), but
this year Columbia
University made a
pretty bad one: The
school sent acceptance
notices to 277 people
who had not, in fact,
been accepted to the
Ivy League institution.
Imagine having to
break that bad news.
At an upscale grocery
store in Hong
Kong you can buy a
single strawberry—
shipped in from
Japan and presented
in a styrofoam ring
on a bed of straw
paper inside a gift
box—for $22, in what
you might call peak
extravagance (and
peak wastefulness).
Suggestions for Mindful–Mindless?
Send them to mfml@mindful.org
Who’d have thought a
viral story could get a
person to spend nearly
$100,000 on one piece
of junk food? eBay
user “valuestampsinc”
is who. The auctioneer
made $99,900 on a
“RARE - One of a Kind”
Cheeto resembling
Harambe, the gorilla
whose killing made
headlines in 2016.
A man dressed in an
Angry Birds costume
didn’t just dress the
part. He played the
part. When someone
walking past him on
the street commented
on his costume, he
attacked the stranger,
causing serious, albeit
non-life-threatening,
injuries.
Jerry Seinfeld once
asked, “What’s the
deal with airplane
peanuts?” Apparently,
their deal is that they
take precedence over
passengers. A family of
four was kicked off an
American Airlines flight
because two of them
were allergic, even
though they had their
own food and offered
to sign a waiver. ●
16 mindful June 2017 Illustrations by Jessica Rae Gordon

“mindfulness is not just
about meditation.
mindfulness is the gateway
to a free and joyful heart.”
— Jack Kornfield,
Founder, Spirit Rock Meditation Center
SUMMER 2017
HIGHLIGHTS
retreats
august 18-20
Cultivating Compassion—
3-day, non-residential retreat
nikki mirghafori
sep 14-17
Insight Meditation for
the Curious— 3-night,
residential retreat
mark coleman, diana winston
daylong programs
july 23
Cultivating a Compassionate
Heart during Troubling Times
sharda rogell, sakti rose
august 13
Real Love: The Art of
Mindful Connection
sharon salzberg
Also available as a live webcast
spiritrock.org
Spirit Rock
An Insight Meditation Center
august 26
Loving What Is
byron katie
Also available as a live webcast
Spirit Rock Meditation Center,
5000 Sir Francis Drake Blvd.,
Woodacre, California | (415) 488-0164

ain science
True, False, or Hmm?
The latest findings in psychology—about our deep-seated thoughts,
emotions, and behaviors—get a lot of media attention. Unfortunately,
they often turn out to be flawed or false.
Sharon Begley is
senior science writer
with STAT, a new
national health and
medicine publication.
She is also author
of Train Your Mind,
Change Your Brain
and Can’t Just Stop:
An Investigation of
Compulsions (2017,
Simon & Schuster).
Whether you are an avid reader of psychology
news or just a casual one, you’ve probably
run across a plethora of fascinating findings
about human behavior, thought, and emotion.
This barrage of findings isn’t surprising. Unlike
studies in, say, molecular biology, psychology
research has a lower barrier to entry: Plan your
experiment, get funding and approval, recruit
participants (often, handy undergraduates, or
even volunteers in cyberspace), and you’re good
to go. No complicated cell cultures or care-intensive
lab animals required.
Unfortunately, consumers of psychology
research—all of us who find it captivating, even
revelatory, because it tells us about how we are
put together—would do well to be as critical as the
many Amazon customers who carefully scrutinize
their order and send back anything that falls
short. Why? Because psychology is in the midst of
a “replication crisis,” meaning that when a second
lab tries to reproduce research findings, the exact
same experiment produces different results.
In 2015, for instance, the first round of attempts
by the “Reproducibility Project” to redo 100
prominent studies got the same results as the
original for only one-third. That doesn’t mean
what the original researchers reported (that, for
example, students learn more effectively if they’re
taught in the “learning style” that matches theirs)
didn’t really happen. It could simply be that what
was true for the participants isn’t true of many, or
even most, other people.
The replication crisis made me look back
over my columns for Mindful to see if I’ve misled
you, however inadvertently. So far, I’ve been
lucky (and I emphasize lucky: I don’t claim any
superior ability to sniff out problematic findings):
I was glad to see that I warned against →
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ain science
RESEARCH
Not Myths
While many findings
in psych studies
have turned
out to be mythical,
a number of
cognitive biases—
mental shortcuts
we use to make
quick decisions—
have been amply
demonstrated.
With confirmation
bias,
we seek data to
support what we
already believe.
Loss aversion
points to putting
more effort into
avoiding losses
than making gains.
They’re discussed
in a popular new
book by Michael
Lewis: The Undoing
Project, which
is about two Israeli
psychologists
whose research
on bias broke new
ground.
Take our pop
psych quiz at
mindful.org/
psychquiz
believing the wilder claims about mirror
neurons (my June 2014 column), about biophilia
(August 2015), and about sex differences in the
brain (February 2016). But I wouldn’t be
surprised if some of the results I described in
neuroeconomics (April 2015) and generosity
(August 2016) don’t hold up as well.
Scores of claims that have gotten extensive
media coverage, and even made their way into
textbooks, are questionable. I’ve chosen ones
that offer some general lessons for consumers of
psychology research:
1 Those learning styles: Although the majority
of studies disprove the popular idea that
students learn better if the pedagogic technique
matches their supposed style, the myth persists.
That may be because when people try to learn
something according to what they believe to be
their learning style, they feel they have learned
the material better—but haven’t, found a 2016
study in the British Journal of Psychology led by
psychologist Roger Van Horn of Central Michigan
University. (Yes, I know every time I cite
research I could be on thin ice. I try to include
only findings with support from multiple, independent
studies.) But the most effective pedagogic
technique varies according to the type of
material, not the student. Nobel-winning social
psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman
asked, “The question I have is: If your effect is
so fragile that it can only be reproduced [under
strictly controlled conditions], then why do you
think it can be reproduced by schoolteachers?”
2 The power stance: Stand with your feet
apart and your hands on your hips, or sit with
your legs on a desk. Such a “power pose,”
researchers reported in 2010 in Psychological
Science, made their 42 volunteers feel bolder,
elevated their testosterone levels, decreased
their levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and
increased their tolerance for risk, as shown
by their willingness of make risky bets. The
TED talk version is that the power stance can
change your life.
Alas, when other scientists redid the study
in 2015, with five times the participants, they
found no such effect. And although the original
scientists protested that 33 other studies found a
power-pose effect, an objective analysis of those
33 found something quite different: The statistics
in those 33 are such that they can equally
support the conclusion that the power stance
has no effect, and hint that researchers deepsixed
power stance studies that did not find an
effect. They called the evidence “too weak to
advocate for people to engage in power posing
to better their lives.” Lesson: If a claim is based
on results from only a few dozen people, take it
with a grain of salt, and keep the shaker nearby
until a larger study replicates it.
3 Smiling makes you happy: This one has
been around since at least 1988, when a study
reported that holding a pen between the teeth
to force a smile (try it) caused people to find
cartoons funnier than when they held a pen
between their lips.
Unfortunately, when 17 independent labs ran
the make-me-smile test with just under 2,000
volunteers, they found no effect of mouth position
on how funny people found cartoons. This
doesn’t mean no one feels happier if something
forces him to smile; maybe if you force yourself to
smile, without the annoying pencil, you feel a little
happier. But the replication failure does mean
the effect, if any, is too weak to appear reliably in
large numbers of people. Lesson: If a psychological
effect that is taken as applying to humans as
a species applies only to some of us in some circumstances,
it’s not a legitimate human universal
like confirmation bias and loss aversion.
4 Finite willpower: This is considered “one
of the most influential psychological theories of
modern times,” as the British Psychological Society
put it. The idea is that if you draw on your limited
store of willpower to, say, resist the dessert
cart at lunch, you have less to use when you walk
past a store advertising exactly the shoes you’ve
long admired. Dozens of studies have found such
an effect, which is also called “ego depletion,” so it
would seem to be robust.
Yet 23 labs studying nearly 2,000 participants
found that “draining” self-control in
one task had “close to zero” effect on people’s
capacity for self-control in a subsequent task.
A separate analysis of 116 studies, in Journal of
Experimental Psychology, similarly came away
unimpressed. Lesson: If there’s an effect at all
it’s small, it doesn’t apply to everyone, and could
even be opposite the one usually claimed. That
is, exerting self-control in one situation made
some people better at it in the next one.
5 The Lady Macbeth Effect, in which people
exposed to, or made to engage in, unethical
behavior are driven to wash their hands or
otherwise clean themselves, as researchers
reported in 2006 in Science. Strictly speaking,
the claim was based on a lab study in which
20 mindful June 2017

people copied, by hand, an account of sabotaging
someone and then found products like soap and
toothpaste more desirable than if they had copied
a story about helping someone. Later studies
found that people felt guilty after washing.
Again, when other scientists redid the original
study they found no such effect. Maybe
some people do have a Lady Macbeth thing
going on, while others didn’t. The more important
lesson here is the need to be cautious in
extrapolating an artificial lab setup (copying a
story, not actually engaging in unethical behavior;
rating soap and toothpaste, not actually
scouring yourself) to real life.
6 Big Brother watching: A poster of watchful
eyes caused people, on the honor system, to chip
in more for coffee than when the walls were
bare. This 48-person 2006 study made headlines
and influenced public policy, with some
British police departments putting up posters of
staring eyes in an effort to keep people honest.
But in 2011, a redo with 138 people failed to find
a pro-social effect in people being “watched” by
the eyes of a poster.
BE MORE
FOCUSED
AT WORK
TRAIN YOUR BRAIN WITH
CORPORATE MINDFULNESS FOR
MORE CLARITY, BALANCE, AND JOY
“The impact of the practices in
this book is truly profound.”
Linda Nordin, Secretary General,
United Nations Association
7 Wear red to attract a mate: Several studies
have reported that men rate women wearing
red as sexier and more attractive than women
wearing other colors, something that scientists
have spun into a “Just So Story” about how
our primate ancestors advertised their sexual
availability. But in a 2016 paper in Evolutionary
Psychology scientists described three experiments
with 800 young men (vs. two dozen in the
original study) finding no such effect. Lesson:
Even if there is a weak red effect, it’s a relatively
unimportant influence on how we judge potential
partners—certainly long-term ones, but even
one-night stands.
It’s easy to become cynical about psychology,
or at least the exciting results that the
media pick up. The general point is not that the
original, dubious claims are wrong. They might
be—heck, they probably are—true for some people.
Some of us likely do feel bolder in a power
stance. Maybe believing that it can transform
your life in a good way produces changes for
the good that bring that about. For if there is
one psychological effect that has stood the
test of time, and countless replications, it is
the placebo effect: that believing in the power
of something can make it so. At least for some
people, a little or a lot, in some circumstances
some of the time. ●
June 2017 mindful 21
Martin Ström (MSc, Lic Psychologist) is a director
at Potential Project, the world’s top provider of
corporate mindfulness. He has trained leaders and
staff at companies such as Accenture, IKEA, and
Five star rating on Amazon
Order your copy now! bit.ly/imsorry-book

INFO
Artichokes
are among the most
antioxidant-rich vegetables
in the grocery store.
Very good source of fiber
Very good source of the
probiotic inulin
Source:
Eating on the Wild Side
by Jo Robinson
22 mindful June 2017

LIVING | food
A Tender Heart
Béatrice Peltre takes a moment to appreciate one of her
favorite vegetables: the artichoke.
There’s something intimidating about
artichokes. Maybe it’s their scale-like
outer leaves, or the fact that at first
sight they look like something you’d
find among cacti in a desert. Maybe
it’s because their name features the
word choke. Yet when you venture
beneath the exterior, you find concealed
within them a soft, buttery
delight unlike any other—called, fittingly,
the “heart.” Just like with most
human beings, when you get to the
heart of the artichoke you discover
something rather different from what
you’d have guessed at a glance.
Artichokes are one of my favorite
vegetables, but they are something of
a handful. As a kid my mom used to
serve them steamed whole, alongside
a mustardy vinaigrette that we would
dip the leaves into and then eat, one
by one. It was a slow but rewarding
process, and by the time we reached
the heart we could truly appreciate its
flavor and texture.
If you choose not to simply steam
artichokes whole like my mother did,
their preparation takes patience—but
the patience pays off. For my stuffed
artichoke recipe, you remove the
exterior leaves and cut away the hairy
“choke.” You’re left with a meaty, delicate
vessel, perfect to fill with a layer of
rich creamy hummus and a medley of
vibrant herbs and tender vegetables. ●
Recipes, food styling, photographs, and
narrative by Béatrice Peltre. Find more of
her work at latartinegourmande.com.

food
GF
Gluten-free
V
Vegan
Artichoke Bottoms with Peas, Carrots,
and Asparagus
Serves 4
8 medium globe artichokes
⅓ cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil + more
to serve
¼ red onion, finely chopped
1 small leek (light-green parts
only), finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and
minced
2 carrots, peeled, and finely
sliced
2 cups peas (fresh or frozen)
1 teaspoon sugar
1 sprig tarragon
3⅓ cups water
12 asparagus stalks
1 small head of lettuce, pale
leaves only
Sea salt and pepper
1 tablespoon chopped mint
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
¾ cup natural plain hummus
To clean the artichokes: In a
large bowl, combine ¼ cup of
the lemon juice with water. Cut
the stem off each artichoke and
remove the outer tough leaves by
hand, continuing until you reach
the tender, pale leaves. Using a
large knife, slice off the remaining
leaves so only the base of the
artichoke remains. Scrape the
hairy choke with a melon baller or
a spoon. Place the artichokes in
the lemon water as you go. When
you've prepared all the artichokes,
drain and place them in a steamer.
Steam for 10 minutes until tender
when pierced with a sharp knife.
Set aside and keep warm.
In a shallow pan, heat the olive
oil then add the onion and leek
and cook for 2 minutes. Add
the garlic and continue to cook
for 1 minute. Add the carrots
and cook for 3 minutes. Add
the peas, sugar, tarragon, and
remaining water, and cook for
5 minutes. Add the asparagus
and lettuce leaves, and cook for
2 more minutes. Add the rest of
the herbs, and season with salt
and pepper. Place the artichoke
bottoms in a serving dish and
spread 1½ teaspoons hummus
on the base of each. Then spoon
in the vegetable mixture. Drizzle
with the remaining lemon juice
and olive oil, and serve.
24 mindful June 2017

food
GF
Gluten-free
Baby Artichoke and Arugula Salad
with Avocado and Mozzarella
Serves 4
For the dressing
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon chopped chives
2 tablespoons apple cider
vinegar
5 tablespoons olive oil
Pepper
For the salad
¼ cup lemon juice
3 cups water
16 baby artichokes
2 tablespoons olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
5 cups baby arugula
6 small mozzarella di Bufala,
halved or quartered
1 avocado, peeled, pitted,
and sliced
3 tablespoons slivered
almonds
To clean the artichokes:
Combine ¼ cup lemon juice
with 3 cups water in a large
bowl. Cut half an inch off the
top of each artichoke, and trim
one inch off the stem. Remove
the bottom and outer leaves by
hand, continuing until you reach
the tender, pale-green leaves.
Using a knife, clean the ragged
areas along the stem. Cut each
artichoke in half lengthwise and
place the halves in the lemon
water as you go. When they are
all cleaned and cut, drain and pat
them dry with a kitchen towel.
In a frying pan, heat 2
tablespoons of olive oil. Add the
artichoke halves and cook on each
side for 3 to 4 minutes, until tender
when pierced with a fork. Set aside.
In a small bowl, whisk together
the Dijon, honey, chives, vinegar, 5
tablespoons olive oil, and pepper.
Place the arugula in a large
salad bowl. Add the cooked
artichokes, mozzarella, avocado,
and almonds. Add the dressing
to the bowl and toss gently.
Serve immediately.
26 mindful June 2017

