MindfulApril 2016的目錄

Mindful Hans Island, disputed territory between Denmark and Canada, is home to a refreshing war. Each country’s soldiers take down the others’ flag, replace it with schnapps or whiskey (guess who leaves what), and drop a note, welcoming the other to the country. It takes lots of power for subway trains to dart between stations, then grind to a standstill (it also takes Hulklike strength to stand upright in that situation). London is now converting the power of braking trains back into the system, saving enough energy to power more than 100 homes a year. Scientists created a bandage that glows neon green under a UV light to indicate if a wound is infected. (Way cooler than Superman bandages. Sorry, Superman.) Aimee Bortnem of Minnetrista, Minnesota, won a two-minute grocery…

11 Ways to TAKE time for what MATTERS 1. First, slow down When we are anxious EVERYTHING speeds up—our thoughts race, our heart pounds, our breathing accelerates. This makes it difficult to think clearly and make healthy decisions. At the first sign of things speeding up, move a little slower and see what else you can do to intentionally slow things down. 2 Come to your senses Anxiety lives in our minds and often manifests in the body. When we’re anxious we’re not connected to where we are. Take a few moments to connect with your five senses. It will help bring you back into the moment. 3 Be mindful of a simple task Life is full of simple tasks: walking, eating, answering emails, gardening, drinking water, cooking. When we’re…

Brussels sprouts pack a strong nutritional punch. They’re rich in many key nutrients, and their cancer-fighting properties are currently under study. • An excellent source of vitamins C and K. • A very good source of dietary fiber, folate, manganese, B vitamins, and more. Unfortunately, the Brussels sprout is much maligned. Many of us have childhood memories of walking into a kitchen to the heavy, off-putting smell of those little green cruciferous bombs as they overcook on the stove. I myself didn’t like them while growing up. But don’t let childhood memories deprive you of this vegetable’s inherent sweetness. The secret is to cook them lightly and simply, allowing them to retain their beautiful, fresh green color. When they lose their color, they lose their flavor. But when cooked just…

Medication Prescription medications are by far the most popular treatment for ADHD in children and adults, and research shows that the medications—usually stimulants such as amphetamines or methylphenidate (brand name Ritalin)—can help about 80% of those diagnosed with ADHD. But the downsides include possible side effects, such as insomnia and loss of appetite, on top of risks of dependence and abuse. Exercise I occasionally take prescription stimulants, and tend to mainline coffee, but my drug of choice is exercise: usually a swift hike, swim, or yoga class. Substantial research confirms that exercise revs up our brains, while releasing natural pain-relievers (endorphins) and antidepressants (serotonin). That’s why John Ratey, M.D., an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and…

It’s estimated that 95% of our behavior runs on autopilot—something I call “fast brain.” That’s because neural networks underlie all of our habits, reducing our millions of sensory inputs per second into manageable shortcuts so we can function in this crazy world. These default brain signals are like signaling superhighways, so efficient that they often cause us to relapse into old behaviors before we remember what we meant to do instead. Mindfulness is the exact opposite of these processes; it’s slow brain. It’s executive control rather than autopilot, and enables intentional actions, willpower, and decisions. But that takes some practice. The more we activate the slow brain, the stronger it gets. Every time we do something deliberate and new, we stimulate neuroplasticity, activating our grey matter, which is full of…

Many things make us anxious or afraid. We have fears or concerns about catastrophic loss and change, fears of our own death, of illness and being injured, of losing loved ones, losing our jobs or our home, and other major changes in life. There are smaller fears and anxieties: anxiety on a bad hair day or other embarrassments about how we look; concerns that our three-year old isn’t potty trained, fear of walking into a meeting late with green stuff in our teeth! Fear can strike anywhere, any time, at any level. And if fear bombs aren’t enough, we also have General Anxiety. This exercise is about looking at your fears of the day, in the here and now. Set aside a period of time, from 10 minutes up to…

Another way of checking in with your fear and also touching into fearlessness is to communicate directlywith those feelings, by letter! See if your language or your feelings change, when you address the fearful and the fearless you. You might find this is a way to bring humor into your anxiousness. As examples, below are letters I wrote to myself. After you write your own letters, reflect on them. Is there a difference in your language when you identify with being afraid versus being fearless? Notice how you felt when you wrote each letter and how you feel now. Did you discover anything? Dear Fearful, Last night, you were worried you wouldn’t wake up in time to get to the airport for your flight. You woke up three times during…

