Exercises / Practices

By Cara Bradley 

Do you ever feel like you’re like a brain on a stick—you know that sensation of being stuck in your head, disconnected to what is happening below the neck, aka your body? Let’s just say, it’s not a comfortable (or productive) place to live—and, yet, it’s all too common.  

Somehow, moving through the world like that brain on a stick is acceptable in our culture. In some ways, we revere those supposedly productive minds that are always thinking.  The result of incessant over-thi…

By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West

“Along with all the growth and healing, remember to give yourself time for integration, which is a fancy word for ‘allowing sh*t to settle.’ It looks like doing nothing. This nothing is necessary.”

- Emily McDowell

Has it ever happened to you? You’ve been meditating, or doing the art, or practicing the breathing technique, and finally, suddenly, something breaks open and you feel completely and irreversibly new? Or maybe you find yourself in a classroom …

By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West

“Sorry, remind me how to pronounce your name?” I asked. 

I knew about her alcoholic mother, about her cancer scare. I knew how many children she had, their ages, and what they were up to. I knew that she hoped to help teens and young adults with her coaching, inspired by her own difficulties as a youth and the kinds of situations she’s been privy to as an adjunct college professor. I knew that a pervasive fear of scarcity ruled many of the decisions she made,…

By Fleet Maull, PhD, CMT-P

During these times of great uncertainty and anxiety, I believe we need to begin a serious conversation about resilience. Resilience is simply no longer a luxury. It's becoming essential and even critical to our very survival… in much the same way that His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a global voice for peace and nonviolence, has said that compassion is not a luxury, that it's actually critical to our very survival in the highly complex, interdependent world in which we li…

By Joy Reichert, New Ventures West

Do this, if you would: Google “René Magritte, Clairvoyance.” Bring up an image of the painting.* Sit with it for 30 seconds, one minute, two minutes. Five. 

Receive it through your heart. Notice its effects on your body. Analyze it with your mind (you probably started doing that the second you saw it. We can’t help it, we humans! However, if that’s where you automatically went, perhaps try amping up the focus in your heart, your gut).

How does the image rela…

By Georgina Miranda

Photo courtesy of the author.

The alarm clock goes off and it’s time to start a new day. Those first initial thoughts and words that run through your mind will play a factor in how your day carries on. Just like those parting thoughts and words before you dozed off to sleep the night prior likely had an impact on the quality of your night's rest. Are you waking up to and going to sleep with a critic or a friend each day? It can be easy to run though the daily motions of lif…

By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West

Cyd is the person in the office who is always fixing everything: the broken printer, the scheduling snafu, the delivery gone awry. They see things that are invisible to most: the bump in the ceiling that could become a leak; the fact that you’re halfway through the second-to-last jug of water and haven’t placed the next order yet. They have the answer to everyone’s mystifying computer issues (or if they don’t, they’ll find out). Whether or not this is in their…

By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West

In Integral Coaching we often talk about the three centers of intelligence: head, heart, and body.* Useful across all areas of coaching, they are particularly interesting to explore in the realm of speaking and listening. 

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend several days with a group of highly experienced Integral Coaches, observing how they interacted with each other as they explored issues that were both deeply personal and globally impactful. And in s…

NOTE: Diana Winston will be hosting a Mindful Leader Expert Workshop, Refine and Expand your Meditation Practice: Practicing Mindfulness Across the Spectrum of Awareness, on June 4th. Click here to learn more. 

By Diana Winston

Awareness is a capacity of the human mind. Awareness is the ability to directly know and to perceive, sense, feel, or be cognizant of experience. We might think of awareness simply as the state of being conscious of something.

Every living being is aware. We usually do…

NOTE: Dr. Elisha Goldstein will be hosting a Mindful Leader Expert Workshop, Moving from Fear to Empowerment, on May 7th. Click here to learn more. 

By Dr. Elisha Goldstein

In the past year of Covid-19 mental wellness for many of us has gone out the window entirely. If you're experiencing that you're not alone. It used to be that 1 in 12 people suffered from symptoms of an anxiety disorder and this last year the CDC found it was 1 in 3. I say this just to give you a sense that you’re not alone…