LIVING | walk the talk
Intimately Mindful
By Victoria Dawson
Photograph by Lever Rukhin
Born in Toronto, to Jamaican parents,
Giselle Jones worked as an actress
in New York City and Hollywood for
17 years, then served as the education
director of a youth literacy group in LA.
She’s now a psychotherapist in private
practice who treats people with mental
health and relationship issues including
sexual anxiety, trauma, and addiction.
How did you first come
to meditation?
In 2012, while at UCLA getting my
master’s degree in social work, I did
an internship at a school in the Watts
neighborhood. On day one, the school
shut down for race-related fighting
and thieving of computers, and I had
teachers tossing me students.
As I got to know them, kids would
disclose sexual abuse and other
traumatic experiences, and then they
would leave the room, and I would
hold my head and cry. But as a UCLA
student, I was able to attend, for free,
a daylong course in mindfulness meditation
with Dr. Marvin Belzer at the
Mindful Awareness Research Center.
And I really fell in love with it. It was
delicious for me.
Delicious? Can you explain
what you mean?
I got to see how much my body was
speaking to me. I’ve always been very
physically oriented: I identify emotions
in my body before I know what they
are in my thoughts. Learning through
mindfulness to not shy away from that
intensity, but to actually pay attention
to it, allows us to tolerate our intensity,
the intensity of being human. The
practice helped me to stay present in
my sessions with the kids and in the
social work I was learning and doing,
without collapsing.
The marketing imagery can
make certain communities of
people feel like mindfulness
is a luxury only for rich
white people, or that it’s not
applicable to their own lives.
How do you use it in your work?
Here’s one example: At a weekly
women’s intimacy group that I facilitate
at the Center for Healthy Sex,
before starting we all sit in a brief
meditation to let us arrive and disarm
and feel safe enough to be vulnerable
in each other’s presences. Mindfulness
practice is not only a tuning fork
for what’s going on in the room but
can also enable us to show up with as
few defenses as possible.
You deal with people who have
sexual anxiety issues. How does
mindfulness help?
I sometimes give a homework exercise
called sensate focus therapy, created
by Masters and Johnson in the ’60s. It’s
a way of pulling intimacy all the way
back to the beginning, with touch—and
make that a mindfulness exercise.
One partner receives the touching
and the other is the giver, whose
task is to do a slow, slow exploration.
What does it feel like to smell behind
this person’s ear? How can you take
20 minutes to explore this person’s
hand? Both partners pay attention to
their own responses, and the person
receiving can say what’s working for
them or not. Such exploration can be
really liberating and actually increase
desire. It’s all about slowing it down
so the intimacy comes in.
You work with a pretty diverse
group. How important is that to you?
Very. The marketing imagery can
make certain communities of people
feel like mindfulness is a luxury
only for rich white people, or that
it’s not applicable to their own lives.
To say “just bring yourself into the
present moment and everything
is going to be hunky-dory” is not
helpful for school kids afraid of being
targeted by gangs. But when you
do bring mindfulness interventions
in—though I might not label them
as “mindfulness”— some people are
like, “This really helps.”
The diversity issue was partly what
compelled me to get my certification
as a mindfulness facilitator. I really
appreciated that a significant part of
my training there was dedicated to
cultural humility and high inclusiveness
on diversity issues.
You also do some volunteer work.
Who participates?
Some of the regulars are homeless,
with PTSD or anxiety or depression.
One woman who identified as
transient told me that the meditation
has really helped with her anxiety.
Another homeless participant had
been targeted by street violence
because of being transgender. I think
mindfulness is a path toward being
able to inhabit your own body in a
way that feels safe.
What do you get out of it?
I never, ever, ever, ever leave feeling
anything but filled by the experience.
When we end, there’s a sense
of community, a thread that seems to
run through the entire room, which
I like to call love, or life. And I get to
be part of that. ●
28 mindful June 2017

Giselle Jones
Social Worker and
Psychotherapist
Los Angeles, CA

LIVING | how to live a mindful life
Break the Chains
How to finally get rid of those pesky
old habits that no longer serve you.
By Kelle Walsh
It’s your
brain
Kelle Walsh is Mindful’s Midwest
Contributing Editor.
Habit-making is simply
what our brains do. They’re
designed to create neural
pathways that provide the
best results. So, when a
desire triggers a reaction
that in turn satisfies that
initial urge, the brain takes
note. The next time that
desire arises, the brain
calls up the circuitry that
got the job done before.
Part of this is neurochemistry,
says psychologist and
author Elisha Goldstein.
When an urge is satisfied—whether
for soothing,
attention, or any other
response—we experience
a rush of dopamine, the
neurochemical associated
with feeling good. After a
few blasts of dopamine, we
start to crave more, which
then drives us to indulge in
the triggering behavior, be
it eating fast food, checking
your phone, or lighting
up a cigarette. Voila! You
have a habit.
When we understand
how a habit forms, we have
a greater chance of catching
it in the act, and take steps
to make a more considered
choice, says addiction psychiatrist
Judson Brewer.
Think about a nagging
habit. Next time you feel
moved to act it out, see if
you can trace each step.
Can you see how the habit
reinforces itself?
30 mindful June 2017
Illustrations by Colleen MacIsaac

how to live a mindful life
Will, want, won’t
Recognizing the patterns
of our habits—the trigger,
the impulse, the brain’s
learned way to satisfy
that need—is just part of
the process of unwinding
them. There also needs to
be an intention to do things
differently, tied to something
that deeply matters
to you. Or as Stanford
University health psychologist
and author of The
Willpower Instinct Kelly
McGonigal says, it means
identifying the “I want”
power that will reinforce
your “I won’t” power.
“Willpower is the ability
to align yourself with the
brain system that is thinking
about long-term goals—
that is, thinking about big
values rather than shortterm
needs or desires,” she
told TED blog. “So, I can
feel the emotion, I can feel
the craving, and at the very
same time, I just make my
awareness big enough to
hold my commitment to
make a different choice.
Your ability to hold those
opposites is what gives
[you] willpower over time.”
“
Habit-making is
what our brains do.
”
Remember HALT
When you get clear on
your want—the deeply
personal reason for wanting
to make a habit change
(hint: “I should” isn’t one
of them)—then begins the
work of strengthening
your ability to choose differently
(aka, willpower).
But as anyone who has
tried to diet or commit
to exercise knows, saboteurs
to our will abound.
This is when psychologist
Christopher Willard recommends
employing the
acronym HALT.
HALT
When you feel willpower
slipping, Willard suggests, ask
yourself if you’re feeling any
of the following:
Hungry: Impulse control
involves a complex dance
between the prefrontal cortex
and the hippocampus, with
a little help from other parts
of the brain also involved
in foresight and decisionmaking.
Any shortage of
calories will short-circuit
this hub of activity, making
it difficult to activate your
willpower.
Angry/Anxious: When we
feel angry or anxious our
bodies can slip into fight-or-
flight mode, where we start
operating from the most
primitive parts of the brain
and nervous system. In this
mode, some of the rational
parts of our brain shut down,
decreasing our ability to think
and reason through things, or
even consider the long-term
consequences of our actions.
When your emotions are
running high, take a few slow,
mindful breaths to quiet the
nerves and activate your more
rational brain.
Lonely: When we tell other
people about a commitment
to change a habit, we’re far
more likely to follow through.
Introvert or extrovert, we
all need to strike a balance
between solitude and
socializing. Consider what
is the best balance for
you, and share your goals
only as widely as you feel
comfortable.
Tired: When we’re tired,
our self-control and willpower
slip away, an effect known
as “ego-depletion.” (A poor
night’s sleep can even
knock you down a few IQ
points.) Establishing healthy
sleep habits is not only
integral to your self-care,
it’s also essential for your
deeper goals.

Try compassion
Research shows that when
we criticize ourselves, it
actually short-circuits
the brainpower we need
to unwind old habits and
adopt new ones. Criticism
(self or external) causes
the same fight-or-flight
impulse, limiting access to
the higher functions of the
brain, like being able to see
the bigger picture, explains
life coach and mindfulness
instructor Carley
Hauck. “Criticism makes
us feel more anxious, more
depressed, and more afraid
of failure.”
If you regularly tell
yourself you “can’t” or that
you’re not enough in some
way, try using a more compassionate
and understanding
tone instead. Once we
can be compassionate in our
thinking, we can figure out
the next best step to take
toward the change we want.
See it, and believe it
Elisha Goldstein reminds
us that mindfulness helps
build the resilience to resist
giving in to urges that foster
unhealthy habits.
Visualize the circumstances
that typically trigger
an urge. Notice what
thoughts and feelings arise
in the body. See if you can
identify where you feel that
urge physically, but don’t
engage it. Instead, relax
the body and tune in to
your breathing, in and out.
Staying with the breath,
watch how the feeling
grows, peaks, and eventually
falls away. In doing
this you’re training your
brain not to engage the
craving and to recognize
the urge as impermanent.
Start off with this visualization,
and then bring it
into the rest of your life. ●
PARTING THOUGHT
Over time habits can become so ingrained that we start
to believe them, says author of The Here-and-Now
Habit, Hugh Byrne. If you often lose your temper, you
might tell yourself, “I’m an angry person.” If you smoke,
you might say, “I can’t quit.”
But internalizing habits only perpetuates the behavior
and limits your ability to see a different possibility.
The next time one of your habit-derived identities pops
up, challenge it. Ask yourself, Is this really true? Is it true
that “I’m an angry person” or “I don’t have the willpower
to quit”? Or is this a belief or storyline I’ve developed
that isn’t solid, is not “me,” and can be let go of?
June 2017 mindful 33

PRACTICES | inner wisdom
The Power of Solitude
Spending time alone with ourselves may
not be easy or even desirable. But it’s key to
getting to know who we really are.
Most of us are afraid to be alone.
I’m talkin’ no cell phone, no Wi-Fi
alone. When was the last time you
were by yourself and didn’t try to
sweeten, avoid, or supercharge the
moment? Were you fearful, anxious, or
hungry for something more?
We are awash in studies telling us
that we need each other to survive and
to be happy. And it’s true, we do. But
when we lose the ability to be alone
with ourselves, our overstimulated
nervous systems suffer from no place
to rest and recharge. Self-imposed
solitude triggered by social anxiety,
schizophrenia, or other psychological
disorders can constitute a health risk,
says psychiatrist and researcher Dr.
Mary V. Seeman in a review published
in 2016 in the journal Psychosis. “But,”
she writes, “[solitude] can also reap
benefits such as recovery of a sense of
self, renewed harmony with nature,
escape from sensory overload, stimulation
of creativity, or awakening to
spirituality.”
Mindfulness helps cultivate this
beneficial solitude, which has psycho-
Elaine Smookler is a registered
psychotherapist with a 20-year mindfulness
practice. She is senior faculty at the Centre
for Mindfulness Studies.
logical and physiological perks. When
we practice anchoring our attention
to a single focus like the breath, the
body and nervous system gear down
from operating in relentlessly highstress
states. Without cortisol and
adrenaline pumping you into high
alert your body has better conditions
to relax. In this more peaceful state
you can enjoy a slower pace to look
around and experience a wider array
of life. You’re able to let go, to not
feel afraid to be alone, which means
you’re no longer grasping at ways to
push away your fear. You can begin to
enjoy what it’s like to be with yourself
and feel calm. And as you learn
Our mind is expert at taking bits of information and
creating a storyline. One of those stories is that being
alone is so terrifying, anything else is preferable.
to be alone you can learn how to be
brave and honest with how things are
right now. If you can cultivate your
ability to be OK with being alone, you
may come to appreciate that you can
create all the conditions you need to
be content with yourself and in life.
Sometimes the unfamiliarity of
being alone can feel awkward, painful,
or just plain wrong. You may feel like
Groucho Marx, who said that he didn’t
want to belong to any club that would
have him as a member. The thought of
making friends with yourself may feel
weak or silly. That’s just another form
of fear, which has many faces.
Spend enough time by yourself
and you’ll notice all kinds of thoughts
bubble up and pass away. Hateful
thoughts. Painful thoughts. Fearful
thoughts. Our mind is expert at taking
bits of information and creating a
storyline. One of those stories is that
being alone is so terrifying, anything
else is preferable.
That’s where time and patience
come in. When you first approach this
idea it’s natural that you might feel
the same aloofness or hesitation you
experience in any new relationship, so
take it slowly. As you train your ability
to be alone, without suspicion or disdain,
you may begin to relax. Spending
more time with yourself increases
your ability to recognize the forces at
play in your life. When you contemplate
being alone, what do you feel?
Are you holding your breath? Are you
clenching your stomach, right now, or
your jaw? Which emotions are being
triggered by your lonely movie? It’s
OK to have these feelings; you don’t
have to like them.
The next time that the tight squeeze
of loneliness commands your attention,
let that feeling be your cue: first
take a breath; develop an
attitude of gentleness and kindness.
Be present to whatever you are feeling.
Lean into your sadness, your pain,
your joy. Let yourself be shy as you
gently get to know you. There is nothing
to fear when you come to yourself
with an understanding heart. Allow
yourself the freedom to discover how
unlonely being alone can be. ●
34 mindful June 2017
Illustration by Marta Sevilla

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PRACTICES | work–life balance
Running on Empty?
Every workplace harbors potential drains to
creative energy. Do you recognize yours?
A little quiz: What gives you energy at work?
Odds are strong that an answer quickly sprang
to mind. Maybe it’s collaboration, a new creative
challenge, or an uninterrupted chunk of time to
focus. Now consider, what drains your energy?
Likely a mix of people, places, and scenarios
come to mind, since there are so many things that
sap our energy at work. Why does this matter?
Because our creative and productive energy
is what fuels our best thinking and makes us
feel connected to our jobs. When that energy is
diverted, blocked, or drained away, not only are
we far less effective, we’re usually not very happy.
Here are five common energy zappers in the
workplace:
1 Drama
You might be attracted to it
or you might create it—either
way its purpose is to distract
from and avoid unpleasant
issues. As a way of dealing
with fear or uncertainty (or
putting off dealing with it), it’s
common for people to invent
“stories” to fill in missing
details. For example, people
create their own theories
about why changes are happening
in business strategy
or personnel. The next time a
little melodrama comes your
way, try to see the story and
return to the facts. Ask yourself,
or the people involved,
“Is this true?” This question
can interrupt the downward
drama spiral that can kill productivity
and morale.
2 Perfection
This is the belief that there’s
no room for mistakes. When
people feel they’re working in
an environment where their
best is not good enough, it’s
not only demoralizing, but it
also limits innovation: no one
wants to take a risk for fear of
“doing it wrong.”
The way to redirect this
energy is to be honest
about both what you know
and don’t know and what
your strengths and weaknesses
are. For example,
“I’m great with content, but
I need help with images to
communicate my words for
presentations.” Letting go of
the idea of perfection
and being open to failure is
how we learn.
3 Glass-Half-
Empty Outlook
When your focus is always
on what’s going wrong, it’s
downright exhausting. And
if you linger in that mindset
for too long, it can cause
hypervigilance (and trust me,
this is not a productive use of
your energy!). Instead, make
a daily effort to recognize and
celebrate what is working.
This doesn’t mean avoiding
or ignoring the issues and
challenges that need to be
addressed. It means starting
with the wins first.
4 No Boundaries
Without clear boundaries
about what’s acceptable,
comfortable, and tolerable in
your worklife, there’s always
going to be confusion (for you
and for the people dealing
with you). If you have a family
commitment on a given day
of the week, let the people
you work with know, so they
have context for why you’re
not free that day. Setting and
communicating boundaries—for
yourself and for your
team—lets everyone know
what is and isn’t expected and
permitted. It keeps the energy
flowing in a positive direction.
5 Control
This shows up as a compulsive
desire to know
everything and control
outcomes. (Hello, micromanaging!)
When we rely on
controlling behaviors, we are
likely fearful—either of the
outcome not going our way
or of being “exposed” as not
good enough—both of which
can deplete your energy
by focusing on incomplete
or false data (aka drama).
You can avoid this drain by
allowing the action to occur
as it would naturally, without
your interference. Take a step
back and reflect when you
notice the urge to force an
outcome to be what you want
it to be. Releasing control
doesn’t mean you stop caring.
It means you are able to
see things from many points
of view and assume everyone
means well and is acting with
the best of intentions. ●
Jae Ellard is the founder of
Simple Intentions and author of
a series of books on developing
awareness in the workplace.
36 mindful June 2017 Illustration by Jason Lee

