Exercises / Practices

By Steven M. Cohen

Thanksgiving has been a special holiday, a day where both sides of our family and some friends gathered together for a feast.  The more the merrier, and without the entanglement of religious significance. In 2020, COVID-19 changes everything. What once brought only joy now brings fear, particularly with respect to our elderly parents. Likely, it will be too cold to gather and eat outside, and likely too dangerous to bring everyone together to eat inside. What do we do?...

By Michelle L. Maldonado

What happens to one of us, happens to all of us. These words repeat themselves like a song’s refrain playing over and over again in my mind just as strongly today as when my family and I first began to speak this phrase some time ago.

For many in our families, communities, and places of work, the vision and wish for equality and equity, coupled with wise and compassionate action to transform societal conditions, have been a life-long endeavor. For others, we are...

By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West

The “Integral” in Integral Coaching has a few different meanings. It points to the multiple traditions and disciplines that weave together to form the method itself. It indicates the ways that coaches synthesize all they know and are learning to support their clients. Perhaps most importantly, it names how we are supporting our clients to integrate themselves so that they are bringing their full aliveness to all domains of life. 

In this...

By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West

Many of us spend the majority of our days in conversations of one kind or another. This is particularly true for coaches, therapists, and other practitioners who spend their time supporting others’ development. Bringing greater mindfulness to how we approach conversations with anyone—our clients, colleagues, partners, children, friends, and others—holds the potential to make these conversations not only productive, but...

By Max Strom

Why is it that so many people in urban environments across the world are now experiencing exponential growth in anxiety and depression? What can we make of the fact that anxiety is now an epidemic in America? It’s also alarming that suicide was the second leading cause of death among people between the ages of 10 and 34. 

Most of us are thankful that we live in a time when we have medications for anxiety and depression, but I haven’t...

By Georgina Miranda

I have a little ritual when I climb literal mountains. I share this with you now, as many of us have been climbing metaphorical mountains of our own day to day in these uncertain times with new obstacles being presented in our work and life around every turn. It’s natural for fear to arise and we all have the power to overcome it. The key is to overcome or move past the fear, otherwise, we can find ourselves in a state of paralysis or heightened stress. From this...

By Mo Edjlali, Mindful Leader Chief Community Organizer

Through our work, I’ve had the privilege to get to know a great many meditation teachers and facilitators. This includes from my own personal practice and mindfulness training, those who have spoken at our events, our adjunct MBSR certified instructors, and the 120+ Workplace Mindfulness Facilitators that we have certified. Of this group of teachers and facilitators, there are those who are world renown with deep practice and...

By Patrick Briody

If only I didn’t have this horrible feeling in my gut every time I think of updating the committee on this project. Why am I such a wimp?

Whether you’ve had exactly that thought or not, managing our emotions in professional life can be a significant source of difficulty. For some leaders, unregulated emotions are the main limitation on their upward trajectory.

The bad news is, of course, that eliminating difficult emotions is probably not going to happen for you anytime...

By John J. Murphy

You turn on the daily news and hear about more businesses slowly reopening. You wonder when you will be going back to work. And then you wonder if you will be going back to work. After all, a lot of people are getting permanently furloughed these days. Or, maybe you are already back to work and you wonder how you will lead your team with poise and confidence when a lot of people are anxious and afraid, just like you. How can a fearful leader inspire anyone? Inspiration comes...

By Steven Cohen

These are really crazy times. There is a need to physically distance ourselves from others to avoid the spread of a virus that traveled in an unknown web of human interactions around the world in months. Recommendations about what to do change by the hour, but ultimately, many of us are quarantined in our own houses.  At the same time, we need each other for emotional support and to avoid isolation. We want to be there for our family, friends, customers, colleagues, and...