According to John Makransky and Brooke Lavelle (Tricycle blog, 1 Feb 2016) we live in an age of exhausted, burned out, rugged individuals, and nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the social service professions:
Forty- to fifty-percent of teachers quit their jobs within the first five years of teaching. Nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals report increasingly less satisfaction in their work. Suicide among social workers is on the rise …
Here are my top picks from the January ’16 issue of the Mindfulness Research Monthly newsletter, a publication of the American Mindfulness Research Association (AMRA). Several articles describe how mindfulness interventions affect student stress and teacher burnout. Another article that might interest those who would like to teach meditation recommends ‘best practices’ for conducting mindfulness programs in public schools.
Continue reading
The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, or CCARE, is part of Stanford’s School of Medicine. It was established and directed by Dr. James Doty, Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, with the explicit goal of “promoting, supporting, and conducting rigorous scientific studies of compassion and altruistic behavior.”
The American Mindfulness Research Association (AMRA) publishes a monthly newsletter called the Mindfulness Research Monthly that lists recent research publications and studies. Quite a few of these research investigations bear on issues that might be interesting to members of the Reed community so I will start publishing short lists of my top picks from the newsletter.
What follows is a list of articles mentioned in the December ’15 issue that describe how mindfulness interventions affect academic performance, working memory, emotional resilience, and more. (Note: only a few articles are ever available through our library’s subscriptions so be prepared to file interlibrary loan requests.)
Continue reading
What a lovely time we had at noon today. Seven of us seated at various spot in the Eliot Chapel, some wearing coats to ward off the chill, some made hot by the crackling radiators, all silent, still, together, sharing.
Thursday will be our regular meeting day most weeks this semester.
“You may start each day intending to spend half an hour on your zafu, practice walking meditation in the park, or write three haikus capturing the essence of your insights. But you’re out of yogurt and broccoli, there are 237 unread emails in your inbox, your taxes were due last week, and your child has knocked out a tooth skateboarding or needs you to buy Japanese print fabric for a history project. So you put off meditating or working on your memoir for one more day. And then one more.” writes Anne Cushman (Lion’s Roar, 4 Jan 2016).
If this sounds like you, don’t worry. Anne has a 6 step plan for getting you to your daily goal. The steps are: Continue reading
It’s that time of year once again. Ads for holiday shoppers, our friends’ post-Thanksgiving photos, and the final exam schedule all fight for our attention. It’s the annual End-of-Semester Dash. It’s fun. It’s intense. And sometimes it’s just-too-much. You just want to reach out … grab your PHONE and turn on some peace and quiet.
Wait. Can your phone really be the shelter in the storm? It’s an interesting question that John Tresch, a historian of science at the University of Pennsylvania, considers in his blog post, “Buddhify Your Android” (Tricycle blog, 4 Dec 2015). Continue reading
It’s a fact: not everyone is willing to sit down, much less sit still. But there are other ways to cultivate mindfulness. Attending to how you walk, listen, watch, wash the dishes, even brush your teeth, may provide you with all the opportunities. Here are some interesting links on this topic that Robin recently sent my way:
Maybe when the football game is over, and the conversation is dying down, and you’re ready to just sit and digest your food, don’t go for the TV. Not yet. Instead, give a listen to The Science of Gratitude from WNYC (56 min):
On this Thanksgiving, take a few moments to feel the nature of thankfulness. As thoughts arise – What am I thankful for? Whom am I indebted to? Which of the gifts I have received have been larger, which smaller? – just let the thoughts run dry. Experience gratitude just for itself, because its there, because you can.
The poem Worms, by Carl Dennis, is a sweet reminder that the opportunities to give thanks are boundless. Have a happy Thanksgiving.
WORMS by Carl Dennis
Aren’t you glad at least that the earthwormsUnder the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth,Of the good they confer on us, that their silenceIsn’t a silent reproof for our bad manners,Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanksFor their keeping the soil from packing so tightThat no root, however determined, could pierce it?