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PRACTICES | the mindful faq
Am I Doing This Right?
Here’s the latest installment in our ongoing series of
helpful answers to common meditator questions.
I once farted in the meditation room. It was a
relief, but I was mortified. Everyone laughed.
What’s the protocol for a thing like that?
So that was you? I always wondered which
poor soul was the source of that scandalous
flatulence. You do realize why everyone
laughed, don’t you? It wasn’t because you’re the
first one to ever inadvertently let loose with an
embarrassing bodily noise, but because we’ve
all been there at one time or another. The echo
chamber that is a quiet meditation hall can certainly
amplify those rumblings in a remarkable
way though, huh?
The truth is that the laughter is an expression
of common humanity. We’re all human
and we all have experienced something of the
sort, and that’s really the point. Embarrassment
is the near end of a spectrum that has
shame on the other end. And shame is that feeling
that if anyone knew a certain thing about
us, they wouldn’t love or respect us any more.
And that one unfortunate burst of gas then
becomes the “big reveal” of our imperfection as
a human being.
One could even say that we are actually
bound together by your humiliating gassiness.
We laugh because we truly know your pain and
shame and can relate to it. We aren’t laughing
at you, we’re laughing with you.
Of course we’d prefer to be laughing just a
little bit farther away from you in that moment,
but even that, like gas itself, will pass.
Is there a trick for getting
past the voice that says,
“You don’t have time to
meditate. You don’t need it
anyway. Just take it easy.”
You need to start by considering
the source. This is the
voice that vacillates between
reacting to every arising
urge and impulse, no matter
how fleeting or capricious,
and maintaining the comfort
and predictability of the
status quo.
But the funny thing is that
what’s being whispered in
your ear at these moments of
doubt or impetuousness are
really just thoughts. Random
neuron firings. Brain
secretions. They aren’t facts,
just ideas to be considered,
hypotheses to be tested.
Perhaps you could simply
notice that these thoughts
are arising. “Oh, I’m having
the thought that I don’t need
to meditate. Hmm. Look
at that.” Then you can stay
connected to your intention
to meditate, which got you
onto the cushion in the first
place. How does this fleeting
thought—be it when your
knee feels sore or the phone
rings—measure up to the
commitment you made to
take good care of yourself
and cultivate a closer relationship
with the important
things in your life?
True, maybe you really
don’t have time to meditate.
But maybe you’re just
having the thought that
you don’t have the time.
There’s a big difference
between the two. When you
can see the thoughts as just
things to consider and not
imperatives, you can make
choices that align with what
is important to you and not
just what seems important
at the moment. Perhaps
then you can experience the
freedom of awareness.
Steven Hickman, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and Executive Director
of both the University of California San Diego Center for Mindfulness and
the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion.
June 2017 mindful 41

the mindful faq
What if I have a really good idea during
meditation? Is it OK to pause to write it down?
When we’re struggling with a thorny issue or
trying to untangle a difficult problem, letting
go of trying and simply settling gently on the
meditation cushion for a period of time often
provides a more relaxed and flexible cognitive
state that allows us to see things from a different
perspective. And, yes, sometimes remarkably
clear and unanticipated ideas arise from the
depths of our psyche when we let go of trying.
So, if you need to you can keep a notepad
nearby when you sit down to meditate, jot down
a note, and let yourself rest in knowing that you
have offloaded the idea and can drop back into
awareness of the moment. I find that if I try to
preserve a good idea while meditating, I simply
become fully preoccupied and distracted by
the idea and its subsequent offspring. Writing it
down allows me to let go of it for the moment.
I also want to note what is likely NOT to
work: meditating in order to solve a problem or
have a good idea. When we use our meditation
practice to achieve a goal, we are destined for
frustration. As Jon Kabat-Zinn said in Wherever
You Go, There You Are, “In meditation practice,
the best way to get somewhere is to let go of
trying to get anywhere at all.”
When I’m freaking out
about something, I find it
impossible to meditate. I
do have a history of panic
attacks. Any suggestions?
We’re often susceptible
to inadvertently engaging
in what I like to call
Strategic Meditation. That
is, because we sometimes
attain a degree of calmness
when we practice,
we begin to think that we
should meditate in order to
change how we feel. Such
an approach is particularly
ineffective and fraught with
danger when we feel highly
distressed, panicked, or
depressed.
At such times, we’re
not really meditating. If
mindfulness meditation is
the allowing or accepting
of all that is arising in our
awareness and holding it
with kindness and patience
and willingness, then using
Strategic Meditation to
calm down or stop a wave
of sadness represents
resistance to our feelings,
not acceptance. We are
adopting a stance of judging
the feeling as bad or undesirable
or problematic and
trying earnestly to make it
stop or go away. The problem
is that trying to make
yourself stop feeling or
thinking about something
only tends to make the
problem worse. What you
resist, persists.
So then should you stop
practicing mindfulness
when you’re freaking out?
No. But you may want
to try a slightly different
approach. Instead of sitting
very still when your body is
feeling agitated and fearful,
consider walking mindfully
or doing yoga with
the intention of bringing
awareness to your experience.
That may just indulge
your agitation enough to
let you find a rhythm in the
tumult. Let go of trying
to make the anxiety go
away and instead see if,
for a time, you can simply
befriend it and get to know
it a bit. Perhaps by letting
go of the resistance to
freaking out, you will find
that you actually take the
wind out of its sails.
Letting go of needing
anything to be any different
in this moment is the key to
moving mindfully through
difficult situations. It isn’t
easy to do, but when you’re
practicing regularly, this
stance of letting go becomes
more accessible and easier
to embrace. Regularly cultivating
mindfulness when
we aren’t freaking out or
anxious will help us when
we are freaked out. If our
inner “volume” is already
turned down, these difficult
situations don’t provoke us
in the same way. ●
42 mindful June 2017

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how to: posture
Take a Seat
Find the right meditation
posture for your body
Meditation isn’t only about the
mind—it’s also about the body. And
believe it or not, meditation isn’t
meant to be physically uncomfortable.
Getting your posture right is key
to staying relaxed and alert instead
of tense or spaced out. Without that,
it’s nearly impossible to focus on the
present moment.
Chances are that when you start,
meditation will feel a little awkward
or uncomfortable. That’s okay. Finding
the ideal meditation posture and
seating arrangement can take a while.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach—
it takes time to familiarize yourself
with the subtleties of your unique
body. We offer the basic guidelines
to help you get started or make
some tweaks.
Posture Pointers
EYES gaze slightly downward,
4 to 6 feet in front of you. Or
eyes closed.
CHIN slightly tucked to keep
your cervical spine aligned.
SPINE follows natural
curvature—upright, yet natural.
SITTING BONES are centered
and stable—not perched too far
forward or spread too far back.
ARMS parallel to the torso,
palms fall naturally on the thighs.
KNEES below hips, with legs
loosely crossed.
Cover Your Bases
If you’re planning a longer session (30+ minutes),
it pays to come prepared. Here’s our list of
essentials: a glass of water, shawl or blanket,
warm socks, timer or clock.
44 mindful June 2017

TIPS
Seat
Spine
Legs
Sitting
in a
Chair
KEEP YOUR
BUTT CENTERED
STAY STRAIGHT
AND RELAXED
FIND THE
RIGHT HEIGHT
If your seat isn’t
comfortable, the
rest of your body
will likely tense
up, which makes
meditating pretty
difficult all around.
Keep your butt
in the center of
the cushion or
chair—if you’re too
far forward your
spine will arch to
compensate; if
you’re too far back
it’ll curve forward.
When you first
sit down, rock
back and forth
on your sitting
bones to loosen
up and find solid
ground. From
there, the rest of
your posture will
more easily fall
into place.
DON'T
PERCH!
There are two
main ways the
spine gets out
of whack during
meditation: arching
or slouching.
When you have
more than a natural
arch, things
stiffen and strain,
and the mind is
more likely to get
frantic. On the
flipside, it’s hard
to feel present and
alert when you're
slouched, your
hands are sliding
off your knees, and
your chin is down.
To align your
spine, drape your
body forward, then
slowly straighten
up, feeling each
vertebra stack as
you go.
RELAX
YOUR
BACK!
If your knees
are above your
thighs, your hips,
back, and neck
will strain. For
the long-legged
among us, this
could mean
finding a higher
cushion.
Resting
Pose
It’s OK to take
a break from
your meditation
posture, especially
during longer
sessions. Try
the resting pose
pictured, bringing
your knees to your
chest, curving your
spine forward.
KNEES
BELOW
HIPS!
There are many reasons to
meditate in a chair: it can be
easier on the knees for those
with joint pain; it’s convenient
when traveling; most people
have access to a chair even
if they don’t have room for
a cushion. If you do use a
chair, resist the urge to rely
too much on the chair’s back,
unless you really need to.
Doing so can cause you to let
your spine go soft, making
your breathing less open and
inviting distraction and discomfort.
And be sure to keep
your feet flat on the floor. This
may mean placing something
under your feet if the chair is
too high off the ground.
Seating Options
Meditation benches
allow you to sit in a
relaxed kneeling
position while keeping
your posture aligned.
Rectangular cushions, or
gomdens, are good for
sitting cross-legged, and
come in various heights
and degrees of firmness.
Round cushions, or zafus,
are used for cross-legged
sitting or, placed on their
side, between the legs, for
a kneeling posture. ●
Photograph by Michael Piazza, Illustrations by Annick Gaudreault
June 2017 mindful 45

mind–body
meditation
on foot
Leave your FitBit and pump-up music at
home, and try out mindful running. This
fresh approach to fitness tunes you in to
your mind as well as your body. The result
is a whole new experience of fitness.
By Alan Green
PHOTOGRAPH BY PLAINPICTURE/AURORA PHOTOS/LESLIE PARROTT
46 mindful June 2017

The vernal equinox is still more
than five weeks away, but on this
mid-February morning there’s nevertheless
a benign, early-spring-like
coolness enveloping the woods where my run
begins. I’ve pounded out thousands of miles
on this lakeside footpath, and over those many
years my haphazard approach has been as
likely to leave me dreading my training as earn
me age-group awards. But today I’m relying on
some experts in running mindfully in hopes of
making this routine more beneficial to both my
mind and body. Unfortunately, there are some
stumbles right out of the blocks.
I have been encouraged, for example, to ditch
my GPS watch and heart-rate monitor as a first
step toward focusing on the process of running
rather than on the outcome—a strategy to help
me stay both relaxed throughout and grounded
in the present moment. Impossible, I decide:
Every New Year’s Day I reset my goal of logging
a thousand miles, and because a knee injury
already has me behind schedule, I’m loath to
forgo the spoils of today’s effort. So I compromise
by hiding my devices beneath a sleeve and
vow to keep them covered—a pointless scheme,
it turns out, since my watch announces both
mile splits and heart-rate spikes with vibrations
that sabotage my intentions.
I have also been instructed to try inhaling
and exhaling exclusively through my nose, since
deep, controlled breathing into the lower lungs
activates the parasympathetic nervous system
and, in so doing, fosters relaxation. But I foolishly
ignore the advice to ease into this advanced
practice with a walking pace and then, if possible,
an easy jog, so by the half-mile mark I feel
as if I’m struggling to inhale through a couple of
pinched cocktail straws. At one point, in fact, I
feel so oxygen-deprived I imagine my face has
turned the color of my electric-blue Sauconys.
I do have some success, however. I maintain
at least sporadic awareness of my adjusted
form (back straight, core engaged), and I keep a
purposefully slow and steady pace from start to
finish, effectively squelching my usual temptation
to just let it rip. I stop briefly to chat with
a friend not seen for months, whom I might
have otherwise blown by with a shouted excuse
about having to beat the clock. I abstain from
my absurd habit of speeding up when runners
approach from the opposite direction so I don’t
appear to be slow-footing it. I make repeated →
June 2017 mindful 47

mind–body
Alan Green is a
veteran investigative
reporter in
Washington, DC,
whose books include
Animal Underworld:
Inside America's
Black Market for Rare
and Exotic Species.
He ran his first
marathon in 1987.
mental notes to check in on how my body and
brain are feeling. And as I pass the halfway
point of the 6.5-mile run, I finally manage to
breathe nasally for a stretch and, perhaps as a
result, relax into the flow.
But following my cool-down I bump into
my training partner, who blindsides me with
a suggestion that we run an early-spring
half-marathon, six weeks before our usual first
long race. I fear I won’t be prepared, given my
knee problems, but the idea of not being able
to keep up with him is so unsettling I all but
agree. And because he’ll see my just-completed
The Experts Say
“Mindful running is the practice
of fully immersing yourself in the
present-moment experience of running
and its immediate effects on your mind
and body, free from judgment, selfconsciousness,
or self-doubt.”
ELINOR FISH
workout when I post it online, I sheepishly
make excuses for my absurdly slow time.
Later that day, I begin to feel foolish for
having offered apologies for my performance.
But I have been instructed, just as in meditation
classes, to be kind to myself and to not judge my
results. So I let those feelings go and remind
myself that a thousand miles begins with a single
step, or even with a misstep.
In addition to keeping the body relaxed and
tall (imagine your head being pulled gently aloft
by a sky-high rope), and letting deep, controlled
nasal breaths dictate the pace, the mechanics of
mindful running are largely indistinguishable
from running as we know it. What’s different is
that this approach to navigating the trails and
the tracks is done in a way that both approximates
and complements seated meditation.
Mindful running educator Elinor Fish, whose
Colorado-based company, Run Wild Retreats +
Wellness, leads women’s trail-running expeditions
around the globe, puts it this way: “Mindful
running is the practice of fully immersing
yourself in the present-moment experience of
running and its immediate effects on your mind
and body, free from judgment, self-consciousness,
or self-doubt.”
Fish, an accomplished distance runner who
now instructs everyone from back-of-the-pack
novices to ultra-distance warhorses, says that
intense competition was what motivated her
early in life, but the stress that came with the
loss of a loved one, the birth of a child, and a
painful autoimmune disease took such profound
physical and psychological tolls that mindful
running became a necessity. “I can only run
if I listen to my body,” she says, “and running
mindfully is the method by which I tune in to
my body’s signals and run my best given how I
feel any given day.”
Although Fish also practiced meditation, it
took a back seat to running until she suffered a
bout of extreme exhaustion. Even then, however,
she found sitting on the cushion to be
challenging.
“But then I discovered how running actually
creates the ideal circumstances in which to
practice meditation,” she says. “Synching movement
with breath, focusing the mind on a single
point (such as the trail ahead), and aligning the
spine to allow flow of energy are just some of the
ways running creates the coherence in the body
that supports present-moment awareness.
“Making this my practice dramatically
reduced my stress and made running sustainable
given my health challenges, so I’m
extremely thankful. I do now have a seated
meditation practice, too, but this was easier to
adopt after only doing mindful running for a
while first.”
Other runners, she adds, have told her that
running mindfully has also been their “gateway
drug” to seated meditation. Conversely, veteran
meditators are particularly open to mindful running,
as they find it easier to focus on the experience
of running than on the quest for faster
times, awards, recognition, and the like.
But like meditation, learning to run mindfully
can prove frustrating for some. Michael Sandler,
who coaches people in both, suggests that
beginners start with mindful walking, taking
gentle, easy breaths as they go. “If it does turn
into a jog,” he says, “there should be no judgment
or competition. Just move and have fun.”
“I have a saying with my runners: 'Kind,
gentle, easy, good,'” he adds. “I advise them to be
48 mindful June 2017

