The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped all of our lives. Not least of these, the lives of healthcare professionals working on the front-lines. Yet amidst the long, challenging days in the hospitals, the medical staff across the country consistently demonstrated care and compassion for their patients. How do they cultivate such enduring resilience?
Much of contemporary mindfulness is based on the newly emerged field of “contemplative neuroscience,” which looks at the effects in the brain and overall health of contemplative practices such as different forms of meditation and mindfulness. In the contemporary mindfulness practices such as those offered through the “Search Inside Yourself” curriculum, many of the exercises and skill building are derived…
The beautiful words you will read below arose in the consciousness of participants in my recent writing workshop at the Garrison Institute. The workshop was based on Healing Rhythms of Words, my system of creative, psychological, and spiritual growth through rhythmical writing. Each of the brief passages here offers a glimpse into one moment of our weekend-long journey through different language…
Humankind’s ability to thrive in a changing world depends on a major overhaul of the way cities are built and organized, and a dramatic increase in the amount of land protected for the sake of biodiversity. Those were key components of the Garrison’s Institute’s recent symposium, Pathways to Planetary Health (April 17-19, 2018), along with regenerative economics and pervasive altruism.…
When doing research for my latest book Real Love, I had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of my students around the world about what love meant to them—self-love, love for friends and family, romantic love, parental love, love in all contexts. In many of these conversations, the topic of “letting go” came up. In all facets of life, we…
Seventy-two million people were watching game six of the 1998 NBA Championship Finals between the Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz. With only eighteen seconds left in the game and the Jazz ahead by one point, an invisible shift seemed to occur: Michael Jordan stripped the ball from Karl Malone, slipped away from Bryon Russell so deftly that Russell careened…
The Mind & Life Institute continues the tradition of hosting its signature program, the annual Mind and Life Summer Research Institute (MLSRI) at the Garrison Institute every year in mid-June. Over the course of a week, a community coalesces. In a rich and intimate retreat-like setting, together we dive deeply into a theme related to contemplative studies. With a broad…