I was recently at a conference introducing Jon Kabat-Zinn and the beginning of the talk focused around my experience when I read page 14 of his book Wherever You Go, There You Are. This was a particularly difficult time in my life when I was feeling uneasy, confused and dissatisfied with things. Now, if you’ve read this book you know he has all kinds of wonderful suggestions in it to sprinkle the philosophy and practice of mindfulness into everyday life. But when I came upon this one section it said to try reminding yourself from time to time that “this is it.” And I said, “Really, this is it?” This is all there is? Well, apparently it was…

Later on that day I stood looking at the Golden Gate Bridge in awe at the beauty of San Francisco and the headlands and the phrase naturally arose in my mind, “this is it.” What a wonderful moment.

That phrase has since traveled with me as a friend reminding me to accept the reality of each moment as it is. When I was sad, this is it! When I was joyful, this is it! When I was anxious, frustrated, or bored, this is it!

Learning how to accept the moment as it was opened my eyes to so much more.

Barry Boyce, Editor for Shambhala Sun Magazine has finally coined exactly what is happening in our culture today with his newest book The Mindfulness Revolution. Since Jon Kabat-Zinn appeared on Bill Moyers in 1993, research on the applications of mindfulness has soared exponentially.His Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program has been splintered off into Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)  for depressive relapse, Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) for addiction, MB-EAT for eating disorders and many more.

There is absolutely a revolution happening right now and there likely couldn’t be a more perfect time.

Corporations across the country are becoming increasingly interested in the applications of mindfulness to the workplace. In March 2011, Google, Facebook, Intel, Twitter and many more took part in the Wisdom 2.0 conference curious about how to integrate this into their work environments.

If you have an IPhone, you can get a Free 21 Day Mindfulness for the Workplace Pilot Program, available for a limited time to people who want to test it out.

In one chapter of The Mindfulness Revolution Norman Fischer, principal meditation teacher at Google’s mindfulness program gives us some practices to maintain mindfulness throughout the day:

When it comes down to it life is driven by our intentions.

Read over the following progression from A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook a couple of times:

1.         Intention shapes our thoughts and words.

2.         Thoughts and words mold our actions.

3.         Thoughts, words, and actions shape our behaviors.

4.         Behaviors sculpt our bodily expressions.

5.         Bodily expressions fashion our character.

6.         Our character hardens into what we look like.

There’s simply so much truth to this. There’s a reason the Dalai Lama looks happy. However, most of the time we live unintentionally and that’s when we look back many years later and say, “Where did it all go.” It’s time to live as if it mattered.

Today it’s my pleasure to bring to you Dr. Les Fehmi who is the co-author of Dissolving Pain: Simple Brain-Training Exercises for Overcoming Chronic Painand The Open-Focus Brainand has been a leader in brainwave biofeedback (also called neurofeedback), training individuals how to balance and regulate their brainwave patterns to improve mental, emotional, and physical health.

Today Les talks to us about how we can use our attention with an open focus to work through chronic pain for good and also some tips on what we can do.

Elisha: You mention that pain doesn’t exist in the body, but only in the brain, can you say more?

In the past post Feeling Disconnected from Life: 9 Steps to Reconnect Today I quoted Abraham Joshua Heschel saying:

“Life is routine and routine is resistance to wonder.”

The purpose of this was to bring awareness to the fact that our brains are inclined toward automaticity and the thing we do in life and the ways we are tend to become habit. What was once interesting or what we used to put heartfelt attention into tends to become rote.

Six months before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967 in a talk titled “What is Your Life’s Blueprint.”  In this talk he said:

“And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.

Today it’s my pleasure to bring to you Bodhipaksa, a longtime meditation teacher, author of Living As a River: Finding Fearlessness in the Face of Change. Bodhipaksa also started a wonderful site called Wildmind that has a number of self paced guided meditation courses and an ongoing blog to help us sew our seeds of mindfulness and compassion. As a short note, Bodhipaksa means “wings of enlightenment.”

Today Bodhipaksa shares with us what it means to live as a river, how we might gain freedom from seeing the ever changing nature of ourselves and what we can do when we’re suffering.

Elisha: What does it mean to live as a river?

Bodhipaksa: To me, living as a river means accepting the reality of impermanence and also recognizing the reality of anatta, or non-self. Our minds try to “fix” things and to see them as more permanent, static, and separate than they actually are. And one of the “things” that we treat in this way is ourselves.

Over the course of our lives we’ve been labeled or labeled ourselves as a glass half full or empty kind of person. But what if the glass was already broken? That’s the lesson that Ajahn Chah gives to a group of students including Psychiatrist Mark Epstein, author of Thoughts Without A Thinker.

Ajahn Chah was a highly respected Buddhist Teacher, maybe well known to some as Jack Kornfield’s teacher. What was he talking about when he said the glass is already broken and how does that relate to our lives?

After spending a weekend with Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the greatest gifts he gave me was the piece of advice:

“Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to be able to sit in not knowing.”

So often in life we feel like we need to have the answer and the truth is, often times we don’t have it.

This is especially true in parenting, relationships and well, I guess many aspects of life.

The more we are unsure of ourselves or don’t have the answer, the greater the insecurity. When we feel insecure, the mind goes into overdrive trying to reach into the past and draw on experiences to anticipate the future.

So what we come to realize is that we’re actually not in the most important place which is here. There is no other time than now and no other place than here, but we spend so much of our mental energy in the past and future.

In a past blog I wrote about how more often than not when any of us are asked how we are, in the response somewhere will be a reference to how busy things are (even if just in our own minds). We just want more space to breathe. Recently I came across a metaphor that I wanted to share about finding the spaces in our lives and what we can do about it.

The metaphor has to do with music.

When Toni Berhnard fell ill in Paris on a trip in 2001, doctors told her she had an acute viral infection, but Toni never recovered.

It is my great pleasure to bring to you a woman who truly walks the talk and has gives great wisdom and insight in her new book How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers. Her deep experience with applying mindfulness to her chronic illness has led her to writing this book for all who suffer and their caregivers. But truly, what has been written here can be applied to anybody.

In this interview, Toni talks to us about how she learned to live with chronic illness, how developing equanimity can help, and her favorite quote. She also shares some advice for those who are suffering.

Elisha: There are so many forms of chronic illness that come in the form of physical and emotional manifestations. How did you learn “How to be Sick?”