more present, to listen to their breath, to be kind
to themselves, and not beat themselves up. I tell
them to forget about pace and just start running.”
Learning to run mindfully, particularly for
less-experienced runners, is probably better
done individually than as part of a group. That’s
because one key to success is finding a rhythm
that harmonizes your breath—deep, controlled
belly breathing, as in yoga or meditation—with
the cadence of your feet, and in a group there’s
always the temptation to keep pace with the
leaders. Moreover, some group members may
want to chatter as they go, potentially distracting
others from tuning in to bodily sensations,
taking stock of emotions, checking in on form,
and otherwise cultivating the focus and sense
of presence that this routine can produce.
On the other hand, many find that group runs
can instill a sense of community, camaraderie,
and motivation to keep at it, even when no words
are exchanged. In that way, these sessions can
be very much like group meditation.
Given such potential upside, some runners
have hatched efforts to expand Mindful Mondays
to include group efforts. Among them is
Diana Gorham, who’s general manager of Two
Rivers Treads, a popular running store in the
panhandle of West Virginia. Gorham ran her
first marathon in the fall of 2006 and earned
an impressive age-group 5th place. After that,
she says, running became more about the racing
than the training, as she doggedly pushed
herself to the limit in hopes of recording better
times. In 2011 she graduated to “ultras” (i.e.,
races greater than the traditional 26.2-mile
marathon), her longest a 100-mile trail race in
August of 2014 that had her on the rain-soaked
course for more than 27 hours.
But something changed, she says, on the heels
of that effort: She realized that there’s more to
running than logging endless miles in pursuit
of racing acclaim, and as a result her punishing
training schedule gave way to a yoga practice,
guided meditation, and exploration of her
spiritual side. Her new routine includes about
three short runs a week, all done with a greater
appreciation of her environment and the rest of
the running experience.
Last February, Gorham launched her Mindful
Mondays running (and walking) group in hopes
of fostering a like-minded community. She says
she may someday race again, as she once relished
all the trappings of joining friends in preparing
for competition. But more important to her is a →
The Right Route
One of the great joys of running is the time and space it gives
you to just be with yourself. There’s nothing else to do, or
really, to even think about. Of course, you can load running, like
anything else, with all sorts of goals and other busyness. But to
truly experience mindfulness while running, the most important
thing is to let running itself be the goal without any other needs
attached to it.
There are two fun ways to practice this.
Just…Run!
Truly give yourself over to the
experience of running just for
running’s sake, with no other
agenda. This will mean going
whichever way your desire
tells you to go, listening to
your body to determine your
speed and the distance you
travel, and remaining alert
and curious to all that’s going
on within and outside of you.
TRY THIS
See if you can take note
of things as you run that
perhaps you haven’t noticed
before. How many different
kinds of trees are there? What
about birdsong? Is the sidewalk
more even in some spots
and more cracked in others?
TIP
Make sure you have plenty
of water, an extra layer of
clothing, and maybe a $10
bill tucked into your running
shorts, just in case. Oh, and
you might want a map or cell
phone if you think you might
wander beyond your ability to
find your way home.
Plan Your Run
Set up some basic parameters—a
preplanned route,
a set amount of time—and
within those, fully embrace
the experience without the
worry of having to make any
other decisions. You won’t
need to wonder if you should
turn left or right at the end
of the road, for example,
because your route is already
decided. Instead, tune
inward, to your breath, the
warmth spreading through
your muscles, how the energy
travels up through your legs,
hips, and back with each
step. Let your inner experience
of running come alive
in Technicolor.
TRY THIS
Notice your predominate footstrike
pattern. Do you lead
with your right foot or your
left? Follow this for a while
with your awareness, then,
do the opposite. Intentionally
lead with the other foot, and
see what happens.
TIP
Just like in seated meditation,
try keeping your focus on
one thing at a time. Use the
footstrike method mentioned
above, or the sound and feel
of your breathing. Let the
rhythm still any other noise in
your mind.
June 2017 mindful 49

Catch Your Breath
3 popular breathing methods to use while
running. Try each one and pick your favorite.
1
2
NASAL BREATHING
If you’ve done yoga, you’ve
likely done diaphragmatic
nasal breathing, where the
diaphragm is engaged while
breathing deeply and slowly
only through your nose. The
technique is used to focus the
mind and trigger the relaxation
response. The same
thing happens when you
breathe through your nose
while running slowly, as in
mindful running. Plus, nasal
breathing warms and filters
the air before it travels into
your lungs, which is a boon
for running in cold, lowhumidity
climates. But it’s
difficult, if not impossible, to
maintain nasal breathing as
you increase your speed and
your body requires greater
levels of oxygen than your
nose can handle.
MOUTH BREATHING
This is the most efficient way
of getting the large amounts
of oxygen needed under exertion.
Runners usually naturally
adopt a rhythmic breathing
pattern focused on exhalation
through the mouth.
3
ALTERNATING BREATHING
Whether you breathe through
your nose or your mouth,
alternating your exhaleto-footstrike
pattern can
wake you from the hypnosis
of a repeated rhythm and
according to one study, may
help prevent running injury.
Instead of a 2:2 pattern,
where you inhale for two
footstrikes and exhale for two,
try a 3:2 pattern, inhaling for
three strikes and exhaling for
two. (If you’re naturally fast,
you may want to adjust this
to a 2:1 pattern.)
PHOTOGRAPH BY PLAINPICTURE/LANCASTER

mind–body
co-embrace of running and spirituality. “Now I
want to do what will feed my soul,” she says.
Sara Hunter, a marriage and family therapist
in Washington, DC, had an entirely different
motivation for starting her Monday Morning
Mindfulness Running Group (RunDCTherapy.
com). In her local-government work with highrisk
adolescents ensnared by the juvenile justice
system, she found that many who were unwilling
to say much in a traditional therapy setting
opened up when she took them outside for a
walk or to shoot hoops (Hunter played college
basketball and is a dedicated runner with one
marathon to her credit).
That was the inspiration for a less formal
approach to therapy, which gives clients the
opportunity to ease into their sessions with a
walk or run. The positive feedback that novel
arrangement generated—both from those clients
and from colleagues—in turn propelled forward
her long-simmering idea to launch the mindful
running group, which she always envisioned as
a community activity rather than a purely therapeutic
experience.
“Our culture has differentiated our minds and
bodies, when they’re so interconnected,” she
says. “I want this to be a way to create community
around a common interest. It’s another
component of what I value: It’s a gateway to
exploring wellness.”
Since my maiden attempt at running mindfully,
my follow-up sessions—all done without
a watch, headphones, or other electronic
devices—posed their own challenges and
offered their own rewards. Nasal breathing
remained the heaviest sledding, so I began
sessions with a quarter-mile walk, breathing in
through the nose and out through the mouth.
Then I stepped it up to an easy jog, and when
my body and brain finally adjusted to this routine,
I tried redirecting exhales back through
my nose. When/if that felt comfortable (it never
did on hills or trails), I amped up the pace a bit
in hopes of attuning my breath to something
that felt like real running.
At the same time, I managed to stay in touch
with my emotions and maintain good form. I
dismissed the idea of matching the efforts of
other runners, and instead tried measuring my
success only in terms of having done something
of value for my body and brain. I remained aware
of tuning out negative thoughts and staying in
the present moment. I took repeated note of my
surroundings and maintained an easy pace.
But where BOOKS I went wrong was to ignore advice
about tuning in to my bodily sensations. As a
result, my intermittent knee pain escalated
along with my eagerness to keep testing this
new approach to running, until I finally decided
that I was teetering on serious injury. So for
a few days I ran with a flotation belt in a tiny
indoor pool, using these same mindful techniques
as a way to throttle the usual boredom
and monotony of this slug’s-pace running.
And to my surprise, it made a real difference.
Whereas this seemingly endless back-and-forth
exercise always had me eyeballing the clock,
this time around I managed to appreciate the
sensation of being suspended in the soothing
water; I marveled at my ability to effortlessly
whirl like a top an inch from the wall; I focused
on my breath, just as I would have if running
my familiar lakeside path; I gawked at the ducks
and the geese and the final, slow fade of sunlight
through the windows at the far side of the pool.
And when my attention faded and boredom
sneaked up, I reminded myself that this repetitive
activity had a useful purpose: Because I
was clearly pushing my heart rate to a moderate
training zone, I was maintaining some of the
aerobic excellence (the “base”) I’d been developing
on the treadmill and, more recently, on my
outdoor winter runs.
In short, although this exercise hardly measured
up to the experience of an outdoor run, I
knew that paying attention to my body this way
would likely insure that I wouldn’t be sidelined
for long. What’s more, there’s no question that
even this sort of running pays physical, cognitive,
and emotional dividends, all of which are
enhanced by my doing it mindfully.
In fact, Sakyong Mipham, a veteran marathoner
and author of Running with the Mind
of Meditation, says there’s such a natural,
supportive relationship between running and
meditation that it’s not a matter of choosing
between them.
“The practice of running with the mind of
meditation is about synchronizing the mind
and body,” he told me. “While the practice of
mindfulness can help anyone in any walk
of life, it can also provide a gateway to
the mind of meditation, which has the
potential to go much deeper. Synchronizing
the power of the mind with
the physicality of running can unlock
this depth in a holistic and grounded
way. That is to say, we will begin to see
benefit in every aspect of our life.” ●
The
Experts
Say
“I have a saying
with my runners:
'Kind, gentle, easy,
good.' I advise
them to be more
present, to listen to
their breath, to be
kind to themselves
and not beat
themselves up. I
tell them to forget
about pace and
just start running.”
MICHAEL SANDLER
“Our culture has
differentiated our
minds and bodies,
when they’re so
interconnected,”
she says. “I want
this to be a way to
create community
around a common
interest. It’s
another component
of what I
value: It’s a gateway
to exploring
wellness.”
SARA HUNTER
Find more mindful
running resources
at mindful.org/
mindfulrun
June 2017 mindful 51

eathing space
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAFF/STOCKSY
52 mindful June 2017

“In joy or sadness
flowers are our
constant friends.”
OKAKURA KAKUZŌ
February June 2017 mindful 53

PHOTOGRAPH BY GETTY IMAGES/ANDY RYAN

creativity
the mind
set free
Hugh Delehanty embarks on a creativity and
mindfulness retreat, where he discovers that the key
to being creative is to strip away all but the essentials
of who and what you are.
June 2017 mindful 55

creativity
“I think I’m going
to shoot myself,”
I screamed in exasperation.
Hugh Delehanty
is a former editor for
Sports Illustrated,
People, Utne Reader,
and AARP The
Magazine, and
coauthor with NBA
coach Phil Jackson of
the bestseller Eleven
Rings. He reported
on Louisville mayor
Greg Fischer's
campaign to create
a compassionate
city for Mindful in
October 2016.
“Why?” asked art teacher Barbara Kaufman
in a soft, melodic voice.
“Look at what I’ve done with that blue paint!”
I replied, pointing to my sad painting of a Buddha
looking like an emaciated Project Runway
model. “It’s a disaster!”
I thought I knew something about painting
when I signed up for this retreat on creativity
and mindfulness at the Spirit Rock meditation
center in Northern California. After all, I’d studied
traditional figure painting at the Corcoran
College of Art and Design and had even spent
time in Italy learning from the masters. But
none of that seemed to matter now. The brushes
were terrible and the paint—a fast-drying,
water-based tempera—was so bright and cheerful
that everything I did turned into a kindergarten
birthday decoration. My painting had
started out as a picture of the Buddha on fire but
had somehow morphed into a muddy purpleand-gray
mess like something by El Greco on
happy pills.
“Let’s turn this into a learning experience,”
says Barbara, trying to calm me down. “Why did
you start to paint over the gray?”
“I thought it was looking too dark,” I replied.
“So that’s when the judgment came in. I think
there’s some muddiness inside of you. You don’t
trust your first instinct. You have to edit it and
paint it over and you end up with a muddy picture.
You need to go with what’s emerging and
listen to what the painting needs.”
How did she know that about me? The reason
I’d come to the retreat was to figure out a way
to grapple with my inner editor. When I was
a young writer, I thought that creativity was
a form of alchemy that required falling into
a deep, trancelike state that only a select few
artists had ever mastered. I was obsessed with
the tricks famous writers had used to stimulate
the muse. The German poet Friedrich Schiller
inhaled the fumes of rotting apples. Gertrude
Stein drove around the French countryside looking
at cows for inspiration. Victor Hugo wrote →
56 mindful June 2017

