Spring Clean Your Mind & Remove Mental Clutter I love springtime. Everything is bursting with life, possibility, and change. I spend time in my garden, cleaning things up. I notice what sprouted up over the winter and clear away the clutter of seasons past to make room for the things that I want to cultivate [...]
Change Your Brain With Mindfulness Mindfulness has become a household word in the past couple of years. And yet, it's not new. Quite the opposite, really. The practice itself has been around since at least 600 BC. Why, then, is it getting so much attention now? Mindfulness meditation appears to have a direct impact on the [...]
We can sit next to each other and yet be in completely different worlds. The other morning, as I was waiting for my bus, I was scanning the day's headlines on my phone. A reminder popped up from my meditation app, reminding me to pause and take a couple of mindful breaths. I took out my [...]
A Samara is the seed of a maple tree. Like my namesake, I am planting some seeds of my own today. Hello world! I built this site about a year ago, and since then, I have heard from many of you who have resonated with my messages and my approach to my work. [...]
I recently came across an article in Discover Magazine that caught my interest. You can find it here. The article describes a successful treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that has, at its very core, an emphasis on teaching mindfulness skills to its participants. Those mindfulness skills are leveraged to change the way these people think, adjusting [...]
Ah, the new year. It's a time for reflection, celebration, and redirection. With all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, it can be easy to miss the opportunity to slow down and reflect on all that has happened over this past year and how those experiences have led up to where you are today. [...]
Note: This is the first post in my 3-part "Introduction to Mindfulness" series. These days, much of our stress has to do with our thoughts about situations. Ideally, when we are faced with a problem, we will do all we can in the moment to solve it and let it go. What happens more often, though, is [...]
When I was on retreat with the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, I heard him describe the mind like a garden - it has limited space for things to grow. As such, you need to be careful what sprouts you nurture. Otherwise you could end up with a garden full of weeds, and not enough [...]
I'm not saying that it is a cure-all, but mindfulness seems to help a lot of people with a lot of different things. Journals in every discipline lately are printing articles about how mindfulness could be a really promising addition to their field. I've come across research talking about how mindfulness can reduce stress, pain, anxiety, make people more [...]