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Mindfulness of Miswanting

One powerful benefit of a dedicated mindfulness practice is it can help us see through our problematic human habits and unconscious biases, including the miswanting that keeps us running ourselves ragged on a hedonic treadmill.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema

Mindfulness of Distress

A dedicated mindfulness practice can help prepare us to meet life's inevitable challenges with greater wisdom and ease. This might allow us to decrease our own suffering and prevent ourselves from mindlessly causing or exacerbating harm to others.

Building Confidence Mindfully

Life serves us up a rollercoaster ride of experiences that can leave us feeling insecure and confused. The practice of mindfulness can help us cultivate the equanimity needed to feel anchored, confident and balanced amidst the fickle winds of worldly concerns.

Cultivating a Mindfulness Practice

Cultivating a mindfulness practice strengthens beneficial qualities that mature into a more skillful way of being in the world. When we let go of attachment to outcome and direct our efforts to creating the best possible conditions, we find the courage to persevere.

Liberation: The True Meaning of Freedom

True freedom comes from within. Through the practice of mindfulness we cultivate an understanding of, and a new relationship with, the things that most often hold us captive, such as ignorance, attachment and aversion.

Foundations of Mindfulness

There are four foundational elements of mindfulness - key areas for focusing careful attention in meditation practice. Through exploration of body sensations, feeling tones, mental states, and the nature of experience, we can gain insight and decrease suffering in ourselves and others.

Radical Acceptance

It might come as a surprise to you that something as calm, balanced, and rational as acceptance can be considered radical. What makes something radical? For our purposes, it means it is both 1) a departure from the traditional, and 2) complete…

Self-Care or Self-Limitation?

With the start of the new year, many of us are thinking about the ways we will care for ourselves going forward and the healthy practices we'd like to cultivate or maintain. But, how can we know what's truly good for us? Mindfulness can help us be more discerning.

Obstacles to Mindfulness

Although the practice of mindfulness is simple in concept, it can be challenging in execution due to a number of habits and human tendencies that can create obstacles for us.

Curating a State of Mind

A retreat I recently attended offered a great reminder that we are ultimately responsible for curating our own state of mind. Most of us are fortunate to posses the ability to select, organize, and look after the contents of mind we wish to…

Facing Aversion

Aversion involves the desire to turn away from or avoid something unwanted. Most often experienced as annoyance, disliking, disgust, or even hatred, aversion obscures reality by turning attention away from what is present, preventing us from truly understanding our experience. By learning to face aversion, we can gather important information that can help us respond to life situations with greater ease and wisdom.

Attachment: Don’t Carry Your Boat

In this modern age we have an unending array of amazing tools to ease or make possible all manner of tasks. Mindfulness also has its tools - in fact, in some ways it is a tool. We all understand that certain tools are useful in certain situations…

Generosity: What’s Mine is Ours

Generosity is a fundamental attitude of mindfulness that has been added to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s original seven listed in his book, Full Catastrophe Living. This virtue is getting increased attention in the science arena due to its…

Caring Without Attachment

Caring simply means kindness and concern for others, but sometimes we get this concept mixed up with emotional investment. Letting go of attachment can free us up to be truly compassionate and a dedicated mindfulness practice can give us the courage and wisdom to do so.