PHOTOGRAPH BY GETTY IMAGES/THANASIS ZOVOILIS

creativity
When my daughter
was about seven
years old, she
asked me one day
what I did at work.
I told her I worked
at the college—
that my job was
to teach people
how to draw. She
stared back at me,
incredulous, and
said, 'You mean
they forgot?' "
HOWARD IKEMOTO
Art is the means
we have of undoing
the damage
of haste. It's what
everything else
isn't."
THEODORE ROETHKE
When you make
music or write or
create, it's really
your job to have
mind-blowing,
irresponsible,
condomless sex
with whatever idea
it is you're writing
about at the time."
LADY GAGA
his novels buck naked. None of these ploys
worked for me, however.
Years later, when my career as a writer was
floundering, I turned to meditation. My teacher
at the time told me that creativity was about
being fully in the present. She said that she used
to spend weeks writing and rewriting her talks
trying to make them perfect until she realized
that all she had to do was trust the moment
and let the words flow effortlessly. That insight
inspired me to break through some of my more
persistent blocks, but part of me still longed
to tap into the wild, free-wheeling creativity I
sensed was buried inside me. The creativity I
knew when I was a child.
That was the world that Barbara (and her
colleague Claudia Erzinger) played in. “You don’t
have to be in a special state in order to create,”
she said. “The creativity will meet you where you
are.” It’s all about “deep listening,” she added,
and going far beyond “I like/I don’t like” and “I
want/I don’t want.” “It’s pushing yourself to your
edges and coming face to face with the ideas and
attitudes that are limiting you. When that happens,
it can be completely transformational.”
Spirit Rock is a peaceful sanctuary in the
golden hills surrounding the San Geronimo
Valley, about 25 miles north of San Francisco.
As I drove onto the grounds past a large herd of
cows and the road sign that read “Yield to the
Present,” I noticed a small raft of wild turkeys
making their way slowly down the road toward
the pasture. The retreat was being held in a large
meditation hall overlooking a hill where a redtailed
hawk circled quietly, searching for prey.
The metaphor that Anna Douglas, one of
the founding teachers at Spirit Rock, used to
describe the retreat was “frozen ice cubes
melting.” “Melting is good,” she said. “Melting
the frozen judgments, plans, ideas that keep you
from being in the moment. And mindfulness
is a tool for dealing with the hard things that
come up during melting.” Listening to her, I
finally understood what my college mentor, poet
Edwin Honig, was talking about when he told
me that the secret of creativity was “gliding on
your own melting.”
The 50 or so participants were divided
roughly into equal groups of writers and painters,
and the idea was that we would spend a
good part of the time practicing our craft when
we weren’t meditating or listening to talks. The
writing teacher was author Albert Flynn DeSilver,
who described his approach as “embodied
creativity.” It combined meditation and quick,
spontaneous writing exercises that, he said,
were designed to “awaken unconscious ideas
and emotions that are hidden in our bones.”
That sounded interesting, but, given my profession,
I worried that it might also rouse my inner
critic, so I opted to go with the painters.
To my delight, the retreat also included
daily yoga practice. “We’re inviting your whole
being to be here,” said Anna. “The point-andclick
world we live in often leaves out the body.
But this week is about letting go of your mind
and dropping down into your body.” Yoga and
creativity, added teacher Anne Cushman, both
deepen our intimacy with experience. With
yoga, she explained, “you discover that whatever
part of your experience you pay attention to
blossoms under the warmth of your attention.
And the same can be said about creativity.”
When Anne, an accomplished novelist and
journalist, started writing fiction, she said “the
editor part of her mind often shut down the creative
part before it even had a chance to open
its mouth.” One effective way to break through
that block, she learned, was through intense
meditation. “There’s a way of meditating where
you drop deeper beneath the surface of the
ocean. All the big waves of thought are moving
on the surface, and you don’t necessarily have
to quiet them, but you can learn to scuba dive
down and contact this other layer that isn’t so
churned up.” Another powerful strategy was
practicing yoga in a way that focused on following
“the thread of aliveness” in her body rather
than trying to strike picture-perfect poses.
“Doing yoga that way,” she added, “taught me
how to tap into something that was moving
through me when I was writing and let it guide
the flow of the story.”
The science bears this out. Being open to
experience is the single most consistent personality
trait that predicts creative achievement,
according to Scott Barry Kaufman, a
psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania
and one of the nation’s leading authorities
on creativity. But that means being open
not only to your observations of the external
world, but also your intuition, imagination, and
intellectual curiosity.
The other relevant traits exist on a spectrum:
extrovert–introvert, agreeable–disagreeable,
conscientious–disorganized and narcissistic–
58 mindful June 2017

COGNITIVE
{ }
SCIENCE
Does Meditation Boost Creativity?
Research shows that some key elements of meditation
stimulate creativity, and others may not.
What style of meditation is
best for stimulating creativity?
One of the most definitive
studies on this subject was
conducted in 2012 by Lorenza
Colzato, a Dutch cognitive
psychologist. Her research
team had a small group of
novices practice two forms
of mindfulness meditation:
1) open-monitoring, which
involves observing and noting
phenomena in the present
moment and keeping attention
flexible and unrestricted,
and 2) focused attention,
which stresses concentrating
on a single object, such as
breathing, and ignoring other
stimuli. Then, after each meditation
session, the subjects
underwent tests to determine
their ability to perform a
range of cognitive skills.
What Colzato and her
team discovered was that
open-monitoring meditation
was far more effective in
stimulating divergent thinking,
a key driver of creativity. Not
surprisingly, the study also
showed that focused-attention
meditation was more strongly
related to convergent thinking,
which is important for narrowing
options and formulating a
workable solution. (Note: Most
common forms of mindfulness
meditation use a blend of both
approaches.)
Two years later, another
Dutch psychologist, Matthijs
Baas, expanded on Colzato’s
work and demonstrated, in a
series of studies, the importance
of specific mindfulness
skills in the creative process.
The skills were: 1) observation,
the ability to observe
internal phenomena (such as
bodily sensations, thoughts,
and emotions) and external
stimuli (sights, sounds,
smells, etc.); 2) acting with
awareness, engaging in
activities with undivided
attention; 3) description,
being able to describe phenomena
without analyzing
conceptually; and 4) accepting
without judgment,
being non-evaluative about
present-moment experience.
One major finding was that
high observation scores were
the only consistently reliable
predictor of creativity. That
skill, which is enhanced by
open-monitoring meditation,
not only improved working
memory, it also increased cognitive
flexibility and reduced
cognitive rigidity—all of which
are critical to the creative
process. According to Baas,
the ability to observe is closely
related to openness to experience,
a personality trait that
several studies have shown to
be one of the most robust indicators
of creative success.
These studies also found
that acting with awareness,
a skill enhanced by
focused-attention meditation,
had a negative impact
on some cognitive processes
related to creativity, such
as activities that demanded
broad attentional scope and
mind wandering. But it had
a positive impact on working
memory and in-depth survey
of only a few categories or
perspectives. Meanwhile, the
results showed that the other
mindfulness skills—description
and accepting without
judgment—were unrelated to
creativity.
What does this all mean?
In its report, Baas’ team concludes,
“A state of conscious
awareness resulting from living
in the moment is not sufficient
for creativity to come
about. To be creative, you
need to have, or be trained in,
the ability to observe, notice,
and attend to phenomena
that pass your mind’s eye.”
emotionally stable. “Creative people are good at
surfing those traits,” he said. “Being agreeable?
There are times when being a total jerk can help
your creativity. Conscientious? Look at Einstein’s
desk when he died. It was a huge mess.
But being open to experience is the sturdy one,
no matter what your creative process.”
That’s why mindfulness is so important.
“We’re often blinded from making interesting
connections because we’re so driven by esteem
concerns, anxieties, and fears,” he added. “Being
mindful is good for calming down the anxieties
that get in the way of creativity and attuning
ourselves to reality in a deeper way. But there’s
a paradox because creativity also includes
mind-wandering and fantasizing.”
To be creative, you need to be adept at
toggling back and forth between different
thinking styles, explained Carolyn Gregoire,
the coauthor with Kaufman of Wired to Create.
“Creative people learn to be more attuned to
their internal monologue,” she said. “That’s →
June 2017 mindful 59

RESEARCH
{ }
The Genius Formula
Dean Simonton, a professor in psychology at
the University of California, Davis, tells us what,
according to his research, makes a creative genius.
Hugh Delehanty: What separates
creative geniuses
from the rest of us?
Dean Simonton: Probably
the two main factors are (a)
tremendous openness to
experience and (b) unusual
motivational persistence. Of
course, they have to be highly
intelligent and well-versed
in their particular domain,
but not necessarily more so
than their far less creative
colleagues.
You’ve talked about creativity
as not being just an
individual phenomenon.
Why is the creator’s social
context so important?
ipated in the Scientific Revolution.
At best, he might have
become a very erudite monk.
Second, the social environment
provides the setting in
which ideas are accepted or
rejected—and that acceptance
or rejection then
determines whether or not
those ideas are even deemed
creative. A “neglected” genius
who remains so will not count
as creative.
How are scientific
geniuses different from
artistic geniuses?
They are similar in that they
both use some version of a
generic process to obtain
their creative ideas. For
example, trial and error is
used in both art and science.
The difference is that scientists
must operate under
stronger constraints than do
artists. For instance, science
First, the social environment
provides the context in which
creative development takes
place. If Isaac Newton were
born in the middle of the Dark
Ages, he couldn’t have particfiction
can be great art, but
science fiction will not be
great science, particularly
if the fiction violates one or
more laws of physics. The
Death Star is impossible in
science, but not in art.
Why is true genius so rare?
Many different genetic and
environmental factors have
to come together in a single
person before a genius can
emerge. Thus, someone
might have all that it takes
from a genetic standpoint—
such as intelligence, openness,
and motivation—but be
born at the wrong place and
wrong time. Like the example
I gave above with respect to
Newton. Or the times may be
ripe for a genius to appear,
but a particular combination
of genetic components are
necessary, and nobody has
them at that time.
What can “small-c”
creators learn from your
discoveries?
Creativity always demands the
willingness to take risks, so
you have to accept the possibility
of failure. Creativity also
requires openness—curiosity,
broad interests, and tolerance
of ambiguity and novelty.
Big-C creators just show
these qualities to a higher
degree, and apply them to a
domain in which they have
acquired sufficient expertise.
What’s the big question
about creativity that
remains to be answered?
As always, the nature–nurture
issue. How exactly do genetic
and environmental factors
interact over time—from the
moment of conception to the
onset of creativity—to generate
a creative genius?
60 mindful June 2017

creativity
how mindfulness and mind-wandering come
together: turning inward and paying close
attention to what’s going on in your mind, while
it’s running off and fantasizing in both positive
and negative ways.”
Creativity is a complex process, which
involves several interacting cognitive systems.
“When we look at the neuroscience of creativity,”
said Kaufman, “the system we use a lot
in school is the executive attention network,
which gives us the ability to focus on the outside
world. But that’s not where creativity comes
from. It comes from the imagination network,
whose functions strike at the core of human
existence—our ability to construct an ongoing
sense of self, to get in touch with emotions, and
to have compassion for others. Those are the
things that make us human, not just our ability
to be machines and focus on other people’s
goals. When it comes to creativity, the executive
network and the imagination network usually
harmonize very well together.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY CATHERINE MACBRIDE/STOCKSY
Something shifted in me during the third
day of the retreat. After laboring over a misbegotten
painting of the exit sign in my dormitory,
I suddenly felt the urge to do something sensual
and started painting a bare-breasted woman
with a long, flowing multicolored skirt. At the
end of the day, Barbara stopped by and her eyes
lit up. “I leave you alone for a minute,” she said,
“and look what happens.”
The next morning after the 6:30 a.m. meditation,
I took a walk in the woods and suddenly
saw paintings everywhere. The lonely oak
beside a meandering trail headed nowhere. The
vain blackbird fluttering its wings and shrieking
to be noticed. The soft, erotic curves of the sunflecked
hills in the distance. It was exhilarating,
as if I were having an enchanting psychedelic
vision without drugs.
Then, suddenly, this voice came into my head,
saying, “Who are you kidding, Hugh? Why are
you wasting your time on such trivia? Shouldn’t
you be doing something more practical?”
It sounded like my father the day I told him
I was thinking about majoring in art history
in college. “No way,” he fumed. “Jesus, Mary,
and Joseph. How’re you going to make a living
with an art history degree?” As it happened, I
majored in English instead, but it creeped me
out that somehow I had internalized his narrow-minded
view of art.
Later that day, in a Q & A session with the →
June 2017 mindful 61

creativity
teachers, I asked what I should do with this
attack of guilt. Albert speculated that the guilt
was connected to my feeling of exhilaration. “On
some level,” he said, “you probably don’t feel as
if you deserve to be so exhilarated.” Meanwhile,
Anna suggested that I have a conversation with
my father, which could be tricky since he died
years ago. “Give the guilt back to him,” she said.
“Tell him you don’t need it anymore.” Both of
their comments made emotional sense.
When I returned to the art studio, Barbara
asked what I was going to do next with my
painting, and I mumbled something about
adding a simple beach scene in the background.
“I guess you could do that,” she replied, disappointed.
“But what would be the dangerous
thing to do?”
“I could put a man in the picture,” I answered.
“Doing what?”
“Whispering in her ear? Reaching out and
touching her breast?”
“That’s it.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Barbara
was daring me to go somewhere I’d never
ventured before.
None of this surprised Ellen Langer, a
psychology professor at Harvard who’s often
referred to as the “mother of mindfulness”
because of her seminal research on the subject.
“When we think of creativity,” she said,
“we tend to think only of the final product, but
mindfulness is all about the process.” And her
research showed that the more mindful the
process the better the final product.
The main roadblock to creativity, according to
Langer, is our relentless self-evaluation. “People
know that they don’t know [the answer], but
what they don’t know is that nobody knows,” she
added. “If we knew that nobody knows, we’d be
confident in our uncertainty. That’s how artists
and anyone else involved in a creative endeavor
have to act. If you know where you’re going,
then you live your life painting by the numbers.
But it’s hard not knowing when you think you’re
going to be judged negatively. So people pretend
and withdraw.”
In one study, Langer and her team made an
interesting discovery when they asked people to
draw a picture of an animal, then forced them
to make mistakes. Of the three groups they
studied, one was encouraged to incorporate the
mistake into their work and keep going, another
was told to forgive themselves for the mistake, →
PHOTOGRAPH BY BEATRIX BOROS/STOCKSY
62 mindful June 2017

June 2017 mindful 63

creativity
Creativity is more
than just being
different. Anybody
can play weird;
that's easy. What's
hard is to be as
simple as Bach.
Making the simple,
awesomely simple,
that's creativity."
CHARLES MINGUS
Breathe in experience,
breathe out
poetry."
MURIEL RUKEYSER
A true work of art
must be a grand
improvisation;
that is, meditation
and composition
should be steps to
a goal which the
artist will glimpse
unawares."
WASSILY KANDINSKY
and the third was allowed to complete their
drawings uninterrupted. Afterward, the first
group not only reported enjoying the activity
more than the others, but judges also rated
their work superior. Why? Because, Langer
concluded, incorporating mistakes made the
process more mindful. “The fear of making
mistakes keeps people sealed in unlived lives,”
she said, and removing that fear can be “enormously
freeing.”
In her book, On Becoming an Artist, Langer
chronicled her journey teaching herself to paint
and eventually showing her work in galleries. In
the process, she learned that “to be a true artist
is to be mindful” and that work executed mindlessly,
even if it’s done by skilled artists, will usually
feel “in some sense dead.” The key is authenticity.
“When we are not pretending or are not
mindless in other ways,” she wrote, “the products
of our labors will have our own signatures.”
Early on, Langer showed one of her paintings
to an art collector friend who told her, “You
know, Ellen, there’s something there, but don’t
go thinking you’re Rembrandt.” Langer didn’t
respond at the time, but she recalled saying to
herself, “ ‘And Rembrandt isn’t me.’ Meaning
that if I’m true to myself, no one can do Ellen
Langer better than me. And I’d rather be a number
one Ellen Langer than a number 500,000
Rembrandt.”
“What now?” asked Barbara, studying my
rendering of a bearded young man canoodling
with the woman in the striped dress.
“Perhaps a picnic scene,” I said.
“Isn’t there something more dynamic you
could do?”
I drew a blank.
“C’mon, there must be something you can
think of...”
“Well, I could paint an orgy,” I said halfjokingly.
She smiled and flashed that mischievous
look of hers.
Then something startling happened. As soon
as I added another naked body to the picture,
everything changed. Not just in the painting, but
inside of me as well. I suddenly felt unfettered
and alive, and the images just started to flow.
As the picture blossomed with men and women
frolicking together, my brushstrokes became
more and more primitive. I no longer felt as if I
were controlling the painting; the painting was
painting me.
Ever since I’d started studying art, I’d longed
to paint groups of people relating to each other.
But mostly I’d worked with single models
because I didn’t have the guts to try anything
else. Now—caution be damned—I realized I
could do anything I wanted to, without worrying
about making it perfect.
That wasn’t the only lesson Barbara had to
teach me. Later that day, I told her I was thinking
of leaving some of the figures in the painting
unfinished, and she bristled at the idea.
“You’re still thinking visually, about making
a pretty picture,” she said emphatically. “This
painting is about relationships. And these people
can’t relate to each other if they’re half-finished.”
To her, the figures were living beings, not just
lines on a piece of paper. “Don’t jump ahead of
yourself,” she added. “Paint those figures and
then see what they want you to do.”
That night I was bursting with energy. I woke
up at three in the morning and started madly
drawing sketches to add to the painting. When I
finally got to the studio, I was pleased with what
I saw. The painting was like nothing I’d ever
done before. It was whimsical, almost childlike,
the kind of painting I normally hated. But
I loved its raw energy and innocent charm. As
a final touch, I added a large-breasted, Mother
Earth figure floating angelically above the whole
scene. I had no idea where she came from, but
she made me smile.
Barbara was excited, too, but she was even
more interested in my early-morning drawing
spree. “Isn’t it great that all those things are
moving inside of you?” she said. “Wouldn’t it be
wonderful if that could happen every moment of
every day?”
I wasn’t the only one in the room who’d had
a breakthrough. As I looked around the studio
later that night, I was overwhelmed by how
powerful the paintings were. I expected to see
lots of landscapes and flower pictures. Instead
the walls were filled with heart-wrenching
paintings of grief, sorrow, and dark yearnings.
“Who would have guessed?” I wrote in my notebook.
“So much pain and suffering hidden inside
such nice mindful people.”
One of those painters was Elizabeth Bessette,
a former yoga teacher and body worker from
Brooksville, Maine. “It was scary and hard,”
she said, looking back on the process she went
through. “But when I completed a painting, I’d
look at it and learn something about myself. It
was like my unconscious was speaking. One
thing I became aware of was about how much
I was trying to protect myself from life’s pain. I
64 mindful June 2017

