How to Practice Sympathetic Joy
Christiane Wolf on how to multiply the joy in your life with mudita — delight in the happiness of others. Illustrations by Carole Hénaff. Imagine you have just received wonderful news. What’s one of your very first thoughts? Probably you’re thinking about whom to call...
Finding a Better Balance
Equanimity protects us from emotional overreaction and allows us to rest in a bigger perspective. Christiane Wolf on how to cultivate it. “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.” With this sentence, the...
Take a Mindful Approach to COVID-19
From NPR to CNN, we’re hearing calls for us to bring mindfulness to bear to avoid the risk of infection with COVID-19. Mindfulness is the practice to intentionally bring awareness to the present moment so we can choose our response to what is happening, instead...
Stay sane, centered and kind during the holidays
Happy Solstice! What an interesting time of year. The days are so short and the nights long so that it feels like a natural time for rest, reflection and introspection. At the same time many of us are pretty stressed around the holidays with preparation and maybe one...
Don’t B*tch – Mindfulness, Reactivity and Social Media
We can use social media to connect and support each other. Or be reactive. We get to choose. If you are active on any social media platform you are very aware how crazy, heated and hyperbole things have gotten. It’s understandable that people feel passionate about...
Transforming Chronic Pain with Mindfulness and Compassion
Without it, we wouldn’t know we’re alive and we couldn’t tell if we’ve been hurt. But too much of it can become an all-consuming drain on our attention. What can we do when we find ourselves… Trapped In the Box We Call Pain When Josie walked through the door to...
Today’s Body – Mindfulness Practices for Body Love
How a simple statement can change the way we feel about our body. We are in tumultuous times. It feels to me that we need our mindfulness and compassion practices more than ever. The more grounded we are and the less inner conflict with ourselves we experience the...
There is no problem here
How a simple statement can help to calm down the mind (and nervous system) in surprising ways. I’m a fixer. There you have it. All these years of “letting things be as they are”, all these years of training and I’m still a fixer. Are you, too? I was...
Writing a Book and Generosity
This week is a big week for me, and I want to share this with all of you. After a year of writing and refining with my colleague, Dr. Greg Serpa, we are sending the finished and edited manuscript for “Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Mindfulness” to the publisher. It...
What Would Love Do? – Access Your Inner Wisdom
A couple of months ago I came across a blog post from a popular life coach called “What would love do?” In it she describes how this question changed everything for her: Her work, her relationship, her struggle with her weight and self-esteem. She describes how she...
Travel-Proof Your Meditation Practice This Summer – 6 Simple Steps
This is my first blog that got published through the Huffington Post this week. If you ever struggled with keeping your meditation practice alive while traveling - this blog is for you. I would love if you would comment on it or share it. Thanks! Here is a linked...
5 simple steps to boost your meditation – before you even start
Where you meditate and what you do before meditating are nearly as important as meditating. You instinctively might be drawn to the same place because of a comfy chair or nice view out of the window. If you take a moment consciously choose where you sit and what you...
Have you made this mistake and stopped meditating?
Do you feel like your meditation practice isn’t really getting traction? Do you have a hard time making yourself do it even though you know how good it is for you and you want to make it part of your life? Have you made this mistake and stopped meditating? It's not...
Surprise the Attacker – The perfect mental Aikido
In this blog you will learn what mental Aikido is, why it is a mindfulness practice and a recent example of perfect mental Aikido that went viral on the internet. Mindfulness practice embraces our entire life. How do we use it with other people? For most of us we...
Meditation saves you time (7 reasons why it works)
Have you ever thought, “I don’t have time to meditate?” Have you ever used lack of time as an excuse to not meditate? Of course you have. We all have. We evaluate activities by how long they take and their results. I get that. We want to spend our time effectively and...
Dirty pain in the night
Today a student, let’s call her Joy, told me about her back pain, which had been flaring up. It had kept her awake quite a bit last night. And then she added: “But it didn’t bother me so much, because I knew that I didn’t have to work today.” I’m sure you are familiar...
Lice and the mind
“Mom!” my older daughter called as she was starting to braid her sister’s hair. “Mom, I just found a lice in Antonia’s hair!” We were about to head out of the door for school. I sighed and let the annoyance wash through me. Great, that was just what I needed now! Then...
What do you really want?
During the last week of December, I reflect back on the past year, up until the last minutes when my husband and I recall the year together. We remember big and small moments, the happy and the not so happy ones. And then we look forward. What might be coming in the...