Our must-read stories this issue: “Face Fear and Keep Going”offers insight and practical instruction for how to face one of our most challenging emotions: fear. On page 58. “Feeling Moody? Here’s Why.” Sharon Begley explains that mood swings happen for a reason. Discover what that reason is on page 20. For what matters most… Live in the now... Make the most of the moments that matter. I received a steady diet of these inspiring messages in movie theater ads preceding the coming attractions during Christmas. They were being used to sell…Tylenol. Words are indeed cheap, and many of the words used to promote mindfulness are the same words used to sell lots of stuff these days. For good reason: We crave these things. As cheesy as it sounds, we do…

PHILIPPE HALSMAN’S JUMP BOOK Philippe Halsman • Damiani (reprint) Photographer and self-proclaimed “jumpologist” Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) said you can glimpse a person’s innermost essence when they jump. “In a jump the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible.” This refreshing reprint of Halsman’s 1959 photo book features 197 jumps by famous and important people, from Brigitte Bardot to Richard Nixon. SMARTER FASTER BETTER The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business Charles Duhigg • Random House What separates “the merely busy from the genuinely productive”? They don’t work harder—Duhigg says they make “certain choices in certain ways.” He mentions the filmmakers behind Disney’s Frozen—they nearly missed their…

1 Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths. Allow the breaths to be an anchor to this moment. 2 Imagine yourself as a mountain, with the forest covering the mountain and all its foliage. Do your best to get in touch with this visualization. 3 Experience the different seasons, of summer, fall, winter, and spring unfolding. The fall brings beautiful colors, the winte all the snow, ice and storms, spring brings its newfound flowers, and summer brings heat and potentially fire. 4 Now ask yourself, “Has the mountain itself actually changed?” The mountain remains the same: solid, stable, and grounded. 5 In the midst of anxiety say to yourself, “Breathing in, I imagine myself as the mountain, breathing out, I am grounded and…

How often have you rushed out the door and into your day without even thinking about how you’d like things to go? Before you know it, something or someone has rubbed you the wrong way, and you’ve reacted automatically with frustration, impatience, or rage—in other words, you’ve found yourself acting in a way you never intended. Intention refers to the underlying motivation for everything we think, say, or do. From the brain’s perspective, when we act in unintended ways, there’s a disconnect between the faster, unconscious impulses of the lower brain centers and the slower, conscious, wiser abilities of the higher centers like the pre-frontal cortex. Given that the unconscious brain is in charge of most of our decision-making and behaviors, this practice can help you align your conscious thinking…

Riding a bike, lifting weights, sweating it out on a treadmill—what do such exercises have in common? For one thing, each can be a mindfulness practice. Whatever the physical activity—dancing the Tango, taking a swim—instead of simply working out to burn calories, master a skill, or improve condition, you can move and breathe in a way that not only gets your blood pumping and invigorates every cell in your body, but also shifts you from feeling busy and distracted to feeling strong and capable. Ready? The following steps, good for any activity, will help you synchronize body, mind, and nervous system. As you do, you will strengthen your capacity to bring all of your energy to the task at hand. 1 Be clear about your aim. As you tie your…

Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you take meditation beyond the four walls of your home or meditation center. □ Be unembarrassed and unassuming. No need to be an exhibitionist. □ Open your eyes (especially when you’re walking!). You can spend time with eyes closed, but it’s good to open up to your environment visually, too. □ If someone asks what you’re doing, offer a simple answer, such as “I’m meditating. I pay attention to my breath and my surroundings.” □ Be out of others’ way, unless you’re protesting something (which is another agenda entirely). □ Enjoy the show!…

1 See the fear This method uses our logical, examing mind to uncover what fear and anxiety are all about. Ask yourself what you’re afraid of. Then ask yourself some questions about what you fear: What’s the worst that can happen? Can I do anything to change the situation that frightens me? Look more closely at what you’re afraid of. See if you can break it down into smaller pieces. Is this fear tied up with memories or past experiences? Am I afraid of something happening now, that happened before, or that I think will happen in the future? 2 Feel the fear Sit with your fear. How does it feel in your body? Does your breathing change when you’re afraid? Do you feel other bodily changes? Is there an…