also realized the pain I felt being separated from
life. The paintings made both of those concepts
become very alive for me.”
Her most striking painting was a self-portrait
of her being strangled by a large green snake.
“The paintings I made were bizarre, but they
spoke to me,” she added. “I didn’t start out with
a pre-conceived idea of what I was going to
paint. I just trusted the brush on the paper and
let it lead me.”
At one point, she felt shaky and nauseous
because she had no idea where she was headed.
“We put so much value on a painting, that it’s
going to reflect who we are,” she said. “To let
go of all the things you know how to do that are
kind of clever and artistic and just let the brush
lead you—that was a fascinating new concept for
me. I didn’t know that’s what I wanted to learn.
But in hindsight that was exactly what I was
looking for.”
A few weeks after the retreat, I visited
Barbara in her painting studio in San Francisco.
It was a playful environment with festive handpainted
prayer flags hanging in the windows,
walls splattered with bright colors, Jackson
Pollock–style, and at one end of the room a large
unfinished mural depicting the Crack in the
Cosmic Egg.
A gracious, strong-minded artist with warm
eyes and curly gray hair, Barbara got into painting
in her late 20s because, she said, she felt
“this pressure inside that if I didn’t deal with I
was going to burst.” In her very first class with
Michele Cassou, the pioneering teacher of spontaneous
painting, Barbara realized that there
was something in her that wanted to come out.
“It was waking me up to parts of myself that felt
not included,” she recalled. “Strong feelings that
I thought were too intense for the world, but they
were living in me. I judged the process, I cried, I
hated it, I screamed, but it was happening. And it
had a voice that told me I could paint big paintings.
And big monsters. I could explore God.”
Sometimes all it took was trying a new color.
“The first time I painted the color black I had
all these ideas of what it would say about me,”
she said. “But in the actual painting of it, my
whole being came alive. It was forbidden. It
was exciting. In the forbidden is a lot of stored
energy. And to paint it from an innocent space
brings this excitement and curiosity. That’s
what’s transformative: when you wake up to the
wonder that children have naturally.”
That’s what was happening to me. Once
I became conscious of the forces that were
squelching my creativity—my guilt, my
repressed sexual energy, my rigid view of
what constituted beautiful art—a deeper, more
complex sense of beauty began to emerge. And
my life began to open up in surprising ways,
as well. All of a sudden, I found myself saying,
“Who gives a fuck?” a lot, especially when one
of my fears arose and threatened to box me in
a corner. It didn’t happen every time. I am still
very much a work in progress. But at least the
movement had begun.
“I don’t think most people are aware of how
small they live,” said Barbara. “We’re so used to
enduring and just getting by. When you ask people,
on a scale of zero to ten, how’s your energy,
and a lot of times they’ll say, ‘Five, but I’m okay
with that.’ What’s stopping us from going for an
eight, nine, or 10?”
One day when Barbara was taking a break
from painting, she ran into a homeless man in
her neighborhood who gave her a remarkable
gift. “I used to think that painting was going
to make me superhuman,” she recalled. “But in
that moment when our eyes met, I realized that
he and I were just the same. The painting was
actually bringing out my humanity and allowing
me to really see him. This was a huge shift in
how I saw painting. It wasn’t about being better
than others or moving beyond anger. It was
about being attuned to the way my being was
responding and entering more into life.”
For me, this was the ultimate takeaway.
When I started this journey, I thought I was
searching for a magical bag of tricks to help me
turn dross into creative gold. But what I discovered
was that creativity isn’t a fancy parlor
game; it’s a more intimate way of relating to
the world.
“Everything leads us back to ourselves,” said
Barbara. “Sometimes we have to go too far to see
that. But what we usually do is play it too safe
and close up. Once you start opening, you get a
sense that you can stretch more, and then you
begin to realize the potential that’s available to
you at any given moment. The invitation of creativity
is to move beyond the boundaries we’ve
set for ourselves. To allow life to permeate those
thick walls that we think are so secure.” ●
One must still have
chaos in oneself
to be able to give
birth to a dancing
star."
FRIEDRICH
NIETZSCHE
The most solid
advice...for a writer
is this, I think: Try
to learn to breathe
deeply, really to
taste food when
you eat, when you
sleep, really to
sleep. Try as much
as possible to be
wholly alive, with
all your might, and
when you laugh,
laugh like hell,
and when you get
angry, get good
and angry. Try
to be alive. You
will be dead soon
enough."
WILLIAM SAROYAN
June 2017 mindful 65

CREATIVE
{ }
PROCESS
5 Rituals of Highly
Creative People
One of the big myths about creativity is that you have to wait
for the muse to whisper in your ear. But most prominent writers
and artists prefer not to leave anything up to chance. “Inspiration
is for amateurs,” said painter Chuck Close in Mason
Currey’s book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. “The rest of us
just show up and get to work.” Or as Jack London famously put
it, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a
club.” Here are unique rituals of five successful artists.
Stephen King
Twyla Tharp
Garrison Keillor
Writer Stephen King starts
every day at 8 to 8:30 a.m.
and doesn’t stop until
he reaches his daily goal
of 2,000 words, usually
between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30
p.m. Before sitting down to
write, he takes a multivitamin
with a glass of water or
cup of tea and makes sure
the papers on his desk are
arranged meticulously. “The
cumulative purpose of doing
these things the same way
every day,” he told his biographer,
Lisa Rogak, “seems
to be a way of saying to the
mind, you’re going to be
dreaming soon.”
Choreographer Twyla
Tharp’s dance begins at
5:30 a.m., when she wakes
up, throws on her workout
clothes, and hails a cab to her
gym on Manhattan’s Upper
East Side. “The ritual is not
the stretching and weight
training I put into my body
through each morning at the
gym; the ritual is the cab,”
she wrote in her book, The
Creative Habit. “The moment
I tell the driver where to go I
have completed the ritual.”
Storyteller and radio host
Garrison Keillor avoids the
lure of the internet by writing
on a legal pad with a rollerball
pen. “I don’t think that
one should sit and look at a
blank page,” he revealed to
the website 99U. “The way
around it is to walk around
with scrap paper and to take
notes, and simply to take
notes of the observable world
around you...I think everything—everything—starts
with the observable world.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY GETTY IMAGES/ANDY RYAN
66 mindful June 2017

Maya Angelou
Author Maya Angelou’s solution
was to go into isolation.
She had trouble writing in her
beautifully appointed home
because, as she said, “I can’t
work in a pretty surrounding.
It throws me.” So she rented
a small hotel room with a
bed, a wash basin, and little
else. “I try to get there around
seven, and I work until two
in the afternoon,” she told
interviewer Claudia Tate. “If
the work is going badly, I stay
until 12:30. If it’s going well,
I’ll stay as long as it’s going
well. It’s lonely, and it’s marvelous.”
On returning home,
Angelou showered and prepared
dinner, so that when
her husband arrived, she
wouldn’t be totally absorbed
in her work. But sometimes
after dinner she would read
to him what she’d written that
day. “He doesn’t comment,”
she added. “I don’t invite
comments from anyone
but my editor, but hearing it
aloud is good. Sometimes I
hear the dissonance; then I
try to straighten it out in the
morning.”
Bernard
Malamud
Like many novelists, Bernard
Malamud stuck to a disciplined
routine—from 9 a.m.
to 4 p.m. every day—which
usually resulted in a page or
two of finished copy. But he
scoffed at the idea of mimicking
the work rituals of great
writers. “You write by sitting
down and writing,” he once
said. “There’s no particular
time or place—you suit yourself,
your nature.... The real
mystery to crack is you.”
June 2017 mindful 67

anne lamott
“
the mindful interview
RADICAL
KINDNESS
By Hugh Delehanty
Renowned writer, devoted grandmother,
and thought-provoker Anne Lamott shares
her latest fascination with an act we rarely
consider but desperately need: mercy.
Anne Lamott wasn’t planning to write a book on mercy.
She’d touched on the subject in Traveling Mercies and
some of her other bestsellers, and she thought she was
done. “But then this thing started to nudge me and tug
on my sleeve,” she says as she sits down at a cafe near
her home in Fairfax, California. “I started thinking about
mercy—just the word—and I noticed that if I said ‘mercy’
or ‘merciful’ to people, it could change their whole day.”
What emerged was Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering
Mercy, her timely, thought-provoking, and—
yes—funny take on a topic most of us don’t give much
thought to. “Mercy, grace, forgiveness, and compassion
are synonyms, and the approaches we might consider
taking when facing a great big mess, especially the
great big mess of ourselves—our arrogance, greed,
PHOTOGRAPH BY GETTY IMAGES/KIM KULISH
68 mindful June 2017

Anne Lamott is
an activist, public
speaker, author, and
writing teacher out of
the Bay Area.

the mindful interview
poverty, disease, prejudice,” she writes. “It includes
everything out there that just makes us want to turn
away, the idea of accepting life as it presents itself and
doing goodness anyway, the belief that love and caring
are marbled even into the worst life has to offer.”
In a pink puffer jacket, sporting her trademark dreadlocks
with golden highlights, Lamott is no faint-hearted
church lady. Over the years, she has written evocatively
about her struggles with alcoholism and her mid-life
conversion to Christianity, but this morning, as the conversation
begins, the first thing she wants to talk about
is her grandson, Jax.
Hallelujah Anyway:
Rediscovering
Mercy, the latest
from prolific writer
Anne Lamott,
delves into one of
our most sublime
emotions—to
reveal how vital
mercy is to life, how
we so often ignore
it, and how we can
make it a bigger
force in our lives.
Hugh Delehanty: Why mercy? Why now?
Anne Lamott: I have a seven-year-old who lives
with me, and I feel it’s a catastrophic time to be
born into. But I also feel strongly that the counterintuitive
thing to do in the face of the danger
and chaos is to find mercy within yourself and
operate from that place, instead of strategically
trying to suss things out. I spend a lot of time
with little kids, and I’ve noticed I become really
merciful and open when they’re around. They’re
crazily generous. My grandson will give stuff
away that I don’t want him to give away. The
merciful heart is really rich at four or five, but
then it begins to diminish.
In kindergarten you’re all part of the litter,
all sleeping on the floor together. Then, in first
grade, you learn subtraction—something before
anybody else—and you start getting esteemed
for that. Pretty soon, you go from being in the
litter to being singled out for praise. You start
putting things in the drawer that don’t serve you,
like wonder and connection to life. Your parents
don’t want you to be one of; they want you to start
excelling. And that leads to perfectionism. But if
you’re getting your value from excelling, you have
to do more and more things perfectly, and, pretty
soon, you’re a completely doomed human being.
When did that happen for you?
In school, I was quick and sharp, and that started
to isolate me from the other kids. Some of them
were jealous because I was such a star student,
and they teased me about my crazy hair. There
was this system of beauty and wealth. Gold, silver,
bronze. Beautiful or rich was gold, and everybody
else was just fighting to be at least silver.
You feel like you’re separating from others,
but you’re really separating from yourself and
life. And that’s terrifying and painful, so you
start thinking about ways to cope. You get
skittish, your central nervous system revs up,
and you become much more watchful, not in a
childlike way, but in a haunted way. I started
to be known for being funny right around then
because it was the best way to deflect criticism.
You talk about mercy as “radical kindness.”
What do you mean by that?
It’s radical in the sense that you would never
expect it. I find a warmth in my heart where
once there was bad energy. I may have the
conviction that someone has sinned against me
to such a degree that I’ll never have anything to
do with him or her again. But, instead, I begin to
see the fear and grief behind their bad behavior,
and my heart softens. That, to me, is the hugest
miracle of all.
Can you give an example?
A man in our neighborhood just hates me and
my dog, Lady Bird, who’s like Dinah Shore
running around the neighborhood, so sweet
and so loving. He constantly calls the Humane
Society to talk to me about keeping her on a
leash. A few weeks ago, he and I really got
into it. He took a picture to show the Humane
Society that Lady Bird was not on a leash, and I
said, “Make sure to get a picture of your dog and
my dog kissing and licking each other’s noses,
because that’s what they were doing.” I was on
red alert. But afterward I said to myself, “Do you
want to be right or do you want to be happy?”
So, I prayed deeply, and the other day when I
saw him, I didn’t go into the story I usually tell
myself. Lady Bird started running over to his
dog and I said, “Sorry, sorry”—automatically, it
was weird—and neither he nor I got into being
morally superior. You take action, and insights
follow. That’s mercy at work.
You’ve written that mercy isn’t something
that you do, it’s something that you are.
Tell us about that.
We come into the world merciful, and we can be
that way again once we realize we have so many
stories about ourselves and other people and so
many defenses against feeling exposed. Little
by little, we can start dropping that armor and
practice being real instead of putting on those
great social personas we’ve mastered. When
you’re real with somebody, they will be real
back. And when you’re back in your original,
merciful, authentic selves, that breeds wonder
and a deep sense of presence.
70 mindful June 2017

