Transforming Suffering with Mindfulness

Sometimes called slogan or compassion training, the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Lojong uses aphorisms as a memory aid for transforming life's circumstances, whatever they may be, into an awakening of the heart.

Mindful Speech: The Power of Words

The words we choose to communicate our experience to ourselves and others can help facilitate intimacy when we are mindful - or they can widen the gap when unexamined.

Mindfulness of Greed

A dedicated practice of mindfulness can allow us see through our insatiable wanting and greed to a more sustainable mindset of sufficiency.

Mindfulness of Social Anxiety

Mindfulness can help us reduce social anxiety and increase interpersonal trust so that we can cultivate more intimate connections, even across difference, toward a more compassionate world.

Mindfulness of Interpersonal Warmth

The skills we gain through mindfulness practice and the resources we share in our practice communities can help us cultivate the beneficial trait of interpersonal warmth.
Mexican Traditional day of the dead skulls full of joy

Mindfulness of Mortality

Contemplative practices and skills such as mindfulness and self-compassion can help resource us to face mortality with wisdom, live our lives with greater appreciation and presence, become more skillful supporters of our dying loved ones, and prepare for our own deaths in ways that decrease unnecessary suffering.

Mindfulness of Mirroring

Practicing mindfulness of mirroring can help us meet difficult social experiences with greater wisdom and skill.
Map of Midwestern US States

Why Mindfulness is Important in the Midwest

The US Midwest possesses unique gifts, resources, and vulnerabilities that impact the rest of the country and ripple out into the world. Mindfulness may help us relate to them more skillfully, to everyone's benefit.

Who Decides? Mindfulness of Multiplicity, Interdependence and Agency

We like to believe we are the authors of our own actions, but research is showing us behavior is complicated. Fortunately, mindfulness can help us make the subconscious processes that drive our impulses more conscious and intentional.

Mindful Life Lessons from the Beatles

Shane Ledford explores how the Beatles documentary "Get Back" offers some mindful lessons that can be adapted into everyday life.

Do Not Fall Into Despair: Mindfulness as Antidote

Any one of the profound difficulties we are facing as a species might cause us to abandon hope. Fortunately, mindfulness can help resource ourselves to face these challenges with wisdom and resilience.

Breaking Down the Gates and Welcoming In the Wilderness with Mindfulness

Certified mindfulness teacher Julia Grimm discusses the wisdom and refuge of her practice as well as the fruits of her mindfulness teacher training experience.

Seven Years of Ashtanga Yoga

Reflections on 7 years of Ashtanga Yoga, a mindful movement practice that heals the body, purifies the mind, and prepares the practitioner for the stillness of meditation.

Moved by Love: Kama Muta

Kama muta, a Sanskrit word for a feeling of oneness, is not just a pleasant emotion. Experiencing it motivates us to commit to communal sharing relationships that anthropologists credit for our survival as a species.

Mindfulness of Self-Referencing

Though self-referencing is a cognitive ability that can be useful for our survival, the unexamined mind can create unnecessary suffering when we react to this tendency in a habitual way.

Mindfulness and Social Courage

In this time of polarity and division, cultivating social courage can give us the resilience to work effectively together to help make the world a more welcoming and thriving place.

A Mindfulness Center in the Midwest: Four and Fabulous

January 1, 2022 marked the fourth “official” anniversary of the Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness (MAM), Kansas City’s premier secular mindfulness and meditation center.

Relinquishing the Uncontrollable, Unhelpful, and Unowned

Mindfulness can help us recognize when our hanging on isn't skillful and cultivate the skills we need to let go of what is uncontrollable, unhelpful, or unowned.