A new take on a well-known mindfulness practice that helps you foster compassion and kind awareness when you need to come down from stress. The STOP acronym is one of the most well-known and cherished brief mindfulness practices to use during the day. It’s super simple: S – Stop T – Take a…
For those feeling the pain of anger and resentment, this practice by Dr. Christiane Wolf guides us through the gentle process of starting to forgive. Rage and bitterness toward those we see as causing our pain can tear us apart. It takes time, writes Christiane Wolf, but the brave and…
As the caregiver of a loved one with chronic pain, you may experience painful emotions like grief, anger, or feeling stuck. Christiane Wolf explores how you can create the space to extend compassion to yourself, while building resilience to meet the challenges you face. Suffering from chronic pain isn’t hard for just…
Pressure to succeed and misunderstanding discipline often lead to giving up on resolutions. Learn how to achieve the goals you set for yourself with self-kindness and acceptance. Is 2022 the year you finally meditate every day? Or do online yoga sessions three times per week for sure? You might be asking, “What…
Imagine you have just received wonderful news. What’s one of your very first thoughts? Probably you’re thinking about whom to call to share your joy with. Knowing that your loved ones will be happy for you and with you makes the joy even greater and more real. As the German…
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 German-American writer Max Ehrmann began “Desiderata.” My…
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 of acting on autopilot. For example, we are…
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 too many…
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 their views and that…
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…
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 more we are available for what is needed around us. I…
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 trained…
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 will be on…
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 moved from forcing,…
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 do before you sit,…
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…
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…
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 communicate…
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…
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…