But that doesn’t come easy.
It takes a lifetime to heal from the toxic selfconsciousness
we all develop in school. But
the good news is that’s why we’re here. You
can begin when you decide to do anything that
makes you feel enlivened again. You do it imperfectly,
two steps forward and one back. The
hardest part is extending mercy to ourselves. To
use a merciful voice with yourself when the work
doesn’t go well or you’ve acted like an a--hole.
Several years ago, Maria Shriver asked me to
come to Los Angeles to take part in a women’s
I WANTED OUT FROM
MY TOXIC OBSESSION
WITH SELF. I HAD TO GET
BUSTED LITTLE BY LITTLE.
conference. I just loathed her husband, then-
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I wrote,
“Thank you so much, but I need to be honest and
say that my work as an activist is mostly directed
at your husband.” She replied, “Of course, I would
never want you to be part of a conference when
your feelings about my husband are so strong.” I
thought to myself, “What an a--hole, Annie.” So I
threw myself at her mercy. I wrote, “I will not be
able to express in words how contrite and full of
exhausted fury I am with myself for having said
something like that about your dear husband. I
don’t expect for you to be able to forgive me, but
please know that I noticed what I did and I’m
humiliated by my behavior. God bless you both.”
And she took me back in and we started over.
In your book, Bird by Bird, I was taken by
author Geneen Roth’s insight that awareness
is learning to keep yourself company. Can you
say more?
The idea, especially for women and girls, is
that you’re supposed to become great company.
In the 50s and 60s, when all the power was in
the hands of men, you wanted men to find you
brilliant and entertaining. But doing that you
lose connection with your own crazy, beautiful,
mixed-up, obtuse self. Becoming friends
with that person and looking in the mirror and
saying “Hi” is the beginning of new life. It’s not
being full of yourself in the pejorative sense. It’s
like, “Wow, I’m full of myself, my little self, my
higher self, and all the selves I’ve ever been.”
What do you do to quiet your mind?
[Deep sigh.] I pray a lot, I do meditation not
very well, and I have certain things I say, like
the prayer, “Lord, have mercy on me. Give me
a break.” Usually the break I need is to go very,
very easy on myself. To drop down to a more
maternal place, instead of that clipped high
school coach in my head who’s unhappy with me
because I dropped the ball.
Being in recovery for 30 years helped me
clear out a lot of that garbage and self-loathing.
There’s a famous saying in recovery, “You’re as
sick as your secrets,” and I absolutely believe
that. I don’t keep secrets because this jungle
drum starts beating inside me. I always spill
the beans. Before I got sober, I converted to
Christianity. And that came, as so many things
do, from my exhaustion with being the way
I was. I wanted out from my toxic obsession
with self. I had to get busted little by little. My
mind is classically alcoholic. Half of it thinks
everything’s going great, and the other half
says the jig is up and they’re going to find out
what a loser I am. Without dropping down
out of my head, without meditation, without
prayer, it’s like a Ping-Pong game in there. It’s
partly about dropping down, but it’s also about
stepping back and letting things get bigger
and more spacious, so I’m not caught in this
cramped, clenched fist of a mind. Just relaxing
the thinking muscle and breathing down into
my heart space. Once you start breathing, you
can get your sense of humor back. Then you’re
halfway home.
How has working with your heart
and mind affected your writing?
With writing, I don’t talk about inspiration
much. I talk about showing up and just doing
it. I never feel like writing. Ever. So I have a
lot of tricks. I give myself very short assignments
and write godawful first drafts. And
I use bribes. Once my butt is in the chair, if I
write for 45 minutes, I get to take the dogs to
the park or watch the news at the top of the
hour. One thing I’ve learned about writing is
that you have to stay with it. If you do that, it
will let you know what it needs to be. The most
important thing is to keep your butt in the
chair. Then something will shift. Something
will get back to you. That’s the secret of life:
Be where your butt is. ●
Lamott’s novels
and non-fiction
books speak to
wonder and the
human heart, and
are “concerned
with real lives.”
Here’s a selection:
June 2017 mindful 71

insight
Go Toward
What Hurts
By Frank Ostaseski
Illustrations by Tatsuro Kiuchi
72 mindful June 2017

EDITOR’S NOTE
In the following piece, adapted from Frank
Ostaseski’s book The Five Invitations:
Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About
Living Fully, he shares some of his experiences
from the decades he has been working with dying
people and those who are dealing with the death
of loved ones. On a regular basis, Frank has gone
courageously to places of deep pain and suffering
few of us ever have to go to. As you are about to
read this account, it might help you to know that it
is deeply affecting, and yet also uplifting, to hear
firsthand about people going through the hardest
experiences of their lives.
Most of the people I have worked with over
the past 30 years were ordinary people who were
coming face-to-face with what they imagined was
impossible or unbearable, walking toward their
own deaths or caring for someone they loved who
was now dying. Yet most found within themselves
and the experience of dying the resources,
insight, strength, courage, and compassion to
meet the impossible in extraordinary ways.
No two people or stories were exactly alike.
Some of the people I’ve worked with had a deep
faith that carried them through difficult times,
while others had sworn off religion. Some wore
the face of resignation or were angry about their
loss of control. Many had lost all trust in humanity.
Nguyen feared ghosts. Isaiah was comforted
by “visits” from his dead mother. There was a →
June 2017 mindful 73

insight
We think we need the
conditions of our lives to reliably
give us what we want. But we
know it will all break down.
Frank Ostaseski is
a meditation teacher
who cofounded the Zen
Hospice Project. In
2004, he went on to create
the Metta Institute
to provide innovative
educational programs
and professional training
to foster compassionate,
mindfulnessbased
care.
hemophiliac father who had contracted the
HIV virus from a blood transfusion. Years
before his illness, he had disowned his gay son.
But at the end of life, father and son were both
dying of AIDS, lying next to one another in twin
beds in a shared bedroom, being cared for by
Agnes, the father’s wife and the son’s mother.
For some, dying was a great gift. They made
reconciliations with their long-lost families,
they freely expressed their love and forgiveness,
or they found the kindness and acceptance they
had been looking for their whole lives. Still others
turned toward the wall in withdrawal and
hopelessness and never came back again.
All of them were my teachers.
These people invited me into their most
vulnerable moments and made it possible for me
to get up close and personal with death. In the
process, they taught me how to live.
When confronted by such harsh realities in
life, or even some small discomfort or inconvenience,
our instinctive reaction is to run in the
opposite direction. But we can’t escape suffering.
It’ll just take us by surprise and whack us
in the back of the head. The wiser response is
to move toward what hurts, to put our hands
and attention gently and mercifully on what we
might otherwise want to avoid.
Once I was speaking to a group in a rural area
in the Pacific Northwest, and we began talking
about the possibilities that arise when we stop
running away from what is difficult. One of the
attendees, a burly middle-aged man with broad
shoulders and an even wider smile, spoke up.
“That reminds me of telephone poles.”
I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“Telephone poles? What do you mean?” I asked.
He explained that he once had a job installing
telephone poles. “They’re hard and heavy, stand-
74 mindful June 2017

insight
Awaken Everyday
ing up to forty feet high.” There was a critical
moment after you placed a pole in the ground, he
said, when a pole was unstable and might topple
over. “If it hit you, it could break your back.”
His first day on the job, the man turned to his
partner and said, “If this pole starts to fall, I’m
running like hell.” But the old-timer replied,
“Nope, you don’t want to do that. If that pole
starts to fall, you want to go right up to it. You
want to get real close and put your hands on the
pole. It’s the only safe place to be.”
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Uncovering a Wound
One afternoon when I was about five, I cut my
hand while playing with a pocketknife. I was terrified
because there was blood everywhere. My
mother took one look at the wound and calmly
said, “Oh, I think we need the magic towel for
this one.” Then she pulled me up onto her lap,
wrapped my hand in a towel hanging from the
stove, and held me until I began to calm down.
After a while, I caught my breath, and she said,
“Let’s take a look.” I didn’t want to; it was too
frightening. But accompanied by her kindness
and reassurance, I was willing to try. Slowly, she
unwrapped the towel, and together we looked
into the wound. I realized that I would be OK.
In that moment, I saw that it is possible and even
helpful to turn toward our pain and that there is
always the possibility of healing.
The secret of healing lies in exploring our
wounds in order to discover what is really there.
When we allow the experience—creating space
and acceptance for it—we find that our suffering
is not a static, monolithic thing, but rather
it is composed of many elements, including our
attitudes toward it. Understanding this, we can
work skillfully to alleviate the underlying reactions
that exacerbate our problems so that we
might ease our suffering. It will only be removed
by wisdom, not by drenching it in sunshine or
attempting to bury it in a dark basement.
Suffering is a pretty dramatic word. Most
people don’t think the term applies to them. “I’m
not suffering,” they say. They imagine children
starving in a famine-struck African country
or refugees fleeing war in the Middle East or
people afflicted with devastating illnesses. We
imagine that if we are good and careful, stay
positive, play by the rules, and ignore what’s on
the news every night, then it won’t happen to us.
We think suffering is somewhere else.
But suffering is everywhere. Suffering is falling
in love and then becoming complacent. →
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and Spirit
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Retreat
Meditation for
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June 2017 mindful 75

insight
Suffering is not being able to connect with
our children. It’s our anxiety about what will
happen at work tomorrow. Suffering is knowing
your roof will leak in the next rainstorm.
It’s finally buying that shiny new smartphone,
then seeing an advertisement for an even
newer device with incremental improvements.
Hoping your company will get rid of your
grumpy boss who still has a year to go before
his retirement. Thinking that life is moving by
too fast or too slow. Not getting what you want,
getting what you don’t want, or getting what
you want but fearing you will lose it—all of this
is suffering. Sickness is suffering, old age is suffering,
and so is dying.
We think we need the conditions of our lives
to reliably give us what we want. We want to
construct an ideal future or nostalgically relive
a perfect past. We mistakenly believe this will
make us happy. But we all can see that even
those people who realize extraordinary conditions
in life still suffer. Even if we are rich,
beautiful, smart, in perfect health, and blessed
with wonderful families and friendships, in
time these will break down, be destroyed, and
change...or we will simply lose interest. On some
level, we know this is the case, yet we can’t seem
to stop grasping for those “perfect” conditions.
Opening to pain in the present moment, we
may be able to do something to improve the
situation. Or maybe not. But we can certainly
notice how our attitudes toward the experience
are impacting what is happening. My reaction to
pain, even to the thought of pain, changes
everything. It can increase or decrease my suffering.
I have always liked the formula:
Pain + Resistance = Suffering
If we attempt to push away our pain,
whether it is physical or emotional, we almost
always find ourselves suffering even more.
When we open to suffering, inquiring into it
instead of trying to deny it, we see how we
might make use of it in our lives.
Even in the Deepest Tragedy
Years ago, Janet was enjoying a backyard BBQ
with her husband, their good friend Albert, and
their families. Looking around, she couldn’t
see her three-and-a-half-year-old son, Jack, or
Albert’s son, Daniel, in the yard. Concerned, she
said that she was going to check on the boys. But
her husband and Albert called her back, saying,

insight
“You’re always jumping up. Sit down with us.
Relax.” They assured her that the kids were fine,
likely playing inside the house. Moments later,
they all heard a crash and a scream. Young Daniel
came running up to the adults. Janet ran past
him to the front of the house, where she found
Jack lying near-lifeless in the middle of their
normally peaceful neighborhood street. The car
that had hit her child had driven off.
Janet scooped up Jack, and they all piled
into the truck, heading to the emergency room
as quickly as possible. Albert was a physician,
so he worked heroically throughout the ride to
restore Jack’s breathing. Janet felt overwhelmed
by guilt and shame, though her primary concern
was for Jack’s obviously broken leg. How could
she have allowed this to happen? she wondered
as they drove.
It turned out that Jack had suffered injuries
far worse than a broken leg. The doctors at the
hospital did their best to save the boy, but they
explained that his head wounds and the resulting
brain damage were too severe. Janet’s son
would not survive. She and her husband eventually
made the decision to unhook little Jack from
life support. He died almost immediately.
Everyone was in shock, frozen in time and
disbelief. Janet held her baby close, rocking
him as she had so many nights as she settled
him to sleep with a sweet lullaby. There would
be no waking from this dream. Full of fear and
sheer horror, the parents drove back home
shortly before dawn. The country road hugged
the nearby river. Janet noticed the rising full
moon reflected in the water. This contact with
something outside herself helped her sense a
deep, clear part of her being, a calm awareness
that, for a moment, could cut through the guilt,
grief, and disbelief. An inner guidance spoke to
her, saying, “If I am going to honor Jack’s life, I
cannot let this accident destroy me.”
Still, the next day, when the police phoned
to confirm the hit-and-run, her whole being
filled again with the heat of rage. Then, at 11:00
a.m., another shift occurred. There was a knock
on the screen door. An older man, a stranger,
appeared on the other side. Instinctively, Janet
knew he was the driver of the car. The anguish
on his face temporarily washed away her rage,
and the grieving mother invited the stranger
into her home.
The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
once wrote, “If we could read the secret history
of our enemies, we should find in each man’s
life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all
hostility.” The driver apologized, admitted his
In time and with attention, her
heart cracked wide open, and her
relationship to the precariousness of
life changed, giving rise to gratitude
and a sense of being fully alive.
liability, and explained that he did not know that
his car had hit anyone until the police contacted
him. Once again, Janet’s guidance spoke to her
with an inner strength reminiscent of the drive
along the river. She looked compassionately at
the man and, without any false sympathy, spoke
honestly. “Jack’s death is a responsibility that we
four adults all share,” she said.
Janet and the man who had accidentally
killed her son talked a while longer. Janet cried
as she spoke of how she, her husband, and their
friend had been preoccupied and hadn’t kept a
close enough eye on the young boy. The driver
explained how his daughter was getting married
and that he had been rushing to the wedding
rehearsal. In Janet’s mind, it was a moment of
distraction on all their parts that had led to this
disastrous outcome. A brief moment of inattention,
nothing more.
We tend to like simple causes: they tidy up
life’s uncertainties. We want such accidents
to be brought under human control. We want
someone to be held accountable. We want the
outrageous and impossible to be understood, so
as to alleviate our sense of helplessness. But life
does not always present itself in ways that are
right or reasonable. The truth is, we are →
June 2017 mindful 77

& everything else
rarely in control of such catastrophes, of the
twists and turns of fate, and most especially not
of our deaths.
In her humility, Janet understood that she
could only be saved from this inexplicable horror
by accepting it. She said to herself, I need to
take my share of responsibility in order not to
live a life full of shame and blame. She found a
middle ground, one without unnecessary internalizing
(“It’s all my fault”) or externalizing
(“It’s all his fault”).
There were still years of grief work to be
done, pain to be felt, anger toward the driver,
herself, and even Jack for dying. It all had to
be reckoned with, and it took courage to face it
directly. But Janet recognized the importance
of meeting her suffering if she ever was to have
a good life again. Her small rural community of
Mormons, Mennonites, old-timers, and hippies
helped her to heal. A bouquet of flowers would
appear on her doorstep one day, a basket of fresh
eggs the next.
Janet told me later that being with her grief
opened her to a new level of love. For a while, she
lived with the fear of the absolute precariousness
of life, warning other young mothers of dangers
to their children that they might not recognize.
In time and with attention, however, her heart
cracked wide open. Her relationship to the
precariousness of life transformed, giving rise
to gratitude and a sense of being fully alive. Now
she would not turn away from any part of life.
Her marriage didn’t survive the trauma
of Jack’s death, but Janet did. She went on
to become one of the most amazing hospice
professionals I know. She has taught hundreds
of volunteers and family caregivers how to live
with grief and accompany death. She is the person
her community calls to stand beside parents
when there are sudden or traumatic deaths of
children. Jack made all that possible. And Janet,
as she had vowed to herself, honored his life by
not letting his tragic death destroy her. It is a
kind of resilience we all possess, and can discover,
if we allow ourselves to take off the magic
towel and look at what lies within. ●
Mindful
The
Twenty-Something
Adapted from the
book The Five
Invitations by Frank
Ostaseski. Copyright
© 2017 by Frank
Ostaseski. Reprinted
with permission from
Flatiron Books. All
rights reserved.
78 mindful June 2017
life skills to handle stress …
BASED ON THE POPULAR KORU MINDFULNESS PROGRAM
HOLLY B. ROGERS, MD

