The other day, we shared a video of a practitioner who introduced mindfulness to female prisoners (if you missed it, you can check it out here). We received a lot of thoughtful comments, and found out that even among our readers, there are practitioners introducing mindfulness in prisons.  Since so many people were interested, we thought we’d share another real-life story, this time from the prisoner’s point of view as well as the instructor’s. San Quentin may be California’s oldest correctional facility, but in some ways, you might say it’s one of the most progressive. About ten years ago, they…

Ever wonder which types of patients benefit most from mindfulness? As it turns out, it has a wide range of applications. To show you the range of ways that practitioners are integrating mindfulness into their practices, we thought we’d share some inspirational stories. We often highlight people who’ve written books or are on the lecture circuit, but this time we wanted to focus on your colleagues who are working with people daily to help them improve their lives. The first story is from a practitioner working with a person suffering from anxiety disorder. See how he slowly integrated mindfulness meditation…

I was reminiscing recently about our December conference in Hilton Head. We don’t host it anymore, but one moment made a lasting impact on me, and certainly touched many of the practitioners attending, too. It’s a song called If I Were Brave, by Jana Stanfield. Jana, a talented singer/songwriter, performed this inspiring song at a couple of our conferences. It asks each of us what we would do today if we had the courage to do it. Take a moment to listen – I think you’ll like some of the real-life bravery “stories” in this video. When I hear Jana’s…

In only one hour, we found a key source of suffering. Tara Brach kicked off our mindfulness series this week, and her wise words about the agony of self-judgment resonated. She also told us why we need to show patients the goodness in themselves. You added to her ideas on the comment board by sharing some thoughts on how to apply this. Here are a few: “In listening to this broadcast I realized that behind what someone said about feeling like a failure was probably his desire to do well. I had never thought to what was behind his words….

“I’m not as good as I should be.” It’s a common refrain from many of our patients. Helping them trade self-judgment for self-compassion is an essential first step in creating real change. Watch below as Tara Brach, PhD talks more about this and what needs to be in place before we can become truly free and open to changing ourselves for the better. Click here to sign up. To hear more about developing self-compassion, and why it extends to others as well, join us this Wednesday for Tara’s full webinar, the first in our Making Mindfulness Work webinar series. Here’s…

You shouldn’t kick yourself when you’re down . . . . . . but sometimes it’s hard not to. Even if we’re compassionate toward others, we can still be our own worst critics. Mindfulness meditation really works. And self-compassion is one of its key benefits. Kristen Neff, PhD, from the University of Texas-Austin, and Christopher Germer, PhD, from Harvard Medical School, wanted to find out whether self-compassion could be developed through training. Dr. Neff and Dr. Germer randomly assigned 54 people to either an 8-week mindfulness self-compassion (MSC) program or a waitlist control. The MSC program combined weekly 2-hour meetings…