We’re almost two weeks into this 100 Days of Lovingkindness, but even after just five or six days the quality of my experience was radically different from usual.

I’ve felt considerably happier than I normally do. Blissfully happy, often. I’ve been much more patient with my children. I’ve been buffered from things that would normally press my buttons. I’ve been cocooned in lovingkindness.

To give you an example, last week I dropped my beloved iPad mini as I was putting it into my bag to head to work. I didn’t notice until I actually arrived at the office, but there was a huge crack right across the screen. Normally I’d …

Jessica Murri, The Montana Kaimin:

Nicole Dunn walked to the public library after work and waited for her husband to pick her up. It was sangha night, and Dunn looked forward to the group meditation all day.

Dunn hated being late. She paced in front of the library, seething about her husband’s tardiness. She grew more frustrated thinking about missing sangha, and she felt herself getting carried away by stress.

She stopped, sat on a bench and looked at the blue sky. It was a beautiful day. She felt like she could hear the day telling her, “Just enjoy me.” She felt…

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Alexander Vervloet, The Daily Barometer: After spending 10 days as a pseudo-monk, the world tends to look and feel quite different. The 240 hours of constant, silent meditation and reflection has an effect that is almost indescribable. Many people don’t take even five minutes of their day to reflect on their lives, because they’re so distracted by what’s going on around them. Because of this, when I tell people about the experience, most seem to be unable to even fathom the implications.

Meditation is a topic with a multitude of views and attitudes toward it. Some believe it to be “hippie crap” while…

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Our mindfulness practice is not about vanquishing our thoughts. It’s about becoming aware of the process of thinking so that we are not in a trance—lost inside our thoughts. That’s the big difference. To train in becoming mindful of thoughts can help us to notice when your mind is actively thinking, either using the label “thinking, thinking,” or identifying the kind of thought—“worrying, worrying,” “planning, planning.” Then, becoming interested in what’s really happening right here. Coming home to the sensations in your body, your breath, the sounds around you, the life of the moment.

As our mindfulness practice deepens we become more aware of our thoughts. This offers us the opportunity to assess …

Brett Smith,redOrbit.com: As veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars return to their lives away from the battlefield, many are having difficulty coping with the additional strain brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A new study in the journal Depression and Anxiety points to promising results for veterans suffering from PTSD. Researchers found that veterans who engaged in mindfulness exercises, such as meditation, stretching, and acceptance of uncomfortable thoughts and emotions, experienced a reduction in PTSD symptoms compared to their colleagues who did not engage in the same activities.

“The results of our trial are encouraging for veterans trying to find help for PTSD,” said lead author…

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Cynthia H. Craft, Sacramento Bee: As the nation embarks on a top-down overhaul of health care, a simple movement with the potential to improve wellness is quietly growing from the ground up.

It’s called “mindfulness meditation,” an outgrowth of the West’s fascination in recent decades with eastern Buddhist philosophy.

Slowly but surely, experts say, the medical establishment is opening its doors to meditation as research continues to reveal its potential health benefits.

Many of the nation’s hospital systems have come around to offer classes in mindfulness meditation as well as mindfulness-based stress-reduction programs.

Scientific research indicates…

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David Saunders, The Cornell Daily Sun: The word ‘meditation’ may invoke any number of images. Perhaps the likeness of the Dalai Lama sitting quiescently in meditative repose, legs crossed, eyes closed, hands resting gently in his lap. Maybe stereotypical meditation paraphernalia such as a singing bowl, a meditation cushion or a Tibetan prayer flag comes to mind. All of these images, and countless more, contribute to and result from pre-conceptions of what meditation is, where it takes place, who does it and why.

I recently took time off from medical school at Weill Cornell to pursue a Ph.D. in religious studies at…

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Rick Nauert PhD., PsychCentral: College is an invigorating world for most students, a time without parental restraints and a period in life when new experiences occur on a regular basis. But this backdrop can also be a barrier to classroom concentration and attention.

New research, published in the journal Mindfulness, suggests practicing meditation before class can help students focus and lead to better grades.

In the study, George Mason University professor Dr. Robert Youmans and University of Illinois doctoral student Jared Ramsburg conducted three classroom experiments at a California university to see if meditation might help students focus better and retain information.

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George Dvorsky, io9: Meditation yields a surprising number of health benefits, including stress reduction, improved attention, better memory, and even increased creativity and feelings of compassion. But how can something as simple as focusing on a single object produce such dramatic results? Here’s what the growing body of scientific evidence is telling us about meditation and how it can change the way our brains function.

Before we get started it’s worth doing a quick review of what is actually meant by meditation. The practice can take on many different forms, but the one technique that appears most beneficial, and which also happens to be…

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Mary MacVean, Los Angeles Times:
Day 1–My anxiety grows as I get to Larkspur, several hours into my drive to Spirit Rock. I stop for a snack, worried the food will be hippie-style brown rice casseroles. When I pull into the parking lot, I’m told I can carry my bags up the hill or put them in a pickup. I heft them, worried it’s too indulgent to do otherwise. Later, walking to dinner, people talk tentatively; it’s our last chance to speak to one another, and rather than motivating a full-on chat stream, that makes me pretty uninterested in small talk…

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