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read…listen…download
ATTENDING
Medicine, Mindfulness,
and Humanity
Ronald Epstein, MD Scribner
MARROW
A Love Story
Elizabeth Lesser HarperCollins
A family physician and a professor at the
University of Rochester School of Medicine,
Ron Epstein has been working to improve how
doctors treat others for decades. Together with
colleague Mick Krasner, he has encouraged
caregivers to pay attention to what’s happening
in their own minds and bodies as they interact
with patients—with particular attention to how
they communicate and the quality of the time:
Are they really “attending” or are they not quite
all there? In 1999, Epstein launched a small
revolution with “Mindful Practice,” a piece in
the prestigious Journal of the American Medical
Association. Ten years later, he and Krasner
reported in the same journal on the results of
their mindfulness work with doctors: They were
more present, less stressed out, and more attentive
to patients, and they incorporated mindfulness
skills into their everyday lives. (See Mindful,
October 2014: “The Doctor is Not Well.”)
Now, Epstein has contemplated and compiled
all he has learned from using the lens of selfawareness
to view the health-care system and
the lives of the people in it. Both analytically
clear and empathic, he guides us to a vision of
a new kind of doctor in a new system: covering
everything from how doctors need to pay attention
to their mindware (the thought processes
they use to make diagnoses and decisions), using
meta-cognition (being aware of your own thinking)
to healing the healer (how to travel the path
from burnout to resistance), to what makes a
compassionate and humane health-care system
(one where small acts of kindness can make
“the unbearable bearable”). Attending is a long
overdue book that needs to be read by doctors,
caregivers, health administrators, and patients
who care about human-centered medicine.
When she learns she’s the
perfect match for her sister’s
bone marrow transplant to
fight cancer, Elizabeth Lesser
begins a life journey she never
imagined. The cofounder
of the Omega Institute and
author of the best-selling
book Broken Open, Lesser
has been a seeker for her
entire adult life and a benevolent
chronicler of the human
condition. But this experience
she shares with her younger
sister goes far beyond any
Do mindful and money even
belong in the same sentence?
Money is such a scary thing,
fraught with so much fear and
emotion. And most advice
about money offered in the
mainstream media plays on
that fear and anxiety: Are you
prepared for retirement? Is
your money working hard
soul-searching she’s undertaken
on the couch or on the
cushion. Along the way, the
sisters get the rare opportunity
to truly explore—and
heal—their past, and find
themselves on a completely
transformed field of friendship,
and indeed, love.
Beautifully written, deeply
poignant in its honesty, this
book is far more than a story
about sibling relations; it’s a
memoir about touching the
marrow of life itself.
MINDFUL MONEY
Simple Practices for Reaching Your
Financial Goals and Increasing
Your Happiness Dividend
Jonathan K. DeYoe New World Library
enough for you? Are you
spending too much? DeYoe’s
approach to money is honest
and free of hype. Money will
never make us happy, he tells
us right off. It’s merely a tool
we need to use to live our life.
That said, he goes on to offer
very practical, non-preachy,
down-to-earth counsel.
80 mindful June 2017

Healthy Mind,
Healthy Life
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• Discover practical techniques
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• Learn about the latest brain
science and the many ways
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Does mindfulness need a
redesign? Author Rohan
Gunatillake, the creator of
the popular buddhify app,
says yes. Although there’s
never been more interest in
mindfulness and meditation
than right now, three barriers
keep too many people from
making mindfulness a lived
reality: the time problem (“I
just don’t have time to meditate”),
the hippy problem
(“You have to be spiritual or
religious to get into meditation”),
and the digital problem
MODERN MINDFULNESS
How to Be More Relaxed, Focused,
and Kind While Living in a Fast,
Digital, Always-On World
Rohan Gunatillake St. Martin’s Griffin
(“It’s not practical for me to
unplug everything”). Fortunately,
each of these barriers
is more apparent than
real, and in this accessible,
readable book, he lays out
some techniques for bringing
mindfulness into even the
busiest of lives. Gunatillake
also argues that switching
off our devices is not the
key to mindfulness. Instead,
he makes suggestions for
using technology, like mobile
phones and television, to
actually be mindful.
GOODBYE, THINGS
The New Japanese Minimalism
Fumio Sasaki Norton
PODCASTS
TEDMED
Episode: “Fulfilling Trauma’s
Hidden Promise”
James Gordon, a professor of medicine at
Georgetown University, talks about using
integrative approaches, such as movement,
meditation, and relaxation, to help patients
with chronic illnesses, US war veterans, Syrian
refugees, and families in Bosnia, Kosovo, Israel,
Gaza, and Haiti, among others.
THINK AGAIN
Episode: “Nature, Nurture, Neither”
Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist, mindfulness
teacher, and author of Thoughts Without a
Thinker and The Trauma of Everyday Life, joins
host Jason Gots in a wide-ranging discussion
on education, free will, trauma, epigenetics,
and the nature–nurture debate.
10% HAPPIER
Episode: “George Stephanopoulos,
ABC News Chief Anchor”
Most of us know Dan Harris: the ABC newsman
who had a panic attack live on Good Morning
America and went on to write best-selling
book 10% Happier. Well, Dan also started
a podcast. In this episode, he talks with
George Stephanopolous about his twice-daily
meditation practice.
Imagine you live in a
215-square-foot apartment,
with fewer pieces of furniture
than fingers on your hand,
and about 150 possessions in
total. Yes, that’s a bit extreme.
But it actually describes
the lifestyle of writer Fumio
Sasaki, who decided to pare
down his possessions to the
barest minimum after years
struggling with stress, insecurity,
and comparing himself
against others. As a result, he
says, he was able to let go of
the emotional baggage that
comes from defining yourself
by the things you own.
Goodbye, Things kicks off
by defining “minimalism,” a
way of living that has been
around for decades but has
been gaining popularity over
the past 10 years or so. From
there, Sasaki explores the
psychological underpinnings
of our materialistic culture and
offers advice for how to shift
your mindset around belongings,
say goodbye to the stuff,
and feel good about it. The
book is light and easy to read,
dotted with anecdotes from
Sasaki’s personal experience
transforming from a maximalist
into a minimalist.
TED: IDEAS WORTH SPREADING
Episode: “What Reality Are You
Creating for Yourself?”
Isaac Lidsky—who runs a construction
company in Orlando, starred in a TV sitcom,
and served as a law clerk to two Supreme Court
justices—lost his sight to a rare genetic eye
disease. In this talk, he challenges us to let go
of excuses, assumptions, and fears, and accept
that we create our own reality.
THE ONE YOU FEED
Episode: “Emily Esfahani Smith”
“Human beings are meaning-seeking
creatures,” says the author of The Power
of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters.
“Transcendent experiences are crucial to
having a greater sense of meaning in life.”
82 mindful June 2017

4 - 8 week classes in mindfulness and compassion from Seattle to Bellingham
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT)
Workshops and Retreats Mindfulness for Healthcare Professionals Custom Programs and Evidence-Based Curricula
2017 RETREATS
Mindful Self-Compassion
May 7-12, 2017
Meeting Self-Compassion
Tassajara Zen Mountain Center
The Roots of Compassion
The Roots of Mindfulness
October 15-22, 2017
-
MTTP
Mindfulness Teacher Training and
www.MindfulnessNorthwest.com

eviews
THE WELL-TEMPERED CITY
What Modern Science, Ancient
Civilizations, and Human Nature
Teach Us about the Future of
Urban Life
Jonathan F.P. Rose Harper Wave
Jonathan Rose is a thinking
person’s developer and
a man who knows whereof
he speaks. His grandfather
and great-uncle founded a
real estate company in New
York in 1928, and his father
and he and other members
of his extended family have
continued in the family business.
For his part, Jonathan
has distinguished himself
by merging his development
interests with concerns
about the effect of the built
environment on the natural
world and on well-being.
Together with his wife, he
founded the Garrison Institute
(one of the country’s
leading centers for contemplative
practice) and created
its innovative Climate, Mind,
and Behavior program. In this
visionary book, Rose presents
an urbanism that’s not
merely aesthetic and practical.
With concrete examples
of both the good and the bad,
he offers a plan for city-making
that fosters community,
vitality, and well-being in
harmony with nature, not at
its expense.
THE WISDOM OF NOT KNOWING
Discovering a Life of Wonder
by Embracing Uncertainty
Estelle Frankel Shambhala
Estelle Frankel, a practicing
psychotherapist and teacher
of Jewish mysticism, has
written a timely new book
about daring to not know.
Certainty in extreme situations,
she says in a passage
that resonates today, can
lead to bigotry and hatred,
which “thrive in environments
where people are too
certain—when they think
they know the truth and consider
their version of it to be
the only valid perspective.”
Too often we allow our fears
to shape our imagination;
this prevents genuine possibility
from emerging in our
lives, and holds us back from
taking risks and venturing
into the unknown. Frankel
suggests that we should use
our imagination to embrace
the possibilities that not
knowing can offer us, and as
a result, “our lives and our
consciousness expand.” ●
84 mindful June 2017

marketplace
mindful
marketplace
Welcome to Mindful Marketplace, our catalog of unique
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awareness and authenticity. Marketplace also provides an
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To advertise in Mindful’s Marketplace,
please contact us today!
Marketplace Advertising
Nancy Dengler
215-622-3092
nancy@mindful.org
Inspire Mindful Change
Helping people make meaningful
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meaning to pause® bracelets gently
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Release. Energize.
Focus.
2017 Retreats and Workshops with Hugh Byrne
Mind Bubbles: Exploring
mindfulness with kids
Daring Spirits' AMP, Active Meditation
Practice, rewrites the rules of
meditation.
AMP teaches you active
meditation techniques to use
anytime, anywhere.
Discover new levels of balance,
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Bring the benefits of an active
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Cultivate skills of mindfulness,
compassion, and loving-kindness
to change unhealthy habits and
live with joy and peace in these
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With Hugh Byrne, PhD, author of
The Here-and-Now Habit.
June 3: N.Y. Open Center, NY
June 9-11: Kripalu Center, MA
Sept 8-10: Omega Institute, NY
Oct. 29-Nov. 3:
1440/Multiversity, CA
Jan 20-27, 2018: Havana, Cuba
retreat
hugh-byrne.com
insighttimer.com/hughbyrne
Mind Bubbles presents an easy way
for young children to engage with
their breath while noting thoughts
and feelings passing and popping
like bubbles. The book offers a fun,
clear, and secular explanation of
mindfulness that children and adults
will understand and want to try.
Mind-Bubbles.com
Amazon.com
Get your AMP package here:
daringspirits.com
June 2017 mindful 85

marketplace
A New Children’s Book on Mindfulness
drive mindfully
mirror hanger
Mindful Sexuality
Retreats
A World of Pausabilities: An
Exercise in Mindfulness is an inviting
introduction to mindfulness for
children. Sometimes we just need
to take a pause — to stop, breathe,
and take a moment for ourselves
and to be mindful. The book is told
in a rhyming verse and is beautifully
illustrated. Readers will learn how
to apply mindfulness to simple,
everyday moments, and how days
are filled with endless possibilities
to take a pause.
Includes a Note to Parents and
Caregivers that further discusses
mindfulness and ways to introduce
pauses into your child's life.
Ages 4-12.
To order:
Amazon.com
drfranksileo.com
transform your car into a place of
practice
become aware of your triggers
choose ‘not to react’
set a mindful tone for your day
create a ripple effect
mindfulhighways.com
traffic is a great teacher
Use your sexual relationship as a
transformational path. For couples
that want a passionate, conscious
and heart-full love relationship.
Shift from performance
to exploration
Become a cooperative
“Erotic Team”
Heal sexual wounds and
release shame
passionandpresence.com
mindfulnessapps.com –
Mindfulness apps with Jon Kabat-Zinn
Atlantic University: Graduate Programs
in Mindful Leadership
Experience the wisdom of a true
pioneer and revered mindfulness
teacher in your smartphone.
Our three apps, JKZ Series 1,
JKZ Series 2 and JKZ Series 3
for iPhone and Android, cover the
entire Mindfulness-Based Stress
Reduction (MBSR) curriculum.
All meditations are guided by Jon
Kabat-Zinn himself.
For more information on the apps
and how to download them to your
phone, visit:
mindfulnessapps.com
Mindful leaders know the value of
attention; they pick up on reactions
and biases more quickly, and they
have learned the tremendously
valuable ability of self-regulation.
Atlantic University is a non-profit,
nationally accredited university
offering online graduate-level
degree programs in Mindful
Leadership that can be applied
in any discipline. Our programs
integrate body, mind, and spirit to
inspire the best in ourselves and in
others. Mindful Leaders transform
lives, enrich communities, inspire
organizations, and make the world a
better place.
In 30 seconds you can begin to
change your future. Give us a call
or visit our website.
www.atlanticuniv.edu
800-428-1512
86 mindful June 2017

marketplace
N The Magazine of
Naturist Living
Find Love Health and Happiness
with Evolution Cards
Cloud Meditation
Bench Set
Take “natural” to a new level where
Body acceptance is the idea—Nude
recreation is the way. The Naturist
Society is a membership organization
formed to help the human race
become comfortable in their own
skin. Request a FREE copy of N
today and discover naturism.
bcase@naturistsociety.com
800-886-7230
Law of Attraction Life Coach Kristie
Scott shares her 53 whimsical and
color charged Evolution Cards for
your self-growth and daily pleasure.
These graphically infused cards,
inspirational words and original
thought provoking messages, will
center your focus to attract great
health, meaningful experiences,
rich relationships, abundant
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For personal attention set up a
coaching call with Kristie.
Purchase today your exquisite quality,
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setting your intention and inspiring
your evolution every day.
evolvewithkristie.com
kscott@evolvewithkristie.com
Made in Vermont, Samadhi
Cushions’ Cloud Bench supports
a cross-legged posture:
More comfortable than meditation
in a chair
Slightly inclined for the best
meditation posture
Bench cushions vary to adjust
the height
Includes a cushion and mat
Portable. Easy assembly, 7 lb
SamadhiCushions.com/Mindful
800-331-7751
The nation’s newest learning destination–
immersion workshops for integrated living
Yoga Anytime - Online Yoga Videos
Step out of busy. Dive into you.
Yoga Anytime's Yoga Shows
provide an immersive online yoga
experience designed to deliver the
yoga or meditation practice you
crave on any given day.
Good Morning Yoga will get you
moving into your day, Yoga for
Trauma shares practices and
techniques to help navigate the
effects of stress, and Heart of
Yoga dives into the rich lineage of
yoga philosophy.
With over 60 shows and 1,500
videos to nourish your body, mind
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complete online yoga source. We're
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contact@yogaanytime.com
1440 Multiversity is the nation’s
newest learning destination
committed to delivering curriculum
at the leading edge of cultural
renewal, provoking inquiry, and
enhancing well-being. Nestled in
the California redwoods between
Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley, we
host world-renowned teachers
in fields including mindfulness,
leadership, neuroscience, yoga, the
creative arts, and more.
Diverse faculty in cutting-edge
disciplines
Weekend and 5-day immersion
learning programs
State-of-the-art campus
Enriching amenities (yoga,
meditation, nourishing cuisine)
Located within easy reach of San
Francisco
See our four-page Advertorial
in this issue.
Get online. Plan your visit.
1440.org/mindful
June 2017 mindful 87

mindspace
notice what you notice
The heart pounds away, day after day, so synced up to our
every movement we don’t even notice. Yet it sustains us. Soft
and vulnerable beneath our breast, it’s no wonder this big, red
muscle is the universal symbol for loving and feeling. To live is
to feel. To love is to survive together. Our tender hearts connect
our inner worlds with the lives all around us.
88 mindful June 2017
By Claire Ciel ZimmermanIllustration by Annick Gaudreault

8 simple shapes.
Each with a purpose.
All part of our System.
#LessByDesign
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