Have you noticed that we are writing by hand less and less these days? Sometimes it’s just a signature with a blunt stylus at the grocery store, or your finger signing crudely on a credit card pay screen. Handwriting certainly looks like a dying form, as we type away merrily on our keyboards, responding to emails that fly off in all directions. Is this withering away of handwriting a problem? Or is it the inevitable unfolding of language forms evolving over the centuries, from oral to written to printed, and now electronic? Before we dash headlong forward, let’s slow down for a moment and consider the role that handwriting plays. I believe that handwriting still serves a deep purpose in our lives and that letting it fade away will be…

Raised in Bombay, India, Parneet Pal entered medical school at the age of 17, and was part of the first generation in her family to attend college. She wanted to help others as a physician, but when she completed her internship and residency—at Columbia and Harvard universities—she felt dissatisfied. Now, 12 years later, she has found her calling in the field of well-being, moving from traditional clinical practice to lifestyle-as-medicine consulting at academic institutions and as chief science officer at Wisdom Labs, a San Francisco start-up. Why did you choose a non-traditional approach to medicine? In North America, three out of four of us will suffer from a lifestyle-related chronic disease, and 80 to 90% of this is completely preventable. But nobody was talking about prevention and how to help people…

“It’s natural to wonder to what extent this is a culturally created disorder, given that pretty much everyone these days feels distracted and overwhelmed,” notes Oregon Health & Science University psychiatry professor Joel Nigg, author of What Causes ADHD? But how can you tell for sure whether you have a genuine biological malady or merely a brain that has been Twitterized? There’s no blood test or brain scan (despite what you may have heard) that can diagnose ADHD—or any other psychological disorder, for that matter. Instead, a clinician will ask you questions from a checklist of the classic symptoms—forgetfulness, distractedness, impulsivity, and difficulty finishing tasks— and deliver a diagnosis only if those problems are chronically impairing your performance at school or at work. For a preview, you can ask yourself…

It’s easy enough to reduce eating to a sensation of bite, chew, and swallow. Who hasn’t eaten a plateful of food without noticing what they’re doing? Yet eating is one of the most pleasurable experiences we engage in as human beings, and doing it mindfully can turn eating into a far richer experience, satisfying not just the need for nutrition, but more subtle senses and needs. When we bring our full attention to our bodies and what we are truly hungry for, we can nourish all our hungers. Try this: 1 Breathe before eating. We often move from one task right to the other without pausing or taking a breath. By pausing, we slow down and allow for a more calm transition to our meals. Bring your attention inward by…

There’s nothing like heavy traffic and impatient drivers to trigger the “fight or flight” response. That’s why road rage erupts and stress levels soar, while reason is overrun. The worse the traffic, the worse the stress. Los Angeles, where I live, has some of the worst traffic around, and some of the most unserene drivers. Emotions run high, tempers flare, tires squeal. But it doesn’t have to be like that. In fact, the snarliest traffic jam can provide an excellent opportunity to build your mindfulness muscle, increase your sense of connection to others, and restore some balance and perspective. Here are the steps to a simple behind-thewheel practice I’ve been doing for a while. I’ve found it can work wonders. 1 First, take a deep breath. This simple, yet profound…

In evolutionary terms, fear is adaptive. That intense charge to your nervous system in the face of perceived threats can save your life. But like any adaptive behavior (eating and drinking, for example), it can get out of hand and end up harming you. Consider the wear and tear on the nervous system if every time you entered a room full of strangers, you freaked out at a level appropriate for being chased by gun-toting guerillas. Exposure therapy is a popular behavioral regimen designed to help people who have difficulty “extinguishing” conditioned fear, such as post-traumatic stress sufferers. The notion of “extinction” or “extinguishing” comes from the psychology of classical conditioning. Pavlov’s dog learned to associate a ringing bell with food and salivate in response, but after the bell rang…

Can sitting still really improve our social skills? Some of the most sought after skills in our global workplace have to do with social intelligence—our ability to regulate our emotions, listen openly to others, inspire colleagues, express ourselves confidently, and much more. And one of the delightful ironies to practicing mindfulness meditation is how this simple act of sitting still cultivates these very talents. But how does this work? How does simply sitting still boost our social intelligence? Research into mindfulness, while limited, has offered some promising insights. For example, mindfulness has been shown to intensify our confidence, improve our sense of well-being and strengthen our attention—all vital to being socially intelligent. Even more surprising, mindfulness has been shown to actually grow the part of the brain that regulates emotion.…