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Exercises / Practices

9 Mindfulness Exercises to Help you Manage COVID Stress

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By Amy Rigby, guest contributor 

Mindfulness exercises are the gold standard for managing COVID stress for a reason.

53% of adults in the U.S. say their mental health has worsened because of Covid-related stress and worry.
From the pandemic that brought you the terms “social distancing” and “Zoom fatigue,” here’s another one to add to your vocabulary: Covid stress. Google Trends shows that searches for the term were nonexistent in February, peaked at the end of March, fell at the start of s…

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Strengthen Self-Observation with this Journaling Practice

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By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West, guest contributor 

An effective use of the mind

Part of what makes the Integral Coaching methodology effective is its focus on somatics: awareness of what is happening in the body, and physical practices that support clients in building the body of someone who has the qualities or competencies they wish to develop (e.g., receptivity, relationality, humility, power, etc.)

In part we pay so much attention to the body because of the automatic and over-develope…

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Kindfulness-Based Stress Reduction — KBSR?

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View our Free Guide - What is MBSR?


By Cassie Schindler, guest contributor 

Right there, in the foreword of Jon-Kabat Zinn’s powerful book, Mindfulness for All; The Wisdom to Transform the World, he coins the word kindfulness, knowing that someone would pick it up, and expand, rather than exploit, its relevance. I hope to do that with this writing. 

If the name of the 8-week MBSR course began with the word kindfulness instead of mindfulness, would you register? Would you have a clear unde…

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An Unexpected Gift from Taking MBSR

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By Karyn Sandelman, guest contributor 

There were many things that attracted me to this particular path when I made the commitment to teach Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) years ago. First was my determination to share mindfulness—the practice that has been a steady, positive force of growth in my life for nearly 25 years. Beyond that, I was (and still am) committed to making mindfulness accessible to as many people as possible. MBSR, with its …

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Sensing Another’s True Nature

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By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West, guest contributor 

Often when we meet someone for the first time, we introduce ourselves by saying what we do, where we live, what we enjoy. Rarely do we speak about the most elusive yet most important aspect of our lives: who we are. 

This is very possibly because we don’t know, not really. This is because each of us is living in a particular Structure of Interpretation: a kind of ‘bubble’ comprising messages about what was acceptable or not in our family a…

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Using One Question to Explore the Heart of Our Being

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View our Free Guide - What is MBSR?


By Janet Solyntjes, guest contributor 

The Open Question

For the past few decades, I have been immersed in various teachings, trainings, and pathways that have inspired me to repeatedly ask the question, “Why am I really here?” Outer circumstances and inner stirrings have led to these contemplations. My intention behind this offering is to guide, support, and lead you into various contemplations so that your deepest wisdom can emerge from beneath any st…

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Naming it, Reframing it, Taming it: Mindfulness in a Pandemic

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By Cheri Lovre, guest contributor 

The first thing to remember about any crisis is: We’re going to come out of it. 

Right now, after months of living with Covid-19, many people feel disoriented. It’s like we’ve lost our North Star. No one can be sure of the best course to follow. But the North Star is there in the sky. We just can’t see it right now because the lingering fog of uncertainty is still all around us. 

The vaccines that are emerging now will help, but the uncertainty related to CO…

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We All Need to be the Iguana

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By Gayle Van Gils, guest contributor 

“We all need to be the iguana,” says comedian Nick Kroll in a New York Times interview, which strikes me as a statement that pretty much sums up our current situation.  The metaphor is about the adaptability of a species of marine iguana Kroll experienced in the Galapagos that can survive even if its tail is bitten off by a bird.  Kroll says that he relates this to his life in this way: “The landscape is changing.  I can either dig my feet in and be like, ‘…

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Celebrating Thanks-Giving Mindfully

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By Steven M. Cohen, guest contributor 

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. W…

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Paradox, Prediction & Perception: Why Context Matters in the Practice and Embodiment of Mindful Awareness

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By Michelle L. Maldonado, guest contributor